7 Quick Takes Friday Vol. 15

- 1 -

Pope Francis declared yesterday as day of prayer and fasting for Syria. Just now I had discussion with my housemate regarding this topic because we were talking about the class on morality beforehand. After we talked about the three components to judge morality of an action: moral act, intention, and circumstances, she asked, "So, whether Obama should 'attack' Syria can be evaluated using this framework?" I said yes, but I think it's a complicated situation. Pope's message is quite clear that we shouldn't respond violence with violence.

- 2 -

Ups and downs are back (well, it's always there, but some stuff pulled you down heavier than others). I almost cancelled going to fish with the Girls' Club (the primary school girls' weekly activity) because I was feeling a bit down on Friday night. Thank God at the end I still went with them. It's good to keep doing something for others even though you are down because you don't focus on yourself. Furthermore, the difficulties will pass. I need to learn to be more patient. When I'm impatient like yesterday, my heart felt very heavy, to the point that I could feel the pain physically. It's very weird.

- 3 -

I got new 'student' last Friday. Ryan's friend came to play at his house so I taught both of them. It was more fun because we could have competitive games. Ryan was also more motivated. He would read then said, "I said it first!" Thanks to Progressive Phonics website, I think the free e-book was very useful. I could see how Ryan slowly got the pattern of "cat", "hat", "mat" after training him reading them using the e-book. It was a good practice for him!

We also discussed "What do we bring to the zoo?" We learned some new animals and I let them draw a zoo. This week was much much much better than last week. Fiuhhhh..

- 4 -

Talking about Girls' Club, the virtue of the month is "magnanimity", to have a big heart. Marie tried to explain that "magna" means great and "animos" means soul, a great soul. We focused on forgiveness as part of this virtue because some of them requested Marie to talk about forgiveness. They were quite aware that bullying occurred in school and they were discussing on how they could forgive and move on. Indeed, to forgive your 'enemy' is very difficult.

- 5 -

Have you read Pippi the Longstocking? I read it when I was in secondary school (a bit too late to read it right?). I couldn't recall the details, but the K1 children in a kindergarten were also reading this book. I ordered it online so I hope I could read it to Shalom and Ryan. HAHAHAHA. I hope they know children's classics when they are still children, not too late like me =P Sharmini was talking about Anne of Green Gables as it was also discussed in the catholicyoungwomen blog and I have not heard about these series before! Now I can start buying these books and give or lend them to the children around me. Hahahaha.

- 6 -

Every job has a kind of 'job hazard'. As research assistant, our 'job hazard' now is every time we see children, we try to guess their age. Hahahaha. The thing is a few months make a difference! For example, we tested the executive control of children from K2 (5-to-6 years old) and K1 (4-to-5 years old). The 4-year-olds already had difficulties in doing the tasks compared to the 5-year-olds. I'm a bit puzzled how they put all kids that were born in 2007 as K2 in Singapore, even though some of them were born in January and others were born in December! You could see the difference even though both of them are in the same class. When I was in Indonesia, the Catholic schools were very strict regarding the age at the moment of school admission. The academic year starts in June, so children who do not turn 3 by October of that year, must wait for another year. My brother was born on 30 December, so he joined another year. He would be quite left behind if he joined playgroup class when he was 2.5 years old (especially that he also just started speaking at the age of 2!). I also compared Paul's niece (Shalom) with my friend's daughter. The difference is 7 months and the vocabulary development is very different. However, when they go to preschool, they will be in the same batch! Hmmmm...

- 7 -

A normal question from my friend, "Are you going to take Master's?"
I said yes, but not so soon.

Oh well, life is not as straightforward as I thought :)

More quick takes at www.conversiondiary.com!