Big School Ready!

This year is the start of many new things for us as a family. The biggest change and adjustment we are making is that our little big boy is now attending big school!

Here’s how we are doing, err or coping so far.

1.      The Time

Our boy is an early riser. When he was 2 years old (and until he was 4 and a half) , he wakes up at the crack of dawn, waits for the first ray of sunshine to hit our bedroom window and will cockadoodle-doo (or tiktilaok) until we wake up. This is about 5.30 am. Even on weekends.

So, I never imagined waking up early for school will be one of our challenges. But years later, I would hear the “5 more minutes, please” plea. Twice. One from him and the other from his dad.

School bus picks him up at 5.45! My goodness. So far, he’d ridden the school bus just a few times in the morning since school opened last June 17.

 

My sweet sleeping child

2.       The Environment

Big school really is big. His preschool is the kind where everybody knew each other. The guards even know which bag belongs to which student. The big school tour terrified this mom. Fortunately, the big-ness thrilled him. And why not? It’s a big playground, now he has more playmates, and can’t wait to use the school library and the microscope in their science room. Can I also mention he said they will be watching movies in a room, too which I interpret as the multi-media room in school.

Missing his old pre school. We picked up his graduation pictures on his first day at big school.

3.       The Subjects

If his boxy bag is any indication, we are loaded with subjects he will encounter for the first time. Sibika at Kultura, Filipino, Music, Computer and Christian Living. Scrap the computer subject, I know we’ll have no problem there. As for the others, we need more practice so Filipino will come easier for him. And we need to work on orienting him about the Bible and the stories. He learned the Big Bang theory years before he was told about the story of creation and now we have to answer very difficult questions. Questions even Mr. Google will have a hard time answering.

Shopping for his school bag a week before school started. He chose this ginormous bag. "Mom, I can sit on it!" Ang galing ng sales talk ni kuya sa SM

His favorite NatGeo science book

4.       The Baon

We have a hearty eater.  The biggest stress I have now is what to pack for him every day. He eats breakfast around 5.30-6 am. His next meal is at 10.10 am. He usually eats every 2-3 hours so I need to make sure what he eats at breakfast will last him until recess. And what he eats at recess will last him until the 1.10 dismissal time.

So, what do I do? Wake up at 4.30 am to start preparing his bento box. I hoarded lunchboxes last summer and I’m buying bento stuff online. I followed Pinterest users to get more inspiration for bento lunches every day. My goal is simple: make eating fun and healthy. I get a high everyday every time he eats "simot sarap" his baon. (means down to the last morsel, but the Filipino expression just seems more apt)
 

I'm a work-in-progress mom. Forgive the hotdogs while I get the hang of things. Mahirap to think of healthy snacks pala every day.

His first day of school photos.

How time flies! This made me teary-eyed. Whatta difference 3 years make, right? Both taken during the first day of school.

 

My Adorable Bee

I missed this. And it made me re-think about priorities and being a working mom all over again. But I took time away from work already to attend his recognition day so I guess, this is the trade off.


When I saw the pictures of this adorable bee at their year-end presentation at a theatre at SM Southmall, I was happy and wistful at the same time. His costume barely reaching his ankle, my boy is really a kid and not a baby anymore.

Grandma dressing him up

 

 

Fuelling up at Mcdo

Goodluck kiss from Grandma

Smile!!!

Bees in a row

The presentation

The Fruit of my Labor

This costume I painstakingly made for hours for my dear son won him a medal for Best in Costume!
Kids were asked to come as characters from their favorite book, and here is the Cat in the Hat.


Grandma placed whiskers on him, too

With some of his classmates

And shared his hat with grandma

Who are the People in your Neighborhood?

Jared found it terribly amusing that his mom and dad knows this song that he sang one day after school. A very apt song for their assignment of the week. They were asked to cut pictures of people in the community and enumerate their importance.

We figured it might be more interesting if we have him meet the people and see the places in our community instead of just cutting images from a magazine or a book.

First stop was the neirhborhood sastre or sewer. Sadly, nobody is at the shop when we arrived.

This is Jared's and his Dad's barber, just next door to the sastre.

With the friendly tricycle drivers in front of the church.

It was a Sunday and the priests are busy so we contended ourselves with this picture just outside our parish.

At the park.

At the fire station.

 

 

The fireman even asked if we need him to wear his full gear. Although that will be picture perfect, that will just be too much of a hassle.

 

His second time to be on this fire truck.

 

 

On our way to the gardener's place, we passed by these men busy working on the roadside. After daddy explained the boy's assignment, we took this picture with them on the background.

Nobody is there at the Barangay Hall so we asked him to pose in front of the bright building.

And this police station is only several meters away from the Barangay hall.

The garden, but no gardener in sight.

And lastly, the butchers at the grocery.

The Cat in the Hat

Armed with my trusty sewing kit, my one and only- had it since 5th grade - I tackled the Herculean task of making a costume for the boy's book month parade.

 

It could have been a simple affair if I was content with making it out of Carolina. But no, I had to make this nice. And in my book, nice often translates to complicated.

 

So, at 4 am on a Sunday, I cut and sewed and tried to recall exactly how it is done. In my recent memory, I could only remember sewing a missing button by hand. And even that did not come out really cleanly.

 

This project was the best effort of a trying hard, DIY mom.

 

I stared long and hard at this kit trying to convince myself that I can do this.

 

 

I used felt to fashion a big red bow and a white pear shaped felt to act as the body fur.

 

Then I place malleable wire inside 2 felt cloth for the long and wiggly tail.

 

 

 

Putting the top part of the hat.

 

 

Not professional quality yet, but this will pass for me and my pre schooler.

 

 

Slowly taking shape.

 

Ah yes. After 4 hours, the costume is ready.

 

The cat....

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Teacher Mommy, Mommy Teacher

As part of the school's thrust to be partners in education with the parents, Jared's school invited me to participate in the Parent-Teacher program.

This means that for 30 minutes, I get to play teacher to Jared's class! What fun!

I stressed over this for days. I realized it's more difficult to prepare for a lesson to a roomful of 4 to 5 year olds than to present to general managers. =)

So, since there was no clear directions on the topic, I chose to do story-telling over my initial plan of conducting a more exciting, but also more taxing science experiment lest the kids get overly excited and cannot sit still for the rest of the class.

The story...

I brought my laptop, introduced the characters and played the video. Because August is Linggo ng Wika, I downloaded a Tagalog video.

Okay in defense of me presenting a video, most kids speak English and cannot understand what I will say (I think) if I just presented the story from the book, so the video helped them with the story.

I still had to translate all the lines though.

And because looks are always a part of the entire package, I created an antenna headbacd so I can be the ant. =)

 

 

So, what did we do again?

 

I introduced the charaters, I am the ant and they are the grasshoppers, or tipaklong. I asked them to stand up, and hop and hop like a grasshopper.

 

 

After the story, I asked them for the lesson in the story. Glad to know they were actually listening!

 

Here is my son with a dazed look on his face. Still cannot believe I am his teacher!

I also distributed the old-fashioned dry-erase boards. They were only P8.00 each and amazed the kids no end.  Apparently, ths kids know the more high tech versions of this toy only.



Then, I also brought a piggy back and gave them all toy coins. Then one by one, they dropped the coins in the piggy bank- to reinforce the value of saving.

This little girl asked for my antenna after the story.She said it matches her jacket.

A picture with the happy bunch. I am carrying my son at the back.

 

It was a fun, fun, fun moment for me.