The Georgous

A Confession: I am a TED junkie. I could spend all day watching TED videos, and I have been inspired, motivated and amazed by so many of them.

Diana Laufenberg’s talk in December last year however, spoke directly to me. I have seen first hand the amazing advantages of experiential learning, and the combination of that with Constructivism (in which the learner attempts to construct their own knowledge) lends itself to a much much more powerful form of learning than one can imagine.

To be able to teach (especially the way Ms Laufenberg has) I think we, as teachers/educators need to Read more »

As Georgia progressively interacts with more and more with people outside of our home and our immediate circle of friends, I have become more aware of how many different ‘parenting faces’ I have and which I call upon depending on the situations.

It often feels as if we have an embedded inner compass of actions, reactions and culture that unfortunately, unlike a true magnetic compass that points due North; this inner compass often flip-flops between East or West (cultural influences) and all points in between.

I have often attributed a large part of this, to the fact that we are parenting and raising a child in a culture and environment so completely different from the one we were raised in (being immigrants).

Beyond cultural influences, however, it has also occurred to me that technology, the changes of societal demands and simply how things have changed over a generation is reason enough to continuously reflect on and question the decisions we now make, or have to make, as parents.

The oft-heard cry of ‘Back in my day…’ is universal; we have added recently though a ‘We do not do that…’ to our arsenal of reasons or excuses, often, rightly or wrongly (any thoughts would be welcome here!) with a cultural implication.

An example is saying ‘Yuck!’ to food. Read more »

With Chinese New Year just around the corner, we sat talking about how we could celebrate it in our own way, especially as it’s not a public holiday here. Somehow the conversation progressed from, who we would invite, what we would eat, when we would celebrate to…

Dad: It’s actually ‘our’ year. Year of the Rabbit

G: Why is it your year?

Dad: We were born in the Year of the Rabbit.

G: And me?

Dad: You were born in the Year of  the Dog…

G (at this point looking at little confused): …and after that it’s the Year of the Hedgehog!

Dad: … ????

to Reinforce the Positive and Encourage Achievement. First let me explain how we came to create the Star Book.

Throughout almost all of last term, Georgia, moaned and whined and made a fuss of going to school. She would be clingy and there were even daily tears.  It was awful! For those of you whose children skip happily along to school, you’re really lucky… 🙂

It helped tremendously that I knew and trusted her teachers and their feedback was always taken positively, and it was great knowing that we were partners working together towards a common goal. However, it was still a challenge every morning.

Over the Christmas and New Year holiday, as a treat to myself, (I had been good :)) I read Jack Canfield’s The Success Principles. Now if you like me watched The Secret and liked it but never really got to the practise of  ‘the secret’, Canfield’s book provides and almost step-by-step guide (an all very logical too) to achieving anything you set your mind to. One of the chapters in the book, suggests that you list every day, 5 achievements for the day (even if you did not accomplish things that you set out to do that day, if you reflect on your day, you will often find achievements each day) and to focus on goals for the next day.

So we thought, what a great way for Georgia, and especially for us, to focus on what we can achieve and to celebrate the successes each day, and that was how we came to create the Star Book. Read more »

15 January, 2011

A note sent home from georgia’s class…
I love the idea and the approach, don’t you?
🙂

then why don’t I feel like I’m the best mother in the World?

A recent article Why Chinese Mothers are Superior in the Wall Street Journal has caused a lot of controversy and raised a lot of emotion amongst it readers and it’s certainly worth a read. Being an immigrant (Malaysian Chinese) to a Western culture (we now live in the UK), this article has certainly struck a chord for many reasons….not least because I too am, to a certain extent, trying to instill my child with ‘Asian values’ while being surrounded by Western Culture (I wrote about this when Georgia was little more than 1 here);

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The idea that watching too much television is bad for children has been around for decades and if you have children you would probably have read about one of the many studies expounding the evils of children watching television. That said, it is an amazing baby sitter and the ability to keep a child quiet for a significant amount of time simply by turning on the television is without a doubt one of it’s many appeals.

Have you ever wondered though what it might be like to ‘unplug’, to live without ‘live’ television at home?

Read more »

Today, for the first time since starting school in September 2010, Georgia actually walked in to her classroom without clinging on to me or whining! What a breakthrough!

The Secret: Her very own Star Book…read more about it here.

But for now, Well done Georgia!!!

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Maths with Mrs Wall.

Mrs Wall is the Maths Co-ordinator for Georgia’s school.

On our way home from school, after a long first week back to school, we were making plans for our weekend when we met Mrs Wall leaving school.

“Oh, has Georgia told you, we had extra lessons today?” she said.

“No…” this had certainly piqued my interest.

“Oh, she’ll tell you more about it, I’m sure,” Mrs Wall added walking off.

Thankfully, she did turn around and say, “Georgia came to my Maths sessions and we did some Maths together”.

It turns out, Georgia is one of two children, in her class to be sent to Mrs Wall to ‘do Maths’. The other children are apparently from the year above. And when asked what she actually did in those sessions? Played games!

Sounds like fun…Way to go G!

What an acheivement!