Tesco milk powder promotion (23 February - 7 March 2012)

 

Screen shot of Tesco catalogue 23 February - 7 March 2012

This is supposed to be a promotion from Tesco Malaysia's catalogue valid from 23 February - 7 March 2012. Not sure if they are so good to honour the prices until really 7 March 2012 and if stock is still available. We manage to get our children's milk powder last week which is about 3% cheaper than Giant's price. So in order to remember the promotion, I screen shot this particular catalogue page. The promotion is part of Tesco's Dunia Si Manja promotion.

Photo from: http://www.tesco.com.my/index.aspx?LID=1

Tesco school shoes on sale

The RM5.90 school shoes are on sale at Tesco. Only RM0.51 now (no kidding!). Just glance through and found there's limited size and the condition of the shoes are yellowish. If can find the right size, even if yellowish, can still buy as school shoes can be washed and whitened. However it's only for spare, not for everyday use as it doesn't look as comfortable as the ones from brands like Pallas.

Next time if we're buying spare shoes will wait for this sale (^o^)

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.

Popular student card

Being kind of a kiasu mom, what do I do when my princess came back with less-than-satisfactory results? By "less-than-satisfactory", I meant she could've done better without careless mistakes. She did exercises at home, she did 2 sets of past year questions - one for her school and one for another school (the one for another school purchase wrong, oh well). For important subjects like Maths, Mandarin, BM, the exercises she did are from the leftover workbooks from her daycare and hand-me-downs from ex-colleague. It was like one or two workbooks for each subject. Still she did some mistakes in exam paper that she did not do during the exercises done just a few days before exam. She also copied wrong words which caused her to lose marks for BM Penulisan and Mandarin Penulisan. She forgot to put units for her Maths (but she didn't make this mistake during exercise) and she lost marks for this subject too. OK OK, so we do not know all the exam results yet. Still it made me rethink my strategy for coaching our princess. She knew she did not meet my expectation and she felt really bad about it.

In order to sharpen her mind during the holidays and prepare her for the new school year, I've decided to go the way of the "tuition teacher method". After some discussion with a friend and looking at how daycare centers coach children, I realize most of them are using workbooks. And I believe they use lots of it. So in my moderated version, I started with one or two workbooks for the holidays. I'm revising the standard 1 syllabus with her, as only one or two publishers have come up with workbooks for the new syllabus KSSR for standard 2. At least when I looked at the bookstores this week.

Which comes to the title of this post, the Popular student card. I saw ad in newspaper that Popular Gurney Plaza is having member sale from 26-28 October 2011 for all books and revision books. This is only for members. However the ad kinda mislead me to believe that new application for member card will have free gift. Because student card application and renewal is NOT ENTITLED :( Oh ok, so it is just RM10 for 2-year membership, only for students age 7-12 years old.

So far the discount I got is RM10.40 for today's purchase. And I got 2 almost freebie, one is mechanical pencil and one memo pad for RM0.10 each with newspaper coupon. So actually the card is fully giving discount of 10% or whatever rebate given by Popular (sometimes they have 20% or 30% rebate) for the next 2 years. This is actually better savings than MPH Kidz Club membership if the title is the same, as the Popular student card is cheaper. However most of the time, the titles available at MPH and Popular is not really of the same genre. If your children need revision books, go for Popular student card if there's a school-going 7 to 12-year-old in your household. Do note that only certain books get discount with the card as "nett-priced items" do not get the discount. "Nett-priced items" are the ones where price tag will say "NETT", for example some revision books are nett-priced items (not all), magazines are nett price items.

I'd be on constant lookout for Popular member sale now that I'm a member our princess is a student member. Those 20% or 30% rebate do add up.

As for Borders, it's out of my target now especially after I bought an Enid Blyton Rewards book at RM16.90 with no discount. I found the same book at Popular and MPH going for only RM10.90. ARGH! My pain when I saw the price tag!