my DD is in K1 currently, since second half year, she had spelling for both English and Chinese. I had a hard time teaching her at the beginning. Cuz her English spelling is by first sound of the word, so it can be ‘queue, quiet, quail’ or sometimes it will come with sentences like ‘This is a small turtle.’ ‘I like the pink ring.’ Very random. And for Chinese, started with complicated words like ‘家，国’ to phrases like ‘一个书包，一把刀’. But after practicing every week for 3 months, my DD is getting used to it and doing almost all correct for her spelling in school. So I felt although I don’t like the words given, there is indeed and improvement after day to day practices.My DD is attending I Can Read, as she is a year end baby, I had to be kiasu since she is the youngest among all her classmates. according to her teachers, her peers are all doing quite well in their spelling. So I put her in enrichment class. I had to say ICR is really a good system. Now she had a spelling list of 12-15 words each week. But to prepare her for this, I don’t need any special effort. It focus on middle sounds (vowels) at the beginning, which I think majority of the kids are struggling with. First and last sounds are normally easy to identify. So now, I don’t need to show her the spelling list at all, just by reading out the words to her, she can figure out how to spell it prefect on first attempt. This week’s list is something like ‘fed, ten, hen, bell, help, kept, left, vet, etc’ so you can see as compared to the list given by school, this is definitely much easier and well organized. Anyway, my point here is, I had to face the fact that the competition is very tough even at preschool stage. I cannot be selfish and tell my girl since I am busy with work I rather you enjoy your childhood happily than spending most of your time to learn academic stuffs. Then what if she faces difficulty in Primary school next time. So pushing her a bit now is because I need to be responsible for her future.