Entertainment

It’s hard to believe that a whole school year has already passed.  It feels like it was just yesterday when I took Ethan to his school on the first day of the school year in January, as he started his year in Nursery.  And now it’s the end of the year, and he is anxiously waiting for the coming year when he would be in K1.

Yes, my boy loves going to school.  And yes, he tells me that. All the time 🙂

I’m so thankful that with Ethan I don’t have to deal with tantrums and tears on why he doesn’t want to go to school, because he genuinely LOVES school.

He has made so many friends in school, and he has grown in leaps and bounds in all aspects: physically, emotionally, spiritually and socially.  He started school as quite a shy guy but now his teacher tells me he is quite *noisy* in school and will volunteer information and answers quite readily.  His confidence, too, has skyrocketed and he has mastered many useful skills.

In fact, I am not surprised that he looks forward to school.  During the final week of the school term alone, Ethan was out on a school field trip to Sushi King, where they learnt how to make sushi, ate the sushi they made and had plain clean fun.  On that day, his teacher had asked them to arrive at school before 9:00a.m. and although I was afraid we might not be able to make it on time, Ethan wasted no time in getting ready and we arrived at 15 minutes to 9:00a.m.!

And then on the last day of school, there was a school party, with water play, food and games for everyone.

How could Ethan not love school?

Well, much as he loves school, he is also enjoying his school holidays very much now.  During the 1st week of the school holidays, Ethan attended a Circus School Holiday program and next week, he’s looking forward to a Science Holiday Program.  Whatever it is, we’re trying to keep him occupied as much as we can, because we know he has tons of energy to expend!  Besides, we all know that an idle mind is the devil’s workshop, yes?

A few weekends ago, Ethan’s preschool had a little concert.  The theme of the concert this year was “The Garden”.

Prior to the concert day, Ethan had been reporting to us as to what he would be doing.  Apparently he would be singing and dancing in a Chinese song performance.  Initially he was supposed to say something in Chinese onstage together with another girl, his classmate.  But the teachers then decided that the girl would say it on her own, and Ethan was instead tasked with introducing his performance number….yes, in Chinese 😛

On the evening of the concert, we all drove to Ethan’s school and Ethan went off to the room to get into his costumes and do some *hair and makeup*. 

The concert was rather well-organized, and given the fact that the performers were all 2 to 4 year olds, it was superb.  Based on the concert’s theme, all the performances were centered around the garden theme: flowers, planting, the sun, farmers…etc.

Ethan’s performance was the very last one, and the truth is, both Pete and I were REALLY proud of our boy because he did a FANTASTIC job.  He danced, he sang and he thoroughly looked like he enjoyed himself. 🙂

Hannah unfortunately had fallen asleep before her brother’s performance, so we’ll have to show her the video some other day.

Here’s Ethan introducing his group’s performance.  What he said was,

“我们是地球的孩子 ( wǒ men shì dì qiú de hái zǐ  )” which means “We are the children of the Earth”, a very meaningful song indeed.

We actually practised saying what we *thought* he was supposed to say during the concert, but little did we know that what we practised was a different phrase.  It was the *earlier* one, but the teachers had changed it.  Anyway, Ethan still managed to say the right one when the time came.

And here are some of the *rather blurry* photos from the concert – these were the best we could get from where we were sitting.  We’re waiting to see the video 🙂

Ethan exuded confidence and showed us what a big boy he was becoming.  On stage, we could tell he was very HAPPY and he was looking out for Daddy and Mommy, perhaps to tell us, “Look Dad and Mom!  Here I am!”

And we are so very proud of him. 🙂

Photo credits