Our dear Mr Calvin turned 5 yesterday! He is now a *big* kindy boy going onto pre-primary next year. Sometimes I just can’t believe (or maybe don’t want to :)) my little boy is already in school and he is 5 years old now.
He is definitely a lot more chatty these days and even at school, I have been told that he has come out of his shell — which means he is very comfortable with his teachers and classmates AND he is very chatty. The one thing I have found is that Calvin is now conversing a lot more confidently in English. He is also speaking a lot more in English whether at home or out. This can be a good thing, but the speaking Mandarin rule at our home seems to be out of the window at the moment for him. I find it hard sometimes to get him to speak Mandarin –perhaps attending a Chinese school (once a week) might help? Well, the plan is to still keep speaking Mandarin to him.
Celebrations this year has been really really low key as compared to last year. It is more of a family affair this year. Yup, I am slack! Anyhow, the boy was happy enough to have our company. I gave him a choice of going to the zoo or watching a movie. He chose the latter. And guess what? The husband announced early in the morning that we were going to the beach! This, of course was a surprise which has created a lot of excitement for the boys.
It was a windy and sunny day at the beach. Several families were there when we arrived. As it was still too cold to go down to the water for a dip, we restricted the boys to playing with sand and only dipping feet in the water. Guess who did not listen to instructions? Who else but our Mr A!
 
Here’s the very happy birthday boy.
The boys ran towards the water and when the waves rolled in, they ran back ….. they just ran back and forth and back and forth ….. I just sat there and watched them and took pictures. 🙂 The husband was with them the whole time, supervising them. At one stage, they wanted to build a sand castle, but it proved too difficult when we did not bring any *tools* with us. And so, the *genius* father suggested they dig a hole and made a tunnel for the water to flow in. That sounded interesting enough for the boys and they began to dig.
 The boys and Robin digging hole in the sand.
 We left the beach after about an hour of play. The boys had a such a fantastic time building the tunnel with their dad and watching the water flow in. Athan was, as usual, reluctant to leave. He simply loved the beach. He was soaking wet with water and sand from head to toe at the end of it. He did not mind a least bit while I was concerned with the cleaning up afterward. *sigh*
After a quick clean up, it was lunch time. We proceeded to a nearby restaurant for our meal. We had the most scrumptious (and expensive) lunch of fettuccine with meatballs and grilled flatbread. Calvin wiped out his big share of lunch in no time. He was looking around for more food!
Even Mr Athan, who is not a big fan of pasta, cleaned his plate without much fuss. He must be very hungry after all that running around on the beach earlier.
I just loved how the boys ate today — sat nicely on their chair and finished their food without a fuss. 🙂 We hardly eat out during lunch time, let alone at the beach. And so, this experience has been such a rare and pleasant for all of us.
What’s next? Ice cream of course!
The boys enjoying ice-cream after lunch.
On our way home from the beach, Calvin did not forget to remind about the movie!!! Gosh, this boy really does have a superb memory for things that he matters to him. He wanted to watch “Astro Boy”. Athan echoed Calvin’s reminder to which I replied “we will go only after your nap!”. Promise is a promise. I have to keep to my word to set a good example.
Yup, we made it to “Astro Boy”, the movie. Calvin was so engrossed throughout the whole movie. He hardly moved in his seat apart from the occasional chuckle from some jokes in the movie. He was really enjoying the movie. Athan, on the other hand lose interest half-way through the movie. I had to bribed him with biscuits to keep him in his seat. *sigh*. After the movie, Calvin asked me tons of questions about Astro Boy and when he was satisfied with my answers, he said to me “mum, it was a good promise”. He meant to say, it was good that I kept my promise. He really appreciated it.
What a good day we had spending together as a family, celebrating Calvin’s birthday. The boy was very happy and thankful and that’s all that mattered. Thank God for blessing us with Calvin.
Oh, I forgot to add that we also received a huge parcel from my family in Singapore! They have sent many gifts for Calvin as well as Athan. They are so blessed. Thank you everyone!
Your first couple of paragraphs sounded familiar. When our kids started school they started to want to talk Japanese instead of English. We had several strategies. I often let them finish the sentence/paragraph and then said “Okay, now would you repeat that for me in English.” or if I thought they were to excited I would simply say “In English you say… ” and repeat whatever they had said in English.
I was always saying things like “I see, but I’ll understand it a lot better if you tell me again in English.” or “You can talk in whatever language you want to your siblings but please talk to your mother in English.” We had an we had an upstairs, downstairs rule. (Upstairs whatever language… downstairs English.)
But I think the no tv rule and the habit of reading English books were even more important than all these conversational strategies. One of us would read to them an hour or more every night. Besides the language benefit it really drew us together as a family. There’s nothing quite like a shared book!
Hi Laurie, thanks for your message and suggestions. I have been reading chinese story boys with the boys lately. They seem to enjoy the stories so far and I hope they will learn much from it.
I have yet to implement the no tv in our household. Perhaps I should give it a go.