Starting Primary One #10 - The School's Curriculum & Practice

DinoBoy survived 3 days of school without any major or out of the norm issues.  However he was down with high fever on the 3rd day, it was 38.8Deg when student care called me that afternoon.  Lucky I was on leave so I was able to rush to the school within 15mins, I saw him sleeping in his sleeping bag along the corridor (away from the human traffic of course), he looks lethargic and gave me a sleepy look when I was there.  We immediately heads off to the nearby clinic but only managed to see a doctor a full 50mins later!  The clinic was crowded to the max, every one; adults and children, were either coughing, sniffing or looking lethargic.  Strong virus going on!

He sleeps while waiting for his turn to see doctor

Anyway, on the second day of school DinoBoy came home with rolls and rolls of letters in his bag.  Yupe, you read it right, ROLLS of letter.  His teacher told the students "not to fold the letters" so he roll them up and put them at on top of his bag.  They practically spring out at me when I opened his bag later that day to unpack his bag.  So here are the letters;

Welcome letter from the school informing the parents about certain things;

Letter from the Chinese teacher;

Letter informing us of the Integrated English Language Curriculum for Primary 1 students;

Letters informing us of the Co-Curriculum Programme for Primary 1 students;

When it comes to anything that has to do with money, it is something we parents would rather not receive or read about.  Nevertheless, it is a MUST for us to pay these as its part of the  school curriculum.

Luckily the school subsidize some of the fees and thank goodness our government set up the Edusave scheme to help pay for enrichment classes etc.  Therefore for now we only need to buy a 10 slots divider for Chinese and pay $21 for the National Geographic magazine.

School timetable!  Something that all parents are eager to receive.  Not very happy that class ends at 2.30pm on Mondays and Tuesdays though.

Student Handbook, a very important book, besides having information on the school's song, values, rules & consequences, Children Day's song and a handful of others, it is also a book where the teacher will write notes to parent, vice versa.  Home work will also be written in this book as show in the photo below, so remember to check the handbook every day to see if there is any home work or any things that your child needs to bring to school etc.

For our school, parents are not allowed into the school after the first day of school for safety & security reasons, but don't worry, the Primary One students will have a buddy from the older class during recess time to bring them to the canteen, find a seat for them and accompany them to buy food.  However, this only for the first 3 days, after that the Primary One students are on their on.  On the other hand I have heard of other schools allowing parents to enter the school for the 3 days and having the buddy system for a week so check out with the school of your choice on both of this.
  

On a lighter note, he drew this on Friday (the day he had high fever) during Art class.  He wanted to write Frisbee but does not know how to spell thought its not far from the correct word, he must have use his phonics skills to spell the word.

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For the next few weeks I will be sharing our experience on our preparation for DinoBoy's Primary One.  I hope it will serve as a useful guide to parents when its their time to get their child ready for the new journey and have an idea how Parent Volunteer works.

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