Traffic jams expected for the long weekend holiday in Penang

Seeing this news in The Star scared me to bits. I hated traffic jams and this news is scary. Hopefully we're not stuck anywhere for too long. Looks like we might not be going far from home this weekend. Might as well let the children rest and get back to health too instead of running around.

The Chinese New Year Cultural and Heritage Celebration was just held 29 January 2012 attracted a big crowd as well. Heard of the jams and crowd. We might visit another year when the children are older and stronger to make the walks (^_^).

CNY shopping

This year 2012 CNY we got ourselves less clothes than last year.

For the mr and I, one t-shirt each. For little princess, one dress and one skirt (I still owe her a feminine t-shirt to go with the skirt). For little prince, 3 t-shirts and one pair of pajamas. Erm, do we count whatever we bought last year but still fairly new and planned to wear during CNY? Then, one t-shirt each for the children. For little princess, 2 pairs of pants. This is not including clothes from the grandparents, even though the children didn't like what they bought. The designs are too fuddy-duddy and the clothes are small, in fact expected to be too tight in a couple of months' time.

Plan for next year is to reduce the amount bought for little prince. He really has too much clothes.

Celebration

When it comes to special events like concerts, graduations, weddings, festivities like Christmas and Chinese New Year and even birthdays. Every seller wants a piece of the celebration pie. Unknowingly, some parents' spending for children tend to go overboard, and we didn't realize it until we do a tally of our spending.

Especially for the school holidays, I find it getting harder and harder to hold our budget together. It is easier during the usual school days when the activities are fixed and we stay at home most of the time. Little princess spend a good 6 hours at school with at least 30 minutes on the road travelling back and from home.  Little prince spend about 5 hours at school or slightly more if he goes early. But with more free hours during the holiday, we're finding it easier to succumb to our wants. It does take a lot of willpower to hold back from spending more. Suddenly there is a need to have breakfast at McDonalds' or KFC. Dinner or lunch out seem more delicious than what we cook. If we go for short trip, everything's about convenience, and that comes at a price. No wonder the King didn't want to travel so much with the family. In fact, eating out is really expensive, one adder is the service tax that had been increased from 5% to 6% effective 1 January 2011. All these fancy places you see are all charging for the nice furnishings and comfortable ambient. Even going grocery shopping to hypermarkets like Tesco and Giant, we tend to spend more liberally to enjoy some special foods during school holidays.

Something I can still be insistant on, is not spending on things I don't deem as important. Such as for children's concert, we were requested to look for dresses, shoes, hair accessories. I don't mind paying a little for the occasion but do not ask me to go scouting all over the place for something that might not even be used in the occasion.       

Back-to-school shopping begins!

It's the beginning of back-to-school shopping. Promotions from Giant, Tesco, Parkson all in newspaper ads today. Planning to buy another pair of spare school shoes for princess, and another pair of school shorts. Already heard from another mom that Tesco's school shorts comes with elastic band which is more convenient for primary school children. She also mentioned their super cheap school shoes are actually not comfy. As a spare, need to buy a much bigger size. Will have to wait till the last week of holidays before any actual buying as the children grow so fast.

In fact, if missed the back-to-school shopping season at the hypermarkets and supermarkets, it will be difficult to find uniform stuff except at the speciality stores. I actually prefer the Kimnovak school uniform as they look nicer, especially for secondary school girl's pinafore. I think other school paraphernalia can get from other sources depending on pricing and comfort level. But next time, princess will have Kimnovak pinafore for her secondary school, that's for sure. When I didn't have Kimnovak pinafore last time, I used to envy the girls who wore them as it looked much nicer and smarter.

Preparing for the new school year

Ok I admit I'm a little kiasu. Like most parents I do not want my children to be left out when they start the new school year next year. So here's what I'm going to do with little prince and princess during the holidays.

