Comfort Food

"Comfort foods are familiar, simple foods that are usually home-cooked or eaten at informal restaurants. They are foods that are often emotionally significant to a person or group of people and are sometimes related to pleasant associations of childhood."

A very good friend asked me months ago what my comfort food is/are. I responded with a list of foods I missed having because I'm away from Philippines. It took me a few weeks to realise the list I had enumerated are not really my comfort food. These are my comfort food: rice and pan fried fish dipped with lots of mayonnaise, rice with sunny side up egg, rice with manggo.

To start school early or not to start early

Living in another country than the one i grew up in, I was a bit unprepared about how children start school differently here. the main factor that determines the readiness here is very much a physical capability and emotional capability on top of intellectual ability. where i only spent 2-3 hours of kindergarten, clarisse has to stay for 6 hours. where i can go home before lunchtime and have yaya or mommy feed me, clarisse has to know how to open up her lunch and feed herself.

Now I understand why 6 years old is the expected year to start kindergarten here. No matter how much i felt the intellectual ability is capable to grasp academic concepts, if the child cannot perform things without adult assistance, then it's better to start later.

Attending pre-school apparently will help the child prepare for big school. I always thought the pre-schools are just glorified day care centres for 3-5 year olds. They are in a sense but they integrate a couple of hours of "programmes" of arts, music, logic into the children's routines.

I understand the need for some kind of prepartion for the big school for Clarisse better now and that I cannot just send her straight to kindgergarten like what my mom did with us and expect the teacher to cope with settling 20 kids simultaneously! We had decided on a school and Clarisse will definitely start at prep first before she starts kindy. I prefer prep school than a pre-school mainly because the prep school follows the same schedule and structure as kindy classes. The children in the prep school will most likely be her friends when she goes into kindy so the adjustment for kindy will not be that traumatic anymore.

As for the year starting school Clarisse can go into kindy in 2011. This will make her one of the youngest (if not the youngest) in her class. Or she can go in year 2012 which would make her one of the oldest in her class.

To start early or late. That is the question.

On a slightly different note, I'm a bit excited about her starting school - imagining her dressed in a school uniform, carrying her school backpack, organising her pencils, notepads, glue, scissors. Though I don't think I look forward to planning and making her lunches - what do you let a 6 year old eat that would be easy for her to open, easy to place inside her mouth, won't mess, still fresh by lunch time or warm enough by lunch time, tasty enough to finish, nutricious enough for growing bodies? Argh! I will have to start experimenting with different sandwich fillings that could work, and other hot foods (pasta and shepherd's pie is definitely in).