English Composition - Primary 2

A friend's daughter who is taking her PSLE exams this year, writes with a simple and natural flair and has none of the cliches evident in most kids' essays (regurgitated from model answers).

Hannah was so inspired after reading that piece of work that she also wanted me to post her own composition (which was done in school) in my blog. No score was given for the composition except for the teacher's comment. Although most of the sentence structures seemed rather abrupt, I am pleased that she has taken a keen interest in writing.

Write a story of at least 80 words based on the pictures below (scene of a birthday party that led to a quarrel). You may use the words and phrases in the box. You are encouraged to include other relevant points to make your composition interesting.

"selfish" "quarrelled" "rude" "lonely" "happily" "snatched" "stamped her feet" "sad" "forgave"
"cried"

After the birthday party, we walked to Jade's playing corner. Jade was a very hot-tempered and selfish little girl. While Helena was playing with a teddy bear, Jade snatched and berated her, "Don't you ever touch it again!" "I'm sorry..." stuttered Helena. Jade was even angrier when she heard that short apology. She began shouting and stamping her feet. She was making such a racket that I suggested leaving her alone. Sean and Dean were also complaining what a nuisance she was. All this while, she continued to shout and scream.

Finally, we could not put up with her rude behaviour and left her standing alone in a corner, sobbing very badly. When Helena, Dean, Sean and I heard her sobbing, we said, "Serves her right!". We started to play among ourselves and ignored Jade. Jade just stood in the corner and watched us. Then she realised her folly and came up to apologise to us. We forgave Jade and played happily together.

Teacher's comments: Good vocabulary.

A Well-Deserved Break in Bintan

Despite the HINI Pandemic Alert, we ventured to Bintan Club Med for a well-deserved break during the June holidays.

The ferry ride to Bintan.

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Family photo outside our rooms at Club Med.



Dinner at the Waterfall Restaurant.



Hayley strumming her air guitar while imitating the performers (GO's) on stage.



Hannah and her other friends from the Club Med Kids Club, performing an Indian Dance.






Hannah trying out the trapeze.

Golf

Golfing in pajamas! That's the new style LOL! Hayley was trying out the new pair of gloves which we bought her over the weekend.

She has been attending golf lessons at Kindergolf Jelita for over a year now. My husband, KC, is a golfer while I am hopeless at golf! I have no ball sense whatsoever though I did take lessons before I was pregnant with Hayley and I am not sure when I will go for a refresher's course. I don't mind the sun but I just simply CANNOT AIM and HIT! Anyway, that's my problem!

Back to Hayley... she is the sort of child who is not able to focus on anything regimental nor routined but surprisingly, she is pretty okay at golf meaning that she is able to hit the ball correctly and requires minimal reminders on posture and tempo. That is indeed a relief to us all in constrast to the fact that she has relatively short attention span when it comes to doing her basic penmanship (including Chinese Characters) and simple arithmetic.

Last December, she has progressed to playing on the Par 3 Course and thoroughly enjoys the outdoor lessons. We also realised that she became more interested in the game after we attended the HSBC Women's Champions a few months back.

Oh by the way, Hannah hates golf! She told me that she much prefers swimming as she feels that golf requires too much walking under the sun. Now, swimming is one sport that Hayley is not able to master despite having taken lessons for more than a year now. Although she has no fear of water and clowns around in the pool more often than not, she does not seem to be able to synchronise her strokes. Guess she will need more time.......

Osteopathy

Most of my friends are aware of Hayley, my younger daughter's learning difficulties. She is 5 going on 6 and has been assessed by an educational psychologist that she displays strong signs of dyslexia.

At the beginning of this year, she started her intervention classes at Orton Gillingham as well as speech and language therapy at Speech Inc.

My child was also asked to undergo Occupational Therapy and will start her session at Kidz Paediatrics tomorrow. Recently, I had been advised by a friend to visit an osteopath to see if the treatment will help Hayley focus better and to cope with her dyslexia.

The following links provide some information on osteopathy and craniosacral work:-

http://www.hands-on-london.com/osteopathy.html
http://www.hands-on-london.com/osteopathy_sciatica.html

http://www.milneinstitute.com/forms/A%20CLIENT%20intro.pdf

We have gone for 2 sessions and its quite interesting as to how the treatment is being administered. The patient is asked to rest on a massage table and the therapist monitors the craniosacral rhythm with his hands while supporting the back of the patient's head. He conducts other gentle assessments and corrects the sources of pain and dysfunction using gentle manipulative techniques, for example at points around the patient's ears and temples.

Hayley has an extremely low threshold for pain but she has yet to complain about any discomfort during the therapy, which is good news to me!