Miya’s first day at school

Miya started school today.

Yesterday we went to our local bookshop (about 45 minutes away by metro) and picked up our school supplies.  Miya was very excited and she wanted to start immediately.  I said she had to wait until today.

Finally the day arrived, and, after eating and cleaning teeth she trotted off to school all by herself.

A couple of minutes later I joined her in our schoolroom/playroom.  She had already set up her desk space with her books and pencils.  Mulan was sitting next to her, ready and waiting too.

These are the books we used:

Miya did about three pages of each book.  She wanted to do more, but I suggested that we start out a little slower.  She got out a colouring-in book and did a couple of pages of that while Mulan finished her schoolwork.

Yesterday we also got these books for Mulan:

She started reading the Dr Seuss one last night, and I think she read another chapter or two in bed this morning when she woke up.

AAIP: Introduction

FYI and FWIW, AAIP is short for Alien Adventures inPhilosophy.  AAIP is a “philosophy in role” programme.

We decided that instead of doing one-off P4C lessons, we would do one activity each week of AAIP.  Mostly, this means that I don’t have to do too much work looking for, or creating, one-off lessons each week.  The pdf I linked to above should give us about three months of lessons (after that, I may write some more lessons using the same thematic template).

We also decided to only do the lesson in Chinese (my Big Sis’s children won’t join in).  This is mostly to give Mulan some Chinese time with her friends, rather than spending all her time with the cousins.

We did Activity 1 yesterday.  It didn’t have a lot of philosophical content, so I wasn’t needed much.  All I did was suggest to Mama a few activity ideas before the lesson, and then she took charge of the rest.  From what I overheard, it all went very well.

The class consisted of Mulan and three friends.  Miya was there for a bit, too, but very soon she decided that she preferred having some one-to-one quality time with me.  She and I had a snack, tidied the kitchen, and played hairdressers together.

In addition to following the lesson structure given in the pdf, we decided to expand the astronomy discussion.  Mama led a discussion on the solar system—naming and locating the planets and moons, discussing orbits and rotations and picking out interesting features of the planets.  They acted out being planets circling around a central sun.  Office chairs helped emulate planetary rotations and movements.

After that, they drew pictures of planets and aliens.  The children introduced their ideas, explaining the features of their planet and the types of aliens that lived on them.  One child had an ice planet, with ice-aliens.  Another was a fire planet.  Another was a spiky planet.  Mulan’s was a rain planet and the aliens were rainbow coloured.  Each child seemed to think it important for their aliens to have some sort of weapon.  Mulan said that her alien had long eyelashes which can shoot out and spike the enemy.  There was an arms race between the ice and fire aliens, and both creators claimed that their aliens were robust enough to withstand the opposing forces of the other.

Next Monday is a public holiday.  We will continue with Activity 2 in two weeks time.