Nalin had a pretty good 2009. She's always liked school, and that certainly didn't change. Nalin absolutely loved her second grade teacher Ms. Pucci. Even though she is now in third grade, she still stops and sees Ms. Pucci on most days. She also liked her third grade teacher Ms. Cheesbro.
I think one of Nalin's favorite activities in third grade is the "chunk check cheer". Each Monday, Ms. Cheesbro gives the students a letter chunk, and they have to come up with at least fifty words that have that chunk of letters. For example, if the chunk was "ed", they would come up with words like red, bed, mended, etc. The kids are allowed to consult sources such as books, the Internet and parents to help make the list. Nalin and a boy in her class have been pretty competitive at it. I think the minimum number of words were forty. Nalin asked me for help, and I think on the first or second time she had over one hundred. The next week Dirk had 150. After that they kept leap frogging each other. One week it was close, each had over 300 words and Ms. Cheesbro had to count the words. The last time Nalin took in over 400 words. What I usually did was make her get 50-75 on her own, and then I would help her. She knew what a lot of the words meant, but some I had to explain to her, which was important, because if Ms. Cheesbro asked you what the word meant, and you didn't know, it didn't count.
Ms. Cheesbro saw me on the track one day and gave me a joking "thanks a lot for helping Nalin." She teases the kids that it is a big burden to check the words, which may encourage them. Its funny when I work with Nalin. She will be all gun-ho one minute, and then want to stop another. The way I introduce a lot of words is to use them in a sentence. For example, if "art" was the chunk, I might say, "Oh Nalin, did you have art today? Did you have orange juice, was it tart?" Sometimes it takes her a little while, but then she picks up on it. She'll often give me a daddy, I don't want to do it now, but then hurry and write down the words. You can tell sometimes that she is torn. When she wants to give up, I'll say something like "I bet Dirk is already on 400 right now." She'll say something like, "daddy, I know what you are doing, you are trying to encourage me," in a tone as if encouraging your kids was indeed a terrible thing.
Nalin is a very strong speller. I always did very well in school, but spelling was not my strong suit. I rely heavily on spell checks. My guess is that if she keeps it up, Nalin will be a better speller than I in a few years.
Nalin continued with the Blue Birds this year. That is the Thai equivalent of the Girl Scouts/Brownies. She is in the same troop from last year. The highlight for her was probably the Father/Daughter dance, where she got to dress up and go to a dance with me. Of course, once we got there, she only danced with me when she was supposed to during the contest. The rest of the time she was much too busy with her friends.
That's the thing about Nalin. She is very anxious to grow up. Jacob is adventurous, but he seems to like to be around his parents even when his friends are around. He always walks with us from the bike rack at school to Aleena's classroom. As soon as we get to school, Nalin is off on her own in search of her friends. I'm not sure how much we embarrass her yet, but its coming soon.
Another activity that kept Nalin busy through most of 2009 was her jazz dance class. In the late spring she did a great job with her dance recital. I think it was to the Madonna song of Operator, or something like that. She will often practice her dance moves in the house.
This past semester, Nalin has rally started to practice playing her recorder and is getting much better. While I hate to tell her to stop playing because I dont' want to discourage her interest, I do tell her that 7:00 a.m. on Saturday morning is a bit too early. I think I told her that she had to wait until at least 8:30. I'm not sure how long her musical instrument interest will last, but she told us that she wants to take piano lessons this semester, and we plan to let her.
Together with Jacob, Nalin joined the elementary school choir this year. They had a recital before the Christmas break which was well performed.
After taking last season off, Nalin decided to play soccer again this year. She is doing a lot better than previously. Sometimes in the past she would just kind of watch the game, but now she is a lot more involved; going after the ball and being a bit more aggressive. Its nice to see her progress.
Nalin traveled with the family this year. She visited Singapore, Hong Kong (with Tim and her siblings), and a bunch of places in Thailand.
Nalin's best friend is still Caroline. They have been in class together since Caroline arrived late in the first half of first grade. Every year ISB shuffles the kids up and combined with the student turn over, there aren't a lot of kids that you are in the same classroom with for three straight years. Caroline may be here for one more year, I'm not sure, but it will be interesting if they end up in different classrooms. I imagine they will still remain good friends. Nalin is always asking for a play date with Caroline, which I am generally okay with, but also is always begging for sleep overs. The problem is that the day after the sleep over, Nalin is just a bear to deal with. She is an early riser, but when she doesn't go to bed early, she is just not a lot of fun to be around.
2010 will be an interesting year for Nalin. She is going to start swimming lessons again, as well as continue in the choir, dance and Blue Birds. She is looking forward to visiting the U.S. this summer and seeing her family and friends there. It should be fun.
I bought some Hannah Montana TV series DVDs a few months ago, and Nalin and Aleena both absolutely love the show. Jacob actually likes it as well. I'm sometimes in the room when its on, and its really not a bad show. Nalin and Aleena (and occassionally Jacob) will recite lines from the show, sometimes over and over.
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