Term 2 AMODES

29 Mar 2012. Sunny then rain

Yesterday was a crazy day. Clayton had his 1st AMODES, which is an Alternative Mode of Accessment in place of the usual test & exams. It was Chinese subject. I was quite confident that he would do well in it because he has tuition @ Tien Hsia. However, I was still worried due to the fact that this was his first attempt. We worked hard together in revising all his work to get ready.

Before he left for school, I gave him a blessing to seek special guidance from heaven to assist him.

The desks in the classroom were arranged into single seater. It looked really serious.

When he came home from school, he seemed confident. So, I'm not too worried.

The afternoon became all crazy because he had a load of homework for English and up coming Practice AMODES show & tell for English today. Spelling on Friday & Tien Hsia's work as well. Clayton broke into tears a few times due to all the work he had to do.

After I was confident that he had done all he can to prepare for his show & tell, I let him play to his heart content.

In school today, Shoei was there early doing rehearsal with Darion and some other kids. Can see that the parents are really concern with their children's performance.

Elaine had reading program at the school today.

After school, Clayton told me that he was given full marks because he was loud & clear with his Show & Tell and he has new vocabularies in the script.

He is doing well for the moment. Soon his classmates will catch up. This I kept reminding him that his friends will catch up to him if he doesn't keep on working hard.

Food Network Asia Recipes

A good site to find recipes for a quick simple meal.  This is very important when you have a few little choosey eaters at home.

 

www.foodnetworkasia.com/recipes.html

New School Term - T2 2012

It was the 1st day of 2nd term.  Honeymoon is over.  There will be accessment test which the school called it AMODES.  The first AMODES will be next week.  That is really soon.  Clayton doesn't seemed to be worried about it, but as the father - I am worried!

Last night, I gave him a Priesthood blessing (Father's blessing) to help him with his new school term.  Told him that he can tap on the power from Heavenly Father through prayers and the Holy Ghost will help him to remember all that he had studied and do well in his school work.  I hope he will remember what to do in time to come.

What to do during School Holiday?

9 March was the first day of Clayton's school term holiday.  Elaine was out of town and I was tasked to keep him occupied and go do something.  Although it was just 10 days long, but staying at home every day would be unproductive use of time and it can be really boring.  Since I had no ideas about what would be the best thing to do and what would interest him most, I told Clayton to come up with the plan. 

This was his plan:-
Friday - Jurong Bird Park
Monday - Sungai Buloh
Tuesday - Singapore Science Centre
Wednesday - Singapore Zoological Garden
Thursday - Library
Friday - Mint Toy Museum

I told him that this would just be a guide, but it would change according to the weather condition or I might have a better ideas of what to do.  So, the following are the actual activities that we had during the 10 days holiday.

Friday - Singapore Science Centre.  Had lunch at IMM.
Monday - Jurong Bird Park.  Had lunch at the park restaurant.
Tuesday - Sungai Buloh & Bottle Tree Park at Yishun.  Had lunch at home.
Wednesday - Changi Airport Terminal 3 &2.  Had lunch at the T3 Food Court.
Thursday -  Singapore Zoological Garden & Forest Adventure (2x). Had lunch at Compass Point food court.
Friday - Pasir Ris Park Cycling & Subway lunch at Compass Point.

All the activities turned out to be pretty fun and Clayton had a great time.

Some other possible things that we could have done were:
1.  Cycling at East Coast Park.
2.  Cycling at Pulau Ubin.
3.  Visit Sentosa island.

Superhero Costume Parade & Rap

On 5th March, Clayton's school organized an English Language S.T.A.G.E. program where all the P1 kids had to dress up in Superhero Costume and do a Rap about that particular hero.  The difficult part of this program was that the hero costume had to be made of recycle materials.  Prior to the date, all the parents were cracking their heads on the chat trading ideas and expressing how difficult it was to create such a costume and had to be worn for the whole day.

Knowing that there are 27 parents to compete in this costume making, I didn't want to waste too much time on it because some parents will always put more effort, time or money to make a "killer" costume.  Moreover, many of them only had 1 son to fuss over.  I have 3 kids and a very busy wife to take care of their daily needs.

So, I asked Clayton what character he wants to be?  He first thought of Spiderman, then he wanted to be Wolverine and finally he decided to be Batman.  We both agree on Batman and started work on it.  He will prepare his own Rap and I will do the costume.

This is what he Rapped:

He is Batman or Badman
Batman is strong at every time
Batman's car is Bat Mobile
It is fast at every way
You better be good because he is watching you!

This is what I did:

1.  I found a black color baseball cap and tape up all the logos with black tapes.  Then I used black cardboard to make 2 pieces of pyramid tip with attachable handle.  I used black tape to taped it into shape and attached it onto the cap with stapler.

2.  From last years Company Convention, Elaine had a black color cape from the event.  I turned it around to hide the event logo and it became Batman's cape.

3.  From my scuba diving gear, I have a yellow belt.  Using yellow paper, I made 2 Batman logo.  A big one and a small one that fits on the belt buckle.  I laminated the bigger one and attached to the chest with double sided tape as the main Batman's logo.

4.  Finally, to top it up, I made 2 Bat boomerangs with tissue box and 2 others with thicker construction cardboard.  Spray painted them all black and 2 of them having a red bat logo on them.

On the morning of the parade, I dressed Clayton up in his camouflage t-shirt and dark blue shorts, black socks and timberland shoes.  He looked almost like real.

He was actually one of the top 7 finalist.  By popular votes from the fellow classmates, he wasn't one of the top 3 winners.  He was rather upset when he came home.  We just told him that:- Some times it is more important to enjoy the process than to win.  Yes, it is always good to be the winner, but in this case when the effort involves parents of all the kids, it can be challenging.  Besides, it was by popular votes.  So, now he has to be friends with all his classmates to ensure higher votes next time.  :-)