Little Renzo is working hard to improve his Chinese

About 2 years ago, I wrote a post on Renzo's Mandarin and although we were pretty impressed with his ability to sing Chinese songs or even recite "三字经" at young age, we have to admit that his Chinese didn't improve much for the past 2 years, with our all English speaking environment at home. 

In fact Renzo has quite a big problem dealing with people who speaks Chinese. You know it's pretty common in Singapore to have strangers who try to strike conversation with him in Chinese, he usually gets pretty angry and responds in a very rude manner. He loves to talk to people who speaks English, and somehow he has this concept that all Malays, Indians and Caucasians can definitely speak English, thus he has a strong preference to communicate and interact with them.

Knowing that he definitely needs to brush up his Chinese language in our bilingual society, we put him into Chinese class (form teacher teaches Chinese) at his childcare for the past 2 years. And this year when we were given a chance to choose between English and Chinese class, we picked English class instead as he's not been adapting well in school, and we suspected language barrier might be the major roadblock.

Now he's doing better under the English form teacher, and his Chinese teacher this year is one of the best teachers in the school. So somehow we noticed that he starts to get more and more confident in speaking Chinese at home. Although he's still speaking with a strong ang moh (Caucasian) accent, his Chinese articulation is very accurate, just like his English. His teacher once mentioned that he was helping to teach other kids how to pronounce "红毛丹" (rambutan) in school! The only problem is that he's using a lot of "direct translation" from English to Chinese which makes his sentences less fluent, and more hilarious. For example, "I want to throw this into the dustbin"，becomes 我要丢这个去里面在垃圾桶 instead of 我要把这个丢进垃圾桶里面 in Renzo's language.

Last night, he happily told us, "我是一个火车，爸爸是树，妈妈是一个球，Rynus是一个小松鼠". He always self proclaim he is the longest wheel train simply because he loves trains so much! We asked him why daddy is a tree, he answered it's because daddy is growing taller and taller, yes in his eyes, and in his little heart, daddy is a tall and strong man! And when we asked him why he thinks Rynus is a squirrel, he said: "因为，我不知道他是什么shape的!".. Well not much logic here but at least that's a good try!

Of course I got pretty upset and "complained" to daddy that I must be too fat to be described as a BALL. Renzo immediately "corrected" me, "不是的妈妈，妈妈是一个球，不过，不是一个胖胖的球!".. Awww how sweet!!!!! My son knows what I was complaining about. But then he followed by, "是一个球，就像一个大西瓜!".. Gosh, is watermelon any "slimmer" than a ball then?!!

Anyway we have to really thank Renzo's school and teacher for their incredible hard work. It's still tougher to teach Renzo Chinese than English, but we can definitely conquer, together!!

This is what he learned in school, and all credits must go to his Chinese teacher, 戴老师!!

Maybe homeschooling is easier for Renzo

No I have absolutely no idea how homeschooling works, I was just thinking out loud because this morning, Renzo was making noise again on his way to school.

He said: "If I go to school later, I am not going to do anything! If I stay at home, I will do anything!!!"

I seriously have no clue what's the logic behind his thought, but one thing he's very right about, is that up to now, at 3 years 8 months of age, he still doesn't seem to enjoy going to school, and in fact he's not behaving well there. He's not able to express his needs such as requesting permission to go to washroom, or asking for second helping during meal time. He is the only one in his class who is not fully toilet trained till now. Taking off the socks and shoes and put them on the shoe rack is the simplest task every kid does in the morning, he's still struggling with it (mentally not physically though). The feedback from his English speech & drama teacher clearly indicated that his participation in class is poor though he has no problem with his pronunciation and performance, at all..

But at home, everyone knows how talkative he is. Not just that, he's quite willing to study, I meant the real kind of study that basically lasts for at least 30 minutes to 1 hour per session. He knows which particular book he wants to read, even for those books that he has read or touched for no more than 3 times, he remembers the title, as well as the size, and the color of the book so it's very easy for him to describe what he wants, and for us to dig out from his bookshelf. He likes to write, especially numbers, He can write letters and words independently also but when he's not in the mood, tracing is an easier alternative as he knows writing on his own seems tougher. He loves doing math, although at this moment he's not strong with subtraction, his concept of addition is pretty good and he even tried 2 digits addition with daddy 2 weeks ago.

Teaching him, at home, seems pretty easy for us so far, no scolding, no shouting, no disciplining and he just follows. I do feel bad when I hear about school teachers' concerns over Renzo, because there's simply nothing much I can do, as he doesn't seem to have those issues at home.

Here's a video of Renzo reading a book that Daddy has read to him for no more than 3 times a few months back. He grabbed it last night and started reading. I was in a shock that only till he flipped to page 2, I managed to take out my camera. I stopped videoing after he's done with page 2 but he continued till he finished page 4.

In any case, homeschooling is never possible since we both need to work, and of course we do trust our well-developed education system a lot more. We are just hoping that we could do more to help Renzo love going to school soon!