BACK TO SCHOOL

The summer holidays are over and children have started resuming back to schools. A lot of the schools here in Abuja have hiked school fees with a lot of unnecessary fees added to the school fess. Do you have to pay caution fess every new session? What about medical fees?

A new style for schools now is to ask for development fees every term or every session as against once throughout the child’s stay in the school.

I think if we start to attend the Parents Teacher’s Association of the schools and give them a voice, most of  the schools will relax on this fees hike and all sorts.

Have you ever asked yourself why you are sending your child to the school he or she is attending right now? The basic for education is to increase in learning. Every other reason comes second. Based on this, can you ask yourself the following questions:

1.    Is the choice of school my child is attending based on the quality of education the school provides or it is based on class?

2.    Can I continue to afford to pay the school fees based on the hike in school fees?

3.    Can I continue to fund the child’s lifestyle and expectations imbibed from sending this child to this school?

4.    Apart from the quality of education, does the school also groom good children and not just spoilt children?

It is also important that as a parent, we collect the teaching curriculum for each child’s class for the year and periodically monitor the progress of each child based on this curriculum.

A good child is a child that is well rounded in arts, culture and academics so It is also important that we encourage our children to participate in music, drawing or any extracurricular that we think can build a well rounded child.

We also need to monitor the health of our children during this period so as to know when they catch any infection from school.

Wishing all parents a great school term.

Summer Schools for 2012

As we gradually get to the close of the school session and the start of a long vacation from July to September starting next week, Children are excitingly talking about the long holiday and the need to go for a vacation.

I have been on the lookout for a good summer school for my children here in Abuja. I have a 4yr old and an 8yr old. Both are a handful trust me.

 My idea of a summer school is a time when children are occupied during school hours with daily activities like music, dancing, cooking, sports, excursion and minimal school work that will prepare the children for the next school term plus a revision of the past school year.

After some research, the summer schools I have seen do not help in logistics especially if you are the regular 8-5 working parents.

How can a summer school resume at 9am and close at 2pm? What is the essence of sending the children to summer school then if I have to leave my office to take the children to school at 9am and also take permission to go pick them from school at 2pm?  So I am left with no other option than to plan an elaborate summer holiday with the theme “Get Busy”. The following are good ideas:

Online activities for families

Share examples of good interactive educational websites that parents and young kids can explore together. Here are a few more of our favorites:

National Geographic Kids: offers great nature videos, activities, games, stories, and more

CoolMath4Kids: take a trip through an amusement park of math and more at this extremely interactive math website

Smithsonian Kids Collecting: how to start your own collection and see what other kids collect

Explore Dinosaurs: FAQs and top 10 myths about dinosaurs, a virtual dig, behind the scenes tours, and more from the National Museum of Natural History

Smithsonian Digging for Answers: a site that tests your research skills and knowledge

NASA Quest: interactive explorations that engage students in real science and engineering. Topics include robots, helicopters, lunar exploration, and designing your own human-friendly planet

My Wonderful World: a multimedia tour of our seven continents

Time for Kids: fun games (The Great State Race), an online weekly magazine written for kids, and news from around the world

Visiting Parks and Recreation

Taking the children to amusement parks, recreational parks, park and zoo etc that will help increase their curiosity about their surroundings.

Reading a book a week

For the children that can read, it is important that you provide reading materials from the library so as to help the children in comprehension and composition. It is also important to provide history books about the world around us.

Music

It is easier for children to learn how to play musical instruments and it can very interesting for children. Get a musical instrument, look out for a music teacher and plan on how the children can lean at least 2hours a week.

For a job well done, you can take the children to the cinema during the weekend so as to encourage them.

For the other parents that prefer to send their children to summer schools in Abuja, you can check up the following schools:

·         American International School Abuja

·         Regent School

·         Cradle to Crayon

·         Abigail school

·         Tender Years School

Have a fun filled and accident free SUMMER!!

Picking a Good Foundation School for Your Child

Picking a Good Foundation School for Your Child

There is no better time to start the look-out for a school for your child than close to the end of a school year. A lot of parents will be thinking of changing their children’s school either because of relocation, increase in earnings, the child is starting a proper school because he or she is old enough or dissatisfaction with the present school the child is attending.

