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From P3 to P4 – what every child should know |
 When your child goes to Primary 4, he or she will cease to be one of the 'young ones' in the school. In addition to an increased academic workload, Primary 4 is also the year when most primary school students start participating in CCA (if not earlier), which will further challenge your child to manage his or her time well. We've put together some pointers so you and your child can begin the year with confidence, and cope with the challenges head-on 
Discovering the World Around Us and Why things Work they Way they do
This is the second year that your child will be coping with Science - a subject that will challenge your child to query, infer and make his or her own conclusions without depending on the texbook. What would be ideal is to introduce your child to the flora and fauna around him or her. Make that trip to the Botanic Gardens and Hort Park and discover the various trees, leaves, shapes , sizes, the ferns, the moss that grows on trees. Look and understand the flowering and non-flowering plants. Your child needs to feel, touch and smell – this becomes absolutely necessary when they are introduced and tested for their Science experiments! The Science subject must be introduced in a fun manner and it is imperative that you help your child love the subject and not to FEAR it. It is also a key component when tabulating results for your child’s promotion to Primary 4.
Tackling That Stressful Streaming Year With Great Ease
In some schools, the streaming of our kids into higher ability classes takes place at the end of Primary 3. Keeping this in mind, it is necessary for us to help our children plan their time and lessons well – you must give equal emphasis to all subjects and never stop your child from reading and building his vocabulary. A good command of the English language will go far in comprehending mathematical concepts, heuristics based problem-solving questions, enjoying the Science lessons and writing imaginatively for all compositions. Interpretation of questions becomes quite critical in Primary 3 and this increases in complexity as you go into the higher levels of the primary school education.
To Strive, To Seek, To Find Answers to Complex Mathematical Problems
More mind-boggling topics are covered in Mathematics, hence going through the newly introduced concepts in a thorough and engaging manner is a must. Heightening your child’s ability to visualise the concepts, using the model method to tackle the two/three-step problem sums, will be without a doubt important. Ensuring that your child draws clear columns, writes neatly and big enough to view his workings will be required if he is to understand and break down his steps for the challenging problem sums. There is no way out but to keep on practising the various topics in Mathematics. Some of the topics that are always a challenge even to the most talented are : Fractions, Area/ Perimeter and Time.
Every Child Is a Gift – Keep the Communication Going
Consistency, discipline in managing time and being creative and engaging when teaching your child are the necessary ingredients to making that successful progress from Primary 3 to Primary 4. To a large extent, your child will start to rapidly mature – in his thoughts- in Primary 3. Tap on this wonderful opportunity by keeping constant communication going. Don’t just dwell on what the teacher covered in class for the day or who scored the highest marks for the term tests, but ask him / her what he/she learnt for the day or week. Find out if anything is troubling your child or if he/she is stumbling in any subject. You need to keep a tab on how your child is progressing socially and from an educational point of view as well. A happy child will always be a keen learner and eventually a “go-getter”!
How did you help your child cope with the transition to Upper Primary? Do share your experiences and pointers with us.
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