'Competition'

Amber's mental arithmetic teacher enrolled her for a district competition. I was skeptical as we've just enrolled her to UCMas 3 months ago and she had to undo what she had do-ed in her abacus program. To cut the long story short, Amber was following some Taiwanese method using only right hand and 3 fingers to manipulate the beads. She (or rather, US!!) found it difficult to manage bigger digits and tends to make mistake easily. We decided to change her to UCMas and was thankful to have met a teacher who understood why Amber kept making mistakes and she was willing to 'undo' what she has learnt and start her all over again. And so, she went... learning abacus all over again, a different method, using both hands and two fingers on each hand, the UCMas approach and which I found to be more systematic and less prone to errors.

Teacher encouraged us to send her for the district competition for exposure. It was a good experience for her, having to compete among the champions and having a feel of how it's like to ready-get set-go upon hearing the starting whistle.

 

Up and early at 8am, her teacher pinned ID sticker on her uniform

   I didn't expect the competition to be such a big event .

Her competition slip and she has to stick on the back of her exam paper. 

 Hubs giving her a good luck high-5 !!!

Pasting the sticker on her exam paper. The girl seated next to her was kind to teach her what to do.

 Jeng ! Jeng ! Jeng ! Competition begins !!!  Parents were allowed to stay along the side of the hall and wait and fidget nervously.

The competition was over in 8 minutes. They had to complete 100 equations (or more.. and I'm not sure but heck, she's only here for the experience).

While waiting for results, we were treated to Magic Show and lucky draws. Amber batch was the last to receive prize and luckily we had our ipad and Sunday papers to keep us occupied.

She didn't win any top prize but only a consolation prize. We were very happy for she completed the competition. Initially we were worried ...

.. that her eyes will be itchy and she'll be crying

..  that her body will be itchy

.. that she'll wanna go 'shee-shee' during competition

.. that she'll feel too cold

.. that her pencils will break

.... we're just like 2 fidgety parents, worrying anything and everything under the sun ! Silly me n silly him !

After a long wait.... it was her turn to receive a consolation prize..

 My little girl, on stage to receive a prize , no big prize but we are sooooo proud of her !

Amber and her dedicated teacher. She  said Amber needs more time, at least a year, to compete at International Levels. 

We praised and rewarded her with a gift of her choice. She went to Guardians and chose a Lip Ice lip gloss.

Competition is not all about winning first, second or third. Just being there and doing her best, she had already won :D

Mental Arithmetics

Her mental arithmetic class is divided to 3 sections now. 

First it's the calculations with abacus :

 

Then, mental calculations, without abacus :

I had to give many stars to keep her motivated.. and a BIG HUGE STAR when she completes the page

Then it's the mental arithmetic without abacus or books, just by listening to teacher :

 

I like the way she writes the date and the big dots between the day, month and year.

Many moms told me it's pointless to send her to mental arithmetic now as she'll learn it in school, at Std 1.  We have our own reasons though, mental arithmetic stimulates the right brain and we hope to develop her mental abilities and improve her concentration and hoping she'll be less boh-tiam ! 

She's doing well despite crying foul over the pages and pages of homework each week. Be warned if you want to send your kids to mental arithmetics. A page of homework has 48 equations and the homework can go up to 5 pages per week.

Little Ms Teacher

She was very good yesterday, at her abacus class. Did 2 page of work with little guidance and didn't want to go home. Well, she has good days and bad. Yesterday was a good day and I hope every other day is a good day too. She was the last student left when I picked her and she was playing with marker pens and whiteboard.

Teacher tested her with some mental equations.. I took some pics of her with my mobile phone. Here, she's using her index and thumb to do the mental equations.

 

Then she played teacher. Set up some equations for teacher and me.

 See how she writes '3' ?   She did it on purpose !

 and teacher taught her on long equations....so, she sets up long equations for us too.  If you notice, her equations always ends with a 'zero'....  9-9+10-10... and so forth...

 

 

I hope she continues her 'good days' more frequent.  I hate forcing her to finish her abacus homework!

Eck-zam - passed !

She received her certificate of examination from teacher last week. She passed the most elementary level - Level 11. Level 11 is the lowest level and she'll progress to level 10 and so forth.

This certificate came all the way from Taiwan and is very precious to us. Hubs, the proud father, handled the certificate with meticulous care. Nobody can touch until he has taken a photo and he wants me to laminate up his princess' achievement.

Like all parents, we are proud of our kids' every little achievement, not bragging but just proud and happy for her :)

 

Amber Ong, I hope you can cope with mental arithmetic but if the homework is too much for you, we are prepared to pull you out, what matters most is your emotional wellbeing, we don't want you to be overly stressed up.

Mental Arithmetics

Amber has completed her Mental Arithmetic Book 2. She's into double digit addition and subtraction. She's come a long way since April, when we first enrolled her for mental arithmetic and she could barely count past 10. Her pre-school had just started teaching the kids numbers and she can't even write 1 - 10 yet.