It is important to have it in mind that a school helps build the foundation of a good education for the children and the decision will be fundamental to the future of the children.

Four years ago, I had to look for a school for my 4 year old daughter because the family was relocating to Abuja. It was the formative period in the life of my daughter and I was determined to get the best school for her at an affordable price. I had a working sheet and wrote some salient things I was looking for in a school.

 The following are the salient points I jotted and I considered important on deciding on the school I eventually enroll my child into:

Location of the school: It is important that the school should be close to the home and probably to your working place in order to ease the logistics needing in carrying out school pick-up. It is not safe to enroll your child in a school that is in another town or states except boarding facilities are available.

Educational Curriculum: There are a lot of curriculums that are being used to teach in schools all around the world. It is important that you carry out your research on the different curriculum and then decide on the one you want your children to be taught with.

Security: Security of your child during the school period is very important. You need to find out how secured the school premises is, what is the school policy on picking a child from school and the security put in place when the children are going outside the school premises on excursion or site seeing.

Affordability: The school fee is very important in deciding the school to enroll your child. You need to find out what the school fees had been in previous years so that you can determine the level of increase of the school fees and how frequent it is being reviewed. (Some schools in Abuja also require Development fee which, truthfully does not make any sense to me *wink**). Does the school have discount for more than a child? Do you have to pay school fees at once or can you pay in more than two installments?

Flexibility of pickup and drop-off: How flexible is the school in terms of drop-off of your children in school and also pick-ups? Can you drop your child before resumption time just to make an official meeting or is the school rigid about it? Does the school have plans for late pick-up of children especially for working parents that do not have someone at home to attend to the child after school?

Conducive environment for learning: Children have a very short concentration span and their environment need to be appealing for them to enjoy learning? How many pupils to a teacher and how many arms does a grade have? How many assistant teachers does a class have; are the classes comfortable enough for learning? What about learning tools for children?

Extra-curricular activities: Learning nowadays includes extracurricular activities. Parent will need to find out what extra-curricular activities is the school offering? for example, if the school offer swimming, where is the pool, what condition is the pool, is the pool far from the school and are there professional swimmers around when the children are learning swimming?

School Visit: it is important that you visit the school during school period, open day and activity day when you can interact with everyone and find out how the school is being run etc.

Retention of Teachers: Continuity is very important in the life of a child so it is important to know the turnover of teachers in a school which will automatically tell you how the teachers are being treated by the school management.

Parents: It is very important to talk to as many parents of children already attending the school for you to know their experiences and relate it to the children. You need to also find out how demanding the school is from the parents.

Pupils: Talk to a child presently in a class your child will be. Find out what the child like about school and his or her friends in school? Check the child up for confidence and ability to express himself or herself. It is a reflection of how the teachers are handling the children.

This list is not exhaustive but with these, you are sure not to make a mistake.

The following are the list of top schools that you can consider in Abuja (In no particular order):

                                                                                                                                    

1.      American International School, Abuja

2.      InternationalCommunity School, Abuja

3.      Springhall British school.

4.      Whiteplains british School

5.      The Regent School

6.      Delphia Kiddies

7.      Tender Years Preparatory School.

8.      Centagon International School.

9.      Abigail School

10.  The French School

11.  FAMAK International Schools

 Happy school hunting!!

How To Discover Your Purpose In life in 20minutes

How do you discover your real purpose in life? I’m not talking about your job, your daily responsibilities, or even your long-term goals. I mean the real reason why you’re here at all — the very reason you exist.

Perhaps you’re a rather nihilistic person who doesn’t believe you have a purpose and that life has no meaning. Doesn’t matter. Not believing that you have a purpose won’t prevent you from discovering it, just as a lack of belief in gravity won’t prevent you from tripping. All that a lack of belief will do is make it take longer, so if you’re one of those people, just change the number 20 in the title of this blog entry to 40 (or 60 if you’re really stubborn). Most likely though if you don’t believe you have a purpose, then you probably won’t believe what I’m saying anyway, but even so, what’s the risk of investing an hour just in case?

