Yesterday, I bought the four 3-year series to prepare my children for the PSLE.

Except that they are not in primary school yet. My elder son will be in Primary 1 next year.

Wah so kiasu, I hear you exclaim.¹

My WHY is very simple. I want to avoid spending money on tuition as much as possible. But of course, I can’t expect my son to take full ownership of his learning (yet). Good, unshakeable habits take time to build, so if I don’t want to spend on tuition, I will have to pick up the slack.

Preparing my preschooler for an exam that’s 7 years down the road actually makes perfect sense. I won’t be able to go through the English and Mathematics books with him right now because they are just too difficult for him.

However, the Science and Chinese books will come in handy - even at this point in time! - because his kindergarten, PCF Sparkletots, has done a great job in building his foundation.

Teaching my son need not be an onerous task. Sparkletots sends its parents a detailed report on their child every six months. All I have to do is to scan through it to keep myself updated on the things he’s learning in school.

Why does Science come into play? That’s because he learnt about the life cycle of a butterfly when he was in K1.

And the life cycle of a beetle.

For the time being, all I have to do is to consolidate his learning by ensuring that he remembers the four stages: egg-larva-pupa-adult. I am lucky that his memory is quite good. This means that it isn’t too much of a stretch for him to try Q1 from the 2024 Science paper:

Of course, he won’t be able to read all the words. I read it aloud for him and let him guess. Moving forward, I will repeat the process until he remembers that a grasshopper has a three-stage life cycle. Maybe even become able to read all the animals.

When he remembers that insects have a three-stage life cycle, I can move on to Q3 2024 and educate him on the defining characteristics of insects.

Similarly, for Chinese, he has learnt about many feeling words, perhaps due to the emphasis on emotional regulation nowadays. He should be able to recognise words like 开心, 伤心 and 生气.

So, I showed him the compo paper from 2022 to see whether he could read 生气.

He could!

I am thus motivated to comb through the PSLE book and surface all the feeling words to make sure that he is able to recognise and read them. When that is done, I will move on to teaching him how to form simple sentences with these feeling words. Sure, I’m not a Chinese teacher by training, but I’m confident that my Chinese is good enough to convey simple ideas clearly and accurately.

I read something about a man carrying a growing calf every day. Because he has conditioned his mind and body to do it, he realises that he is able to carry it - even when the calf has grown into a fully developed cow.

Not being stressed helps me guide my son better and perhaps even enjoy the struggle.

Stay tuned for more unorthodox ideas as I weave in easy ways to prepare my preschooler son for his PSLE!