Home-Schooling over COVID-19 Outbreak in Singapore

In case one day in the midst of COVID-19, you are required to stay home with your children and are scared stiff about how to meaningfully engage them without falling behind, here's our story.

Ewan succumbed to cough and runny nose in the beginning of February. That meant staying home until he recovered because we are expected to exercise social responsibility during this sensitive period. No school, no malls, nowhere. But if we do go out for grocery shopping, he'd be masked. It really cannot be Nowhere. Unless of course we are victims of COVID-19.

It came to a point, I didn't know where to draw the line on Social Responsibility. Do I send a healthy Faye to school even though her brother is sick? Or does she stay home with us? I rationalised, “Take this as HFMD. This must be more serious than HFMD since so many people died in China already! So yes.. if Tania's brother had HFMD and she still comes to school, I’d be upset as a parent because what if she is silently incubating it? Wouldn’t she pass it on to my kid in class?" I decided to go the extreme. Faye stays home. A little innocent cough or mucus will trigger a SWAT team today and my decision will eliminate many worries from the people around us.

It was a difficult decision of course because why would I want to give myself more trouble with two kids at home as opposed to one? But I know, there’s only one right decision to make. 

For the entire week we were home, I decided to home-school the children with Ewan's Primary School timetable. By doing so, we will be able to fill six good hours of the day and he won't be falling behind school's curriculum. I promise to make the fun parts fun for both children. The study parts, if it's dry and difficult, then, alas, we just have to bite the bullet.

I did five home-schooling days with Ewan and Faye. To be honest, Day One was exhausting! I wondered out loud to Meyer, "I don't know how the teachers do it at school! This is madness!"

He replied, "The teachers rotate! English, Math, Chinese, PE, Music. But you are one teacher for all subjects! Of course you are tired."

I didn't realise that but yes! I am alone at this plus making sure I have lunch ready when "school" ends! To be honest, we all had a good time the past week at home. Ewan pleaded after he recovered from his sickness, "Can I stop school? Can you home-school me from now on?"

Mommy is honoured.

MONDAY'S TIMETABLE
0730 to 1330 hours
PE PE EL EL RECESS MT MT MT SNACK MA MA EL LIB

ASSEMBLY

Before school starts at home, we would sing Majulah Singapura, say the pledge and sing a Good Morning song which Faye taught us from her Kindergarten. Well, I just thought that'll make it a little bit more fun and add a little bit more formality. In case, they don't take this teacher seriously when I conduct my lessons with them!

PHYSICAL EDUCATION

I personally feel P.E. should be mandated as an every day subject to take children out of class and into the outdoors. It would be crazy to put a child in his/her seat for six hours without play at school. CRAZY!

The day started off with two periods of P.E., which meant, an hour of exercise! I decided to take it outdoors for the first period with games like "Simon Says", "Hide and Seek" and "See Who Can Tahan The Reflexology Garden". I lost the "Simon Says" game and Faye couldn't even take a step on the pebbled walkway!

Along the way, we stumbled upon two adult snails and decided to add in a little bit of Science in our class. It was a beautiful stumble because we stayed with the snails long enough to watch them crawl. They crawled so slowly towards the grass. Ewan assumed they were hungry and plucked a leaf for them. True enough, that was their goal! We witnessed the snails ate through the leaf. Not only that, we got to go so close to them, we learnt that the snail's upper tentacles held its eyes and lower tentacles always points to the ground! Can you spot its eyes from our photograph?

The last 20 minutes of P.E. was held indoors with Yoga. The kids love their Yoga time with Cosmic Kids on their Chalk and Chakras kids Yoga mats. When I announced we still had a bit more time before English, they jumped and ran to unroll their mats!

But after all these fun, it's time to get down to business with their subjects. Will there be laughter, whines or tantrums?

ENGLISH

They both love English because it is a subject they do not have much trouble with. As much as I try to speak Mandarin at home, I always bounce back to English. So much mindfulness involved to switch language and many times, I am not mindful.

So there. Our spoken language at home is English. With that, Ewan has little trouble with his grammar, phonics and vocabulary.

While Ewan worked on two weeks worth of Spelling, I introduced Comprehension to Faye. Surprisingly, she loved it! Faye loves storybooks and doing Comprehension is like reading stories to her. I got to work with her on word recognition and phonics which was great.

It can get really tiring with all the writings; all the teachings. So I gave them one period of English Library time - to go engage in silent reading while I prepared fruits for Recess.

RECESS

We went to the vending machine at our driveway to choose our breads! It was the closest the kids can get to making payment for their own food. I thought about setting up a small stall in my kitchen to play Recess with them but decided, "Argh! Too much effort." 

A platter of fruits plus their vending machine breads will suffice! 

They even had time for the swing. 

MOTHER TONGUE

Three Periods. 

Oddly, I look forward to teaching them Chinese every day. It is their most dreaded subject but at the end of each lesson when they learnt a bunch of new words [whether through reading or writing], I feel accomplished.

With Faye, she doesn't like to do 习字 [repetitive writing of a single character]. But that's how we learn how to spell in Chinese. I didn't want to fight with her that day and made sure I chose my battle properly. We did reading instead. Hmmm... and a little bit of writing. I got her to practice penmanship by copying a simple Chinese storybook. That, she was happy to do. 

