The Pri Sch Leaving Exam is so intense that I’m starting my boy young. Even before he enters Pri 1. Lest you accuse me of being kiasu (Singlish for afraid to lose), I just wanna justify my action by saying that preschool education is very advanced these days. He has learnt about life cycles and the digestive system. The latter in Chinese, no less. I would be doing him a severe injustice if I don’t consolidate his knowledge.
Anyway, after 3.5 years of teaching Sci, I only learnt the term ‘froglet’ today. And that hundreds of eggs stuck together is called a clump. Though actually, these pieces of knowledge are deemed unnecessary by our exam system haha.
The greatest strength of this book lies in its many colourful photographs, which serve as prompts for me to drill him:
- how many stages in the life cycle?
- does a frog have a nymph stage?
- does the tadpole resemble the adult?
- what kind of animal is the frog?
- why does the frog lay so many eggs at once? (Because some of them will be eaten by predators.)
The aspiring student was intrigued enough to remark, “I don’t know the difference between a reptile and an amphibian.” Which I must say is the culmination of these few months of pre-pri sch prep!
