Summer Holidays

One of the things I have tried to do last few summers is write a letter to my daughters on what summer plans we have for them.

They are dated 17th July purposely and I may add afew thing till the holidiys begin

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17th July 2009

Dear Tanya,

We are all set to begin another summer holidays. This time we have 6 weeks in all so if we leave weekends out we have 30 days of no school.

You have had a fantastic academic year this year starting from Taipei where you did great in Grade 4 till December. Your Class teacher had great things to talk of you…
You actively participated in swimming; Actors Workshop and singing through out the semester and your winter performance for Chanterelles was outstanding.

You also worked very hard and took your Test of Proficiency in Mandarin for beginners .We were happy that you manged a score of 58 out of 80 although you missed the pass mark of 62 by 4 marks .Its still a great achievement for an eight year old.

In 2009 you moved to a new country which was as unfamiliar to you as it was to us..
You have settled down beautifully to 2 schools. The first school which you attended less than 15 days you had three friends giving you friendship notes and it was brilliant that you can adapt so easily.

Then you joined yet another school where you were in school merit book in the week one itself for settling down fast.

We are very proud the way you have adapted and enjoying your new schools.
You have had excellent report this year including the fact you are significantly ahead of your peers in English, Science and Math’s. You were also thrilled you are one of the best swimmers in your Year group….how different from the peers you had in Taipei.
Great going and we want you to keep up the good work in all the areas.

You also participated in an outreach dance session during your mid term break and performed a minor role in a musical.

We started going to a new Catholic Church regularly and you worked really hard at your First Holy Communion classes and is enjoying the Pantomime Practice.

You began to attend Chess after school for the first time and took part in a tournament where you had 2 draws and 4 losses. Remarkable for the first time!. You presumed Choir and Piano classes and was confident to have a piano recital after the second class.

The most significant change in you in 2009 your sudden interest in reading which was not there till now. We are very happy now that you can read for long period s of time and enjoy reading fiction…we need to start reading some non-fiction too…Great going so far!


Papa and Mamma has planned two holidays for you….

We will take you to Paris….for 3 days the highlight of the trip being a day at the Disney Land. This would be your second Disney Park that you have been lucky to visit. And we think you really deserve this treat and to top it we will be planning it with your friend Neha.

The next holiday we are planning is going to be a big surprise but we promise you its going to be a lot of fun! And that will be for two weeks….so these holidays are going to be very different from last year you spent in Kochi and Singapore.

So we are left with other 15 days at home (about 3 weeks) to work on all that you need to achieve ……


Here are the things we plan to do.

Mandarin:

You have completely lost touch as we had no time and interaction in Mandarin. You will need to catch up Book 1 in 5 days to be ready for Level 2 classes come September. We just completed class one and the teacher is really confident that you are capable of catching up and more.

ICT
We think its time for you to spend more time on computer at least an hour a day.
We will divide that 15 minutes of Typing , 15 minutes of some ICT related assignments and tasks which Mamma will figure out, 15 minutes of mathletics and 15 minutes of other items which we will soon plan out!

Hindi and Malayalam

We had made significant progress in writing and reading these languages which you have not gone back for over an year. We hope you do at least one session a week so that you are in touch. We can’t but keep emphasizing that any language acquisition is going to assist you immensely through life.

11+ exams

We are yet to research and find out although your placement tests except spelling were below average. So it is important we work an hour a day to improve these scores.




Writing

We will work with some books we have that enable better writing. We will try to take a type of writing and do one piece a week.
So at the end of your holidays the target is 4 well written pieces you can be proud of.

Reading

You will continue to read and we will pick up some of the books you want to read from the library.You have so far mentioned these:

The Incredible Journey
The Wizard of OZ

Kumon

We will continue to have Kumon sheets during holidays as you have resumed after a long break. That will be an hours commitment daily and we are hoping you will be self motivated to do it without much prompting from our side.


So all in all we hope you will have a great summer holidays with lots of new things to learn and great experiences.

With lots of love

Mamma and Papa