Here’s a story about Bruce Lee which sets the stage for this little exercise. A master martial artist asked Bruce to teach him everything Bruce knew about martial arts. Bruce held up two cups, both filled with liquid. “The first cup,” said Bruce, “represents all of your knowledge about martial arts. The second cup represents all of my knowledge about martial arts. If you want to fill your cup with my knowledge, you must first empty your cup of your knowledge.”

If you want to discover your true purpose in life, you must first empty your mind of all the false purposes you’ve been taught (including the idea that you may have no purpose at all).

So how to discover your purpose in life? While there are many ways to do this, some of them fairly involved, here is one of the simplest that anyone can do. The more open you are to this process, and the more you expect it to work, the faster it will work for you. But not being open to it or having doubts about it or thinking it’s an entirely idiotic and meaningless waste of time won’t prevent it from working as long as you stick with it — again, it will just take longer to converge.

Here’s what to do:

1. Take out a blank sheet of paper or open up a word processor where you can type (I prefer the latter because it’s faster).
2. Write at the top, “What is my true purpose in life?”
3. Write an answer (any answer) that pops into your head. It doesn’t have to be a complete sentence. A short phrase is fine.
4. Repeat step 3 until you write the answer that makes you cry. This is your purpose.

That’s it. It doesn’t matter if you’re a counselor or an engineer or a bodybuilder. To some people this exercise will make perfect sense. To others it will seem utterly stupid. Usually it takes 15-20 minutes to clear your head of all the clutter and the social conditioning about what you think your purpose in life is. The false answers will come from your mind and your memories. But when the true answer finally arrives, it will feel like it’s coming to you from a different source entirely.

For those who are very entrenched in low-awareness living, it will take a lot longer to get all the false answers out, possibly more than an hour. But if you persist, after 100 or 200 or maybe even 500 answers, you’ll be struck by the answer that causes you to surge with emotion, the answer that breaks you. If you’ve never done this, it may very well sound silly to you. So let it seem silly, and do it anyway.

As you go through this process, some of your answers will be very similar. You may even re-list previous answers. Then you might head off on a new tangent and generate 10-20 more answers along some other theme. And that’s fine. You can list whatever answer pops into your head as long as you just keep writing.

At some point during the process (typically after about 50-100 answers), you may want to quit and just can’t see it converging. You may feel the urge to get up and make an excuse to do something else. That’s normal. Push past this resistance, and just keep writing. The feeling of resistance will eventually pass.

You may also discover a few answers that seem to give you a mini-surge of emotion, but they don’t quite make you cry — they’re just a bit off. Highlight those answers as you go along, so you can come back to them to generate new permutations. Each reflects a piece of your purpose, but individually they aren’t complete. When you start getting these kinds of answers, it just means you’re getting warm. Keep going.

It’s important to do this alone and with no interruptions. If you’re a nihilist, then feel free to start with the answer, “I don’t have a purpose,” or “Life is meaningless,” and take it from there. If you keep at it, you’ll still eventually converge.

When i did this, I thought back to what i wanted to become when I was 4years, 6years,10years,14years,18years, 20years, 24years, 26years, 30years etc. I remembered all i loved to do and things that made me happy as i was carrying them out.

When i finally found the answer, I knew all I wanted to do is counseling people, easing them out of poverty and building good relationships.

When you find your own unique answer to the question of why you’re here, you will feel it resonate with you deeply. The words will seem to have a special energy to you, and you will feel that energy whenever you read them.

Discovering your purpose is the easy part. The hard part is keeping it with you on a daily basis and working on yourself to the point where you become that purpose.

If you’re inclined to ask why this little process works, just put that question aside until after you’ve successfully completed it. Once you’ve done that, you’ll probably have your own answer to why it works. Most likely if you ask 10 different people why this works (people who’ve successfully completed it), you’ll get 10 different answers, all filtered through their individual belief systems, and each will contain its own reflection of truth.

Obviously, this process won’t work if you quit before convergence. I’d guesstimate that 80-90% of people should achieve convergence in less than an hour. If you’re really entrenched in your beliefs and resistant to the process, maybe it will take you 5 sessions and 3 hours, but I suspect that such people will simply quit early (like within the first 15 minutes) or won’t even attempt it at all. But if you’re drawn to read this blog (and haven’t been inclined to ban it from your life yet), then it’s doubtful you fall into this group.

Give it a shot!