Helping Year 5 Making Their Books

During the final week of March, I was helping out the class teachers in assisting the students to complete their books. I was not the only one, there were other parent volunteers too. Basically, our tasks were to cut the cards to make the covers, cut out the blank papers to make the pages, cut out the fabric for the cover of the book, sew in the pages into the cover and assist the kids in gluing the fabric to the covers. That's all we did, the kids would paste their homeworks onto the blank pages themselves.

To be honest, this was the most exciting project I had ever helped at the school. I was glad to help because in the process I learned something precious, making your very own book. It was actually super duper easy !!!

In my excitement, I forgot to take pictures of the process, however on the last day, I did manage to take a few pictures

Gluing the fabric onto the covers



The pages sewed in.

Ready to paste the homework in..

This project also allowed me to look at the interesting works that some of the kids did. Some kids were truly creative.

This lovely girl was showing me her family tree. 

The books were displayed recently for the parents to see during the Year 5 Local Study Exhibition.

Such a treasure these books will be one day :D

Waiting and Waiting

After a few weeks of the homework project, I decided enough was enough. For the first few weeks DS got away by making "easy homework", something that did not pose any problems to him at all. On the first week, he insisted to make a list of places that he had been to and their connections to him, an easy one that carried 2 points. Then on the second week, he compiled all the flags of the countries that he had been to. With the wonders of Internet, life is definitely easier, all he did was search for the flags and transferred them to the publisher, this also carried 2 points. On the third week, he made a list of similarities and differences of the two schools that he went to in the Netherlands. This got him 4 points I think, I'm not so sure, unfortunately it took him 2 weeks to complete the list.  On the fifth week he made a draft summary of his travel to Rome, no proper writing yet . . .

On the sixth week, I decided I needed to intervene. How could he get the minimum requirement of 40 points before 30th March at the rate he was going? And more, his book needed to have pictures, diagrams as well as text. Since the school had a one week break, this was the time to catch up with the travel to Rome story and an extra homework. So on one not so fine day during the holiday break, there he was. . . sitting and waiting. . .

and waiting. . .

And waiting and . . .

and jotting . . .

Equipped with pen and paper, chocolate bar and sweets, and also my hand phone (in case he missed me, he said :D ), there he was recording the numbers of people and vehicles that passed down the street. The data would then be compiled in the form of graphs.

Not even 20 minutes had passed when the house phone rang . . .

"Mama . . can you bring me more food?"

What? Finished already? Did he spent the time eating or what??

When I did not turn up 10 minutes later as promised, the phone rang again . . .

Hmmm so much for my quiet time alone !!!