Ewan's got 听写 he had to learn for school and we got that out of the way first thing into our Chinese period. His school teacher updated me via ClassDojo of her progress in school and suggested I taught him a new chapter that week. We worked through his textbook and I further engaged him with interactive learning from Xue Le on the laptop. 

Xue Le is a wonderful platform which follows MOE curriculum chapter by chapter, year by year from Primary One to Six. According to Ewan, his teachers use this to teach them in class via a visualiser. It's a natural thing, I think, that kids like to work on the computer more than boring old paper. There are videos, games and learning aid that are colourful on Xue Le; even Faye stops everything to watch what her brother's learning. 

If you haven't been introduced to Xue Le by your child's school teacher, go check it out! I would suggest doing reinforcement work with your kids instead of going through new Chapters with them. I am a believer of, "Let school teach, we reinforce." Otherwise, there is a tendency for a child to not pay attention in class because they already know what's being taught.

MATH

With Math, sometimes it can be a good day and sometimes it can be really bad. On this day, I had it bad from both kids. 

Only two periods and I was looking forward to accomplish a lot more than we did. In the end, we completed only one page per kid on the subject Subtraction [Faye] and Hundreds, Tens and Ones [Ewan]. 

You know what I realised? That assessment books can be so much harder than what our children are currently learning in school. That we as parents should sieve out and decide if the questions are level appropriate. I've passed on many pages of English from Faye's supposedly K2 Assessments to Ewan because they were beyond her. Some, in my opinion, were beyond Ewan's Primary Two capability too.

When Ewan was in Kindergarten, he was assessment book free. I didn't believe in academics at the age of six and below. I still don't and we did only what his Kindergarten required.

Poor Faye had to be pulled into the academic rut at K1 because when I tell my Primary One Ewan to sit and work at the dining table, he would go, "妹妹 has to work too. Otherwise, it's not fair." Thankfully, my daughter was willing to accompany his brother.

I was saying, assessment books questions can be overly demanding on a kid.

697 = 6 hundreds _______ tens 17 ones

Well, this question isn't as straight-forward as it seems. The answer isn't 9 tens. Ewan is required to take 6 hundreds [600] + 17 ones [17] and then proceed to find the difference between 697 and 600 + 17. The difference is 80 and he has to take that one step further, deciding if 80 is 8 tens or 80 tens. The answer is 8 tens.

In school, it's usually just:

697 = 6 hundreds _______ tens 7 ones

The answer would be 9. 

So with this page of Hundreds, Tens and Ones, Ewan was going mad. I was getting mad too with every question, wondering what is it he doesn't get! It was only after showing Meyer the questions that I got reminded, "Ewan's only 7 going on 8! This is a three-step Math question. Isn't this is too much?" Yes, it can be too much especially when he hasn't been introduced to it before. That said, challenging questions are also good exposure. We just have to ensure that we tell ourselves it's Okay if our child doesn't get it. Sometimes, certain questions require certain level of maturity.

He cried, "Real school is so much easier." 

Faye cried too.

She was tired by the time Math period arrived. It was simple Subtraction which she could handle on a normal day but she wasn't up to it that day.

When Faye throws a fit, it can really get on my nerves. I did speak to her sternly. I did tell her to take a break. I offered her my lap to sit on [it comforts her] and I offered to hold her hand to write the numbers. But inside of me, I was as angry as a bull. Angry because it takes forever to calm her down.

Instead of finishing what I set out for her to finish, I cut it down only to one page. I spent 40 minutes of our hour-long Math period trying all methods [hard and soft] to stop her tantrums. She kept chanting she doesn't know how to count and I kept my stand that she had to at least finish that page.

It was a break or break. Either she break or I break. *haha* Ewan stepped in to encourage her as well, offering his fingers if she needed more. Suddenly, at that magical minute, she stopped crying [I think she gave up] and finished that page in less than a minute. From 40 minutes of crying to completion in one minute! Can you imagine my wrath?

REPORT CARD [MOM'S]
It was hardest on the first day of home-schooling because we hadn't set expectations and boundaries right. I didn't know how I was going to conduct our lessons and the kids thought it was going to be all fun and play. Subsequently, we all got used to it and I was even looking forward to start school every morning!

The day Ewan got well, we felt a tinge of sadness.

It meant, going back to school. Although it was very tiring, leaving me no room for rest between coaching, playing and cooking, I found home-schooling very rewarding.

Faye gave me an encouraging testimonial, "This teacher [mommy] is so special. She can teach, cook and put us to sleep!"

To be honest, we all had a good time the past week at home. Ewan pleaded after he recovered from his sickness, "Can I stop school? Can you home-school me from now on?"

It is funny, I thought he said Real School was easier? He doesn't cry in school because of work you know? But he does with me at home. I pointed this observation out to him but he commented he still prefers Mommy's School [even though sometimes I get so thin from anger and exhaustion, I unreasonably scream at them]. Awwwww... I was touched.

Like Us on Facebook if you enjoyed the read!

A stay at home mum, blogging to widen her social life. 

We want to echo the sound of love through our lives to inspire other mothers alike.