The many hats I wear

Apart from chores and home-schooling Rachel, I am forever wanting to go shopping and also to practice my violin.

Chores wise, thanks to the machines, Mr dishwasher, Mr washer and Mr dryer, I spent most of my time cleaning floors (short cut paper method most of the time) and occasionally Miss Osim Mermaid. Ironing happens only once a week 10 pieces since Yan returned to the work force. It's relaxing and if done in air-conditioning with the TV or music on, quite therapeutic. We hardly cook since we moved here since with 7 eleven at our doorstep, many conveniences abound and largely because we prefer to eat out.

Home-schooling wise. Rachel is fantastic. We're about to finish the Pri One English and Math and apart from composition, she still writes with a very egotistic, huge hand-writing, short sentences, we are ready to progress on to the next level. Her mandarin is making much progress since she completed the Hanyu Pinyin for pre-schoolers, she does recognise a whole lot of chinese characters. Writing chinese is another thing altogether. It's alright that she learn to speak and understand basic conversational chinese first. Though I pretty much prefer she does not need to, and therefore I do not need to teach Mandarin at all.

It takes much effort on my part since I need to consult English-Chinese dictionary sometimes. I hardly speak mandarin at all. But since its important, even the foreigners are learning the language and culture as Chinese we should embrace the language and excel in it if possible. I did CL1 or chinese as the first language from 13-16 years old and afterwards I was exempted from the language examinations having scored distinctions in the O level exams. Shortly afterwards, I became monolingual. I spoke only Mandarin to my late mum and after she died in 2008, I hardly have to use the language at all.

I so envy my husband who does not speak or read Mandarin and he is Chinese!!!! Well, as a former Malaysian, Melayu was his mother tongue and he was even in the debate team!!! It's an added advantage when we travel to Malaysia, he could read signs everywhere and communicate to the local people very fluently.

French. Its the official foreign language in this family. I had a french tutor once in my early 20s while he did A level French. Rachel adores the language and whenever possible, especially with DVD, we would learn la francaise together and appreciate the culture. We so want to visit Europe soon and live there when we are ready.

Rachel understands why she is home-schooled. At this moment she loved the fact that she can "control" her time to play, to study, to learn music, to watch tv, go movies, to go shopping, visit the bathroom, have meals etc instead of "following a structure time table from Mon to Fri plus CCA on Sat. Please do not be mistaken that everything is wishy-washy here. We do have a time-table, in fact we had updated it thrice, its reviewed every 6 months according to her rapid progress and each day she puts in 1-2 hours on music, another 1-2 hours on art / free play, another 1-2 hours on languages inclusive of grammar, punctuation, vocabulary, another 1-2 hours on math/science/history and the rest watching TV, little chores and cooking.

We are flexible too, if she watches a cartoon in French/Mandarin, it could be counted as learning that language for the day. Art is often infused with many subjects from languages to the sciences and music.

A review of her time-table is due in June. Due to her longer attention span and interests, we will (we already are) having music lessons daily. At this beginner level, I am the primary piano teacher and I supervises her when she practises the violin. I am also teaching her theory with games and I do play for her enjoyment little music pieces within my ability and sing along the disney love songs and other pop songs usually sentimental that we both love.

Singing is very important!!! I learnt to sing before I had the chance to learn any instrument and it certainly helps in achieving the bel canto tone essential for good violin playing. Whether its the piano or the violin, a good musician will make the instrument sing!!!!!! It's a VOICE and sometimes many layers of voices I do hear!!!

Exercise is so important to a growing child and we do climb stairs whenever possible and I let her bike or scoot about when the weather permits. Last sunday, Rachel participated in her inaugural Cold Storage Kid's Run 2010 and she wants to take part again next year. She wants to be Number one but with her tiny frame its kinda impossible. She is 5 years old equivalent to a 3 year old caucasian build. Anyway, its good healthy fun, bonding too when she ran alongside the daddy while I spent the precious moment at home figuring out this: