凯凯's first day in a formal playgroup

Picture of Kaikai's first formal school bag and water bottle.
Zekai’s first day in a formal playgroup. Mommy took one day leave to bring Kaikai to playgroup and oriented 婆婆 on the school environment.

Normally Kaikai would sleep until 9.30am and on this special day he has to wake up at 7.45am. A big change to his sleeping time. We spent 30mins to get his off his yaolan then fed him milk and finally dressed him up. Kaikai refused to wear uniform. 婆婆 and mommy managed to get him in his full set of uniform and we thought “work done”, who know, he pulled his pant down and wanted to wear his casual pant. That was around 8.45am and class supposed to start at 8.45am (supposed to be 8am if we wanted him to have breakfast at playgroup but 8.45am if he has breakfast at home. We chose to feed him at home).

Pictures of Kaikai dressing up in his formal uniform, the very first uniform in his life. Mommy must captured all these wonderful memories and showed him when he was older.

Finally mommy, 婆婆and a happy Kaikai went for his school.

Kaikai’s form teacher was called Ms Joyce Lee and Chinese teacher was 李老师 (same surname that’s why婆婆was confused). Teacher Joyce briefed mommy the admin procedure, course curriculum and communication mode. The class started with only 4 children, including KaiKai. It supposed to have 8 of them but teacher Joyce said at playgroup level a lot of the children did not have 100% class attendance and especially in Nov and Dec when it was a holiday season.

Mommy felt that this was a good time to get Kaikai familiar with the place and teacher could spend more time with him since there were lesser children. By next year in N1, there would be 12 children to 1 teacher and I believed at that time teacher might not have that much of time to spend with Kaikai. So choosing to enroll Kaikai at this time was still a good choice.

The whole session goes on well.

1 Kaikai started with playing “outdoor”, then they shift to his playgroup classroom,
2 Teacher Joyce play nursery rhythms, play toys, asked children to pack toys
3 Drinking water time. All 4 children including Teacher Joyce would sit around the table and drink water from the water bottle. Kaikai who normally does not like to drink water follow what other children were doing.
4 李老师 bring out play dough and all 4 children sit around table and start cutting dough

Throughout the session, mommy sat quietly and observed, Kaikai did look at mommy occasionally for assurance and will start playing again.

While playing dough, mommy pretends to go toilet and let Kaiaki stayed with the teacher after telling him. When mommy was back, teacher said Kaikai was doing very well; he sat there quietly cutting his dough. Mommy was pleaseJ))

5 around 10.15pm, teacher Joyce come in again
6 She let the children played toys while checking their diaper
7 Mommy again informs Kaikai she needs to go out. Mommy stayed outdoor till 10.45pm. When mommy walked in, she saw a cute little kaikai, carried a water bottle across his shoulder while another hand dragging his school bag which is about half of his size saying” 回家咯“ give me a shy smile when he saw me.

Teacher Joyce said Kaikai just gave her a hug. One of the little boy “Rayson” thot I was a teacher, asked me to help him to carry bag and hug me. So I gave him a hug as well with Kaikai starring at me with wide eye.

Overall, I’m happy and proud of Kaikai for his performance on his first day. There was no tear but all smile. I hope this will continue. Next week will be a challenging week as Kaikai will be all alone… I will have to keep my finger cross.

P/s : I only saw three out of seven classmates. Out of this three, one is very active, and he pushed Kaikai twice pretty hard while Teacher Joyce was busy. Kaikai looked at me but when I give him an encouraging smile, he was happy again and walked away. Hope the other four classmates would be good to Kaikai as well.