Today , Tina is already 4 years, 5 months, and 22 days old. She could now read whole poems or stories in her books. I'm happy that she's further learned to ask how to read a word she finds difficult to read. But in general she loves to read all by herself. This has now become a habit that she does many times in one day. I'll say more about how she learned to be a good reader later. In sum, teaching Tina how to read is the least of my problem today. I'm focused instead on teaching Tina how to write, do arithmetic, and patterns. Again, Tina could now write her first and surname. With arithmetic, we had already started with two-digit addition three weeks ago and with subtraction a couple of nights ago. My goal before classes begin in June is to get Tina to learn how to do carry in addition and borrow-one in subtraction. With patterns, Tina is just pretty amazing. We had already advanced to the more complicated cases like XCSAXCSBXCSCXCSDXCS___XCSF. She still commits mistakes here but she listens to me when I explain the pattern. Also, Tina would ask for pattern exercises after addition and subtraction. Below is my journal entry on 28 March 2011.
Tina is now 4-years-and-5-months old.
I and Tina had successfully flew the kite Chris bought last year. I saw in her face that she was so thrilled to hold the kite string and feel the tension and wind pressure in it. My daughter glowed with happiness. I think she was marveling at the idea of a different sort of connection between her and the distant kite in the sky. We did it at an oval track.
Today, I and Tina are also in the middle of doing our paper mache horse. Horse is Tina’s favorite animal. It will take days before I could finally let her paint it.
Tina could now do a two-digit addition. Though she has yet to learn the carry-one, we are now very close to moving to this level. Preparations shall be made at once if she’ll ask to do numbers tomorrow. She could also do subtraction with one-digit numbers. Also she seems to have already mastered telling which number from one to ten is more than the other. She could count backwards from ten, from one to 100, and tell what number is before a certain number from one to ten. She still makes occasional careless mistakes though in some of these exercises. But I know that this could be fixed before classes open in June. I’m trying to get Tina to understand x-1 in preparation for two-digit subtraction. There were struggles before I and Tina got this far in math, but the breakthroughs and how they came are likewise important. I’ll talk about these later.
Tina is now a very advanced reader at her age. Our current concern is the perfection of her grammar. Tina’s handwriting is pretty amazing. She could now write “Tina Borega” all by herself. I’m thankful she loves to write her name again and again. First she would use a pencil. Then she would borrow my yellow marker to write her name before tracing it. What a great exercise: She writes her name with a yellow marker and traces it. Soon I will teach her to write her complete name. She should be able to do this by the end of May.
I have already finished reading Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. I don’t quite agree with her very strict way of handling her kids’ home training and education. Chua’s kids obviously learned a lot from her, but they were apparently unhappy when their mother supervises their learning. While they love their mother, I wonder if they will adopt the exact same spartan style of parenting to their own kids someday. Despite Chua’s success in getting her children to attain their very high status as pianist and violinist, I still believe that any normal child can learn fast and become excellent at something very soon without sacrificing the happy moments that other children typically enjoy as very young humans. I want Tina to think without hesitation, when she’s already an adult, that I’m a parent worth having again if she’ll be given a chance to live one more time. I want Tina to have, though it cannot be achieved to perfection, only happy memories of me and Chris.
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