We celebrated children's day on Friday.
Joy had a school "event" at NUS, College of Alice & Peter Tan (CAPT), and parents are to attend the event with the child. So I kinda kena "volunteered". The plan was this.. me to go with joy for this event while Mr choo brought the twins for a movie and we would meet again for lunch.
To be honest, I wasn't very keen to go to the school event coz it meant seeing a lot of parents and having to small talk with them. It is a dread to talk/social/fit in etc.. so for most of Joy's school activities, William had always been the one volunteering/participating. But Joy had "pre-booked" me weeks earlier and I didn't want to disappoint her. The parents are genuinely nice people, but I just don't seem to be able to last an entire conversation with them.. I also felt that it was kinda too early for her to do a school visit to a university since she still need a couple of years before embarking onto the uni at stage.. certainly it's too early for P4s to go on an open house to a university right? But anyway we went.
The crazy hot weather
And I was glad we did. Although the struggle of trying to talk / fit in is still real, the objective of the tour was rewarding. It was organized by Prof Tan Lai Yong who wanted to let the students understand the benefits of studying. Not just to get good results for PSLE, but why do we study? It is so that we can improve the lives of others thru our knowledge, to be able to create better ways at enriching the lives of the less privilege ones. Also for the kids to have an outdoor work out , instead of always buried in revisions and homework etc.
The kids had some team building exercises where they were supposed to do task 1 & 2. The instructions were simple: the team wins if the time taken for task 2 was 80% of the time taken for task 1. But as usual, the kids were more concerned about finishing it fast. No one really read/understood that by doing task 1 fast, it meant that completing task 2 within the 80% time would b even more challenging. Prof Tan took the time to explain to the kids (& us) that it's not who finish first that matters but who finish most accurately that matters. And most importantly, PSLE is not the final stop in the kid's lives. It is only one of the many milestones in life.
The kids plus some of the volunteers who took time off to bring us around.
Such words of wisdom, and timely as well.. it's another affirmation that what we have been guiding our kids about exams , life , responsibilities are on the same direction. It's assuring to hear it from someone who have mentored so many kids and also someone who despite not being a high PSLE achiever, have done so much more over the years. Resilient and grit are the things that we should plant in our kids. Not just achieving well for the national exams. Enpathy and kindness are virtues that I really hope Joy could have(more) of. Allowing the kids to try various skills like baking, gardening, pottery or many others, in their early years, so that they can have fun in their childhood.
The tour ended just before lunch with the kids learning the various plants etc. Overall, I'm glad that we went. 😊
Met the girls and uncle choo at Marche at vivo. It's one of the places where it's price friendly for families and comes with a small playground where the girls could play after their meals.
And they loved taking pictures with the cow each time we are here..
