Loves Education, Technology, Children & Learning, Adventurer, Explorer | Inquiry based understanding of the World | Change is not altered in a day, it takes mindsets to shift perspectives, bringing forth new paradigms
My favorite time of the year is here again! Amidst all the frenzy for the Christmas preparations, shopping for gifts and tidings, Christmas, a time for giving, friendship, we rejoice in celebration of this joyous occasion!
It’s a time of excitement and anticipation for every child. This is the time of the year when decision-making isn’t so difficult your 9 year old, waiting for this merry occasion to arrive and perhaps even before Christmas, the decision for what Mum would buy, would have already been decided.
The wish list seems to get longer and longer, the items larger and larger in value, when is it that enough is enough? How do you explain the budget that you have for each child during this Christmas? Can they understand why it’s important to choose an item within a budget? How involved are they about the budgets at home? Northwestern Mutual one points that, “Holidays are a good time to teach lessons in finance.”
Budgets are a proportion of our money that is available to us for specific purposes, it is critical in money management to teach our young their money on what they decide and choose to spend on. Why is it important? A budget sets the precedence for a few things,
It teaches children to understand what can we afford in our family. Speaking to a Mom this Christmas we found her 10-year-old son contemplating how much he could spend on his Sister’s gift and how much he would apportion his savings to purchase gifts for the rest of the family. There and then, the notion of a budget was surfaced to him, explaining that he will have to spend within his means and decide how much he could afford to purchase in gifts for the entire list of family. Setting a budget enabled him to decide how much he would allocate to purchase meaningful and affordable gifts for each person at home without overspending and living within his means.
Budgeting also sets the stage on how your child will possibly think about buying the next time he goes on a shopping trip. Budgeting is a process that gets the young one thinking, how can I afford what I want? More importantly, am I apportioning my money so that I can have a balanced goal in mind for healthy spending and saving? This will be timely for us to teach our young, to learn the decision making process behind how the young one makes choices.
The budgeting exercise teaches them to understand that we have to work within their budgets! What can your child do? Start a budget for the upcoming New Year! A way to start the new year with some budgeting goals in mind!
November marked the start of Global Entrepreneurship Week here in Singapore and around the world. This initiative fuels activities, programs and business plan competitions etc, that surrounds being creative, innovative and entrepreneurial.
It was a privilege to be a part of the panel at the Global Entrepreneurship Launch 2010 this year. ”Can We Create The Next Steve Jobs” – that was the panel discussion with a stellar group of Entrepreneurs, Darius from TenCube, David from Studionorm and 19 year old Junliang who started his own tuition service agency before even going to college. An educator, Choon Kiat from and our very own local school and our Minister for Entrepreneurship, Mr Lee Yi Shyan.
The event was put together by Spring Singapore with NUS Entrepreneurship Center, the audience made up of students from the elementary to the tertiary institutions, aspiring entrepreneurs and stakeholders. The discussion thrived around inspiring our young people to explore in their young age what they enjoyed doing, more importantly, to seek out what they truly love.
Steve Jobs, a visionary and innovator started this creative idea back in the late 1970s with his co-founders Steve Wozniak and Mike Markkula. Ideas start small with humble beginnings, allow us to face challenges head-on, push limits and to fight for what we believe in. Even when the going gets tough, there are always chances for exploration and to be brought back to the fundamentals of why we first started. We may not have a Singaporean version of Steve Jobs here today, but I am definitely certain that we are planting seeds that will yield good fruits in the years to come. Visionaries do not spring out overnight, neither are they created out of prototypes, small steps and attainable goals will bring us far in this search for our very own visionary here in Singapore.
Will you be the next visionary in your own right?
10th November 2010
My trip back to my Alma Mater brought back tremendous memories of the early years of my childhood. Primary School in CHIJ Our Lady of Good Counsel, up a small hill in Serangoon Gardens, I spent my 6 years of early education. The topic of discussion centered around the journey of Entrepreneurship, the audiences were made up of young primary 5s and 6s, in their blue and white pinafore. This slide was talking about the value of network and friends. You might never know that the best friend sitting beside you, a life-time partner in your next business.
To the young people, I said, DREAM, I used to build castles in the air all the time as a little girl. Being explorative and ambitious in what I wanted to do, at the age of 7, confidence hanging in the air, reality however, far fetched to some extent. That never impeded me from dreaming. I took on the role of a teacher then, playing this role with my brothers. Also had my own currencies at home and gave my brothers my version of money made out of torn magazine papers. What entrepreneurial attributes displayed – it was hilarious looking back on hindsight!
Parents, do keep an eye for the type of games your children choose to play, it’s pretty fascinating! There’s a desire for questions and a hunger for answers among the little ones I met. “What advice will you give to us who want to be Entrepreneurs?” In my response, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way (Thank you Wilson). If you never try, you’ll never really know.”
This made me laugh. “Can you speak Singlish?” – asked one of the Primary 6ser, “Okay lah!” I replied Thank you Reini for the awesome capture!
So here I am back in the bay area. 8 months have zipped by and everything here does not seemed to have change very much. It’s possibly that my perspective and outlook to events and things have very well been shaped and sharpened.
All seems to be a matter of how one chooses to perceive the circumstances and trials around them. I was touched and inspired by a meeting with Mia, a Mom of two kids, 5 and 12. Mia spent some time over dinner to share how her experience of seeking the best for her very special child and how she turned her child’s learning around. Often some children do not quite fit into schools due to the traditions, systems, ways of teaching and learning found in schools. Does your child come home crying? Upset over what school has done? Feared going back to school day after day?
What do we do when these things happen? We let it slide by because we have no clue what to do next. Or do we simply settle for the simplest alternative – convenience? Unrelenting standards never to settle for less will some times help to push us through to get the best for our loved ones. Persistently striving to search for the best school around that fits her first born, then 6. From researching in magazines to forums, to speaking with countless people and going the lengths to convince the people around her that turning a blind eye to her child’s happiness in school was simply, not alright?
Mia taught and showed me the love a Mother has for her child, despite circumstances that one resides in, has many alternatives. It’s very much the same picture to begin with, it’s just painted in a different way, played out with workarounds in a different manner.
Today, the little one spends time at The Nueva School, for the gifted.
Cheers to all the Moms who fight every day for the best for their little ones – Thank you.
It’s interesting to peer back into our days of old. The memorable or maybe not so memorable times of our childhood?
Dr Maria Montessori has left an impressionable footprint in my view of child development and learning. Looking at the initial stages of child development, first three years of growth, Montessori calls the absorbent mind, ‘a special mechanisms exists for language.’ Not the possession of language itself, but the possession of this mechanism which enables men to make languages of their own, in what distinguishes human species[1].
As Mario M. Montessori explains in the Education for Human Development: Understanding Montessori, The absorbent stage where learning is mainly influenced by the result of unconscious mechanisms determined by the emotional development of the child and in turn is dependent on the adult who cares for it.
Introjections, imitation, and identification are of particular importance in the formation of behavior patterns and the acquisition of cultural attitudes.
This tells the story, Children See. Children Do.
I find myself almost as a replica of my mother’s way of being. She’d teach, “Others before Self.” And being in the company of children recently surfaced this point, I found myself teaching the little ones almost naturally the concept of sharing and giving before gratifying their needs. And reflecting on what Montessori mentioned, not only were the good results channelled this way, where imitation is concerned. Boy do I scream like my mother when I do
What about your version of replica? How has that changed the way you think about the world?
My favorite time of the year is here again! Amidst all the frenzy for the Christmas preparations, shopping for gifts and tidings, Christmas, a time for giving, friendship, we rejoice in celebration of this joyous occasion!