Princess:
- Revise Year 1 Mandarin, Maths, Moral Studies.
- Start preparing for Year 2 Maths and Science. Was stuck after the first chapter of Maths and Science as it is all new things to her, so I think will focus on strengthening her grasp of Year 1 work such as recognize key words and learn how to interpret questions.
- Also start work on her English grammar and reading as it seems to be deteriorating from lack of conversational practise as compared to last year.
- Work on method for composing better sentences in Mandarin and BM with subject and object, improve on her weakness for this.

Prince:
- Work on conversational BM, English and Mandarin in preparation for the goverment assessment next year.
- Prepare according to syllabus of Kurikulum Standard Prasekolah Kebangsaan (KSPK)
- Start work on Maths workbooks which is written to meet KSPK criteria
- Ensure he knows Mandarin characters in KSPK and also can recognize key words in question paper
- Go through Moral Studies values in Mandarin as he learns this in English at his kindy, maybe leverage on princess' workbook for Moral Studies.

Some of the above will be for the holidays, some will have to extend over to the new year. However definitely there will be time for play and cartoon. Hopefully can balance up their work and play time.

Recounting Year 4-6 student school activities

Alright alright, in a few more years princess will be in upper primary school. By then, maybe I don't have the energy to record down what are the long string of activities that students have. So while I am still young and able *smirk* here is what I got from princess' school memo's. Also trying out function of copy-and-paste table here. These activities are for princess' school and for reference only.

Date	Day	Activity	Remarks
5-Jan-11	Wed	Taklimat PEKA SAINS	Year 4 -6
11-Jan-11	Tue	Start extra class for Year 6 (all classes), Year 4 and 5 (last 2 classes only)	4 hours per week, parents pay monthly fees of RM30
12-Jan-11	Wed	Taklimat Menulis Karangan BM	Year 4  and 5
19-Jan-11	Wed	Taklimat Menulis Karangan BI	Year 4  and 5
26-Jan-11	Wed	Taklimat Menulis Karangan BC	Year 4  and 5
9-Mar-11	Wed	Year 4 and Year 5 motivational talk
12-Mar-11	Sat	Holiday extra class for Year 6 (all classes), Year 4 and 5 (last 2 classes only)	4 days with total 16 hours class
14-May-11	Sat	Previous year UPSR results excellence prize ceremony	Those with good UPSR results from previous year invited back to school to get a prize
21/6/2011 to 23/6/2011		UPTP (1)
24-Jul-11	Sun	Pre-UPSR talk	Students pay RM27.50 to attend
2/8/2011 to 4/8/2011		UPTP (2)
13-Aug-11	Sat	Year 6 UPSR motivational talk
17-Aug-11	Wed	BM motivational workshop	At other school
30-Aug-11	Tue	UPSR motivational workshop	External
13-Sep-11	Tue	UPSR exam	3 days
23-Sep-11	Fri	Meet Year 6 parents	Explain method to fill up secondary school application form
27-Sep-11	Tue	Seminar on secondary education
12-Nov-11	Sat	Graduation ceremony	There's a dinner arranged for Year 6 students
14-Nov-11	Mon	Local attraction travel	For Year 6 students
17-Nov-11	Thu	UPSR results	Result slip availabe 10am onwards from school
8-Dec-11	Thu	Year 6 students get secondary school placement announcement	Back to school for this memo
15-Dec-11	Thu	Year 6 students report to secondary school	Only 1 day
29-Dec-11	Thu	Year 5 students gotong-royong	Half day

The new start

I'm moving over the posts related to children as the other blog is getting more congested and scattered. This would be easier for my own reference too.

Still in learning stage how to manage these 2 blogs, wonder if I could just export some of the posts over to here?? Try, try and try again.

Been viewing my other blog for some time and couldn't find any button to export the posts I want over here. Sigh... so manual??!!!!

Kindy open day

There's a kindy near our home that I'm interested to send our prince. They're having open day on 8 Oct 2011. There's promotion like 50% off for registration fees and free colouring book. However it might be next year that we might visit as it's not time to change kindy yet. Heard this kindy is quite good and academic-focused.

I'm recording down the Open Day date for reference next year.