Huda
Huda can now read quite well. There are huge areas for improvement, of course. Like rhythm and intonation. But, for now, I'm satisfied with her progress.
However, there's the issue with Singlish. I'm not from the I-detest-Singlish camp. I see value in it but only after the kid is competent in English. So, my ears hurt terribly when she goes, 'Inside have a spoon.'
Gaaaah! I am now in the process of forcing her to use 'There is...' and 'There are...' in her speech. It's not an easy task because I'm sure that she has friends who use 'have' to start their sentences.
Then there's the wrong structure for questions. She goes 'You go where?' when asking people where they are going. I must have corrected this at least 3000 times so far but I still hear this too often!
I'm hoping that by the middle of next year, I would be able to weed out all these problems and that she would speak in grammatical English. Hopefully, she would develop an ear for correct English and would know the correct contexts for English and Singlish.
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Farah.
Farah sometimes likes to call people by anything except by their actual names. One night, while saying goodnight to her father:
Huda can now read quite well. There are huge areas for improvement, of course. Like rhythm and intonation. But, for now, I'm satisfied with her progress.
However, there's the issue with Singlish. I'm not from the I-detest-Singlish camp. I see value in it but only after the kid is competent in English. So, my ears hurt terribly when she goes, 'Inside have a spoon.'
Gaaaah! I am now in the process of forcing her to use 'There is...' and 'There are...' in her speech. It's not an easy task because I'm sure that she has friends who use 'have' to start their sentences.
Then there's the wrong structure for questions. She goes 'You go where?' when asking people where they are going. I must have corrected this at least 3000 times so far but I still hear this too often!
I'm hoping that by the middle of next year, I would be able to weed out all these problems and that she would speak in grammatical English. Hopefully, she would develop an ear for correct English and would know the correct contexts for English and Singlish.
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Farah.
Farah sometimes likes to call people by anything except by their actual names. One night, while saying goodnight to her father:
Farah: Bye bye Momok. (ghost)
Ayah: Ayah bukan momok. (I'm not a ghost)
Farah: Ok. Bye bye Bukan-Momok.
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She's not reading yet.
I used to put the Baby Can Read videos on for Huda. Although she couldn't talk til very very late in her toddlerhood, she could identify words. I remember that after a few months of Baby Can Read, she could identify the beginning sounds of words. For example, if I have a couple of word cards in front of her, she would be able to correctly pick out the cards for the words I want. When I give her a new word which she has not seen before, she would choose the word cards that begin with the same sound. I once put in the word 'butterfly' in the set of word cards she had. Up to that point, she had never seen the word 'butterfly' before. When I asked her to pick out 'butterfly' among the set, I noticed that she only picked out the words that begin with the /b/ sound. I believed completely in Baby Can Read after that.
Huda is now at Book 6 of Iqra'. That's the final book of the Iqra' series. She is a rather reluctant reader when it comes to practising this because while she can read, she does not understand what she's reading. Once she finishes book 6 (by the end of the year, I hope), she can start reading the Quran. I want her to start reading the Quran and at least cover 1/3 of it by the time she goes to Primary 1. This will make it easier because once she's comfortable and more fluent reading it, she just needs to spend 10-15 minutes reading it daily and I just need to check her recitation.
Primary School
Primary school will be a frightening time and I want to make it as smooth-sailing as possible. The only way to do that is to prepare her sufficiently for it so that she won't have to struggle. I hope that I am on the right track and that my daughters will not cause grief to their teachers!
Unfortunately, I'm not doing Baby Can Read with Farah. Tsk.
She enjoys being read to and insists that we read her countless of books. This is her father's area. Every evening when he comes back from work, he will spend at least half an hour reading to the kids. We visit the library every one to two weeks so there's a constant supply of fresh storybooks for them. This father-daughter reading time gives me some time to rush through housework: hanging the laundry, vacuuming and mopping.
TV
TV
The kids still don't watch TV at home. Of course, they do watch TV when we are at other people's homes but not at our own place. There are three videos that they watch sometimes though - Baby Can Read, Baby Signing Times & Iqra' (that's something like Arabic phonics).
Some people are surprised when they discover my no-TV policy. The standard questions will be:
Do they ask for it?
So what do they do at home?
How do you go about doing your work?
What if your daughters don't know anything about TV shows when their friends are talking about their favourite shows?
Short answers are:
1. No. They don't ask for TV when we are at home because it's simply not switched on when they are awake. We do have cable but we don't have the kiddy channels.
And no, it's not like we replace TV with computer games/ipad/iphone either. I am pretty much a Luddite when it comes to kids' entertainment. The more low-tech, the better. The kids are only allowed a limited use of the ipad on Sundays. About 20 minutes each. Even then, I sometimes distract them with a whole lot of other stuff that they forget about the ipad.
2. What do they do at home? They play/fight/play/draw/fight/play/colour/fight/read/play. They are used to keeping themselves entertained without the use of screens.
3. When I needed to cook or clean in the kitchen, Farah would take her toys and play at my feet. There is a kids' table in the kitchen and that's her work station when I'm there. When I'm hanging the clothes out to dry, she'll help me pass the clothes pegs. Vacuuming the floor will see her trying to chase the vacuum cleaner and sitting on it. When both are at home together at the same time, it's much easier because they will keep each other entertained.
4. My children know plenty about Dora from the books we bought and borrowed from the library. Huda loves the Disney Princesses but she doesn't know who they are exactly. There are plenty of books we can get if we want her to know about the princesses but we hate them princesses. Life is not about spending your entire life looking for a prince charming. Ptui.
(This fixation with the princesses may be a losing battle for us parents, though.)
Iqra'
Huda is now at Book 6 of Iqra'. That's the final book of the Iqra' series. She is a rather reluctant reader when it comes to practising this because while she can read, she does not understand what she's reading. Once she finishes book 6 (by the end of the year, I hope), she can start reading the Quran. I want her to start reading the Quran and at least cover 1/3 of it by the time she goes to Primary 1. This will make it easier because once she's comfortable and more fluent reading it, she just needs to spend 10-15 minutes reading it daily and I just need to check her recitation.
Primary School
Primary school will be a frightening time and I want to make it as smooth-sailing as possible. The only way to do that is to prepare her sufficiently for it so that she won't have to struggle. I hope that I am on the right track and that my daughters will not cause grief to their teachers!
House-Hunting
Saturday's headlines: Resale flat prices keep going up. I'm giving up. I'm not going to harbour hopes of getting another flat anytime soon. I'm just going to go ahead and get my floor to ceiling shoe cabinet.
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I started this on the ipad but finished this of on the laptop a week later. The ipad is simply not a machine for typing.