She enjoys the class but hates the weekly homework that follows. On good days, she gets a page or 2 but on most days, she gets 5 pages of homework. One page has 48 sums ! ! !  We lose our heads getting her to finish her homework. I try to get her to do a page each day but there's always the distraction of going out for dinners, weekend activities .. etc. etc. etc and by Sunday, I start to freak when she's lagging in her homework.

The deal on mental arithmetic is practise, practise and PRACTISE. Practise makes perfect and conditions the brain to think fast. Numbers comes in pairs of 10 like  3 is to 7 as 4 is to 6 and 5 is to5 and so forth.

Amber gets distracted very easily and whines ' I don't know how to do ', or she'll play with her eraser.. scraping shreds of rubber off with her fingernails or she'll deliberately drop her pencil and asks to sharpen. Self distraction, I call it.  I believe she knows how to do but wants us to accompany her and I was told not to seat by yr kid when doing homework, unless she really and honestly do not understand and needs coaching. Sit with her once, you'll have to sit with her thru her UPSR and PMR !

Her teacher has very good things to say about her. She's the youngest kid at her level and does well in class.

At home, she's entirely different, complaining and whining all the time.. However, on few occasions, I threatened her with abacus homework and once she made hubs very very angry for some reasons I cannot remember, I told her to quickly finish abacus homework, tell daddy you've been good and redeem yourself.

She quicly 'tik tik tak tak' the beads... so FAST  and in no time, finished one whole page of sums, with no mistakes too.  Hubs and I watched her over the cctv and had a good laugh, no dilly dallying but concentrating and on the beads.

We concluded - she likes abacus but hates homework but then, who likes homework ???

This is what she has to deal and even I, find it boring but as long as it improves her concentration, she has to go through the grind :

 

 Another trick to help her concentrate is to empty everything off her table or else, she'll get distracted. No papers, no color pencils, nothing. Just a pencil, eraser, abacus and book.

 

How about you ? Do you have difficulties coping with your kids abacus homework ?

Eck-zam Day

Amber had to sit for her first mental arithmetic exam today. She's into her 8th month of class and currently in Book2. Teacher feels she's ready to sit for exam. I had a fright initially when she mentioned 'exam'. My 4 year old, subjected to exams, pass and fails ? At this age ? I can't get over it, even till now.

Her exam was actually last Saturday and we rescheduled it to today as we had plans to go back to the in laws and also get her allergy checked. That was a blessing because she was sick last week and I don't think she could do her best.

When I mentioned 'exam', that she has to go for 'exam' and has to sit for 'exam', she was all excited.
She thought eck-zam (that's how she pronounces it) was an outing to somewhere and a fun event.
Wait till she finds out the ugly truth about exams, I thought but of course I would have hoped she'll enjoy exams in her coming years !

I realised I'm the panicky type and being typical myself as a student, I forced her to practise all morning, even at the mamaks when we had breakfast. Hubs cut it short and said to let her rest, after all exam is 2 hours away.

We bathed and showered her.. I made sure her clothes were comfortable and will not cause itchiness. Amber, being her, always always complains about itchiness and all.. I had to make sure she don't waste precious time scratching. I trimmed her fringe, pig-tailed up her hair and make sure no hair went astray and itches her eyes. I really am PARANOID but ... but... my baby, is going for her first exam..naturally, kancheong-ness sets in.

I cursed the traffic at MRR2 when I saw a long queue. Hubs was getting very annoyed with my anxiety, almost as if he was sending me to sit for exams.

When we reached the center early and punctual. I gave her the abacus and 2 pencils. No mechanicals and erasers.

Each exam is 3 minutes duration and they had to complete 10 mathematical equation using the abacus. No correction by erasing is allowed but they are allowed to cross and rewrite the answer.

When the teacher pressed the stopwatch, I saw Amber talking to the teacher instead of doing the equations. This girl.. haih... she still doesn't understand the concept of EXAM. Still talking. Teacher told her to keep quiet and do her work.. All this while I was peeping from outside the room and laughing..

Results are not out yet. Apparently, it has to be sent to Taiwan for marking - such big deal meh.. ?? but her teacher called me later and said Amber did well and will pass.

Let's wait for the actual result.

Mental Arithmetics

We started Amber on mental arithmetics class last month. The school had an abacus demonstration during parents teacher meeting day and asked parents if they'd like kids to participate in this extra curricular activity. In fact, the kindie also has taekwondo class on Saturdays but hubs didn't like the idea his princess learning 'kungfu kicks' although I didn't mind but when they introduced abacus, hubs quickly agreed to send Amber. She's the youngest in her class of 12 kids.

During the first lesson, she was a bit slow as kindie only started to teacher numbers in April. After a private coaching by her teacher, she caught up pretty fast and can do additions and subtractions.

Below is her work during class and I'm happy with her achievements :




See how senget and distorted her numbers are ? That's ok, she only started numbers recently.

On a sidenote, hubs caught her at Guardian Pharmacy's make up shelves counting lipsticks. She pointed and counted.. 1,2,3,4,5,9, err..no no.. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10..

Too bad I didn't have a camera then :)