Rainforest Kidzworld

Would you believe it... today is Faith's first visit to the zoo.

Yep! First time. Ever.

Well... there's lots of reasons for it, but the single most deterrent is due to my phobia of snakes. My memory of snakes and zoo were that there were always a few of them on display at common zones within the zoo, not just the enclosure that they are kept in.

In my younger school days, visits to the zoo were dreaded and I spent my entire time at the zoo looking left, right, front and back, in fear of chancing upon any sighting of snakes; pictures or those in the flesh.

Its hard to explain this phobia and people who do not have phobias will never fully comprehend the level of fear. Its irrational, unexplainable and I had never had any frightening experiences with them to be so deeply petrified of them.

But after checking and double-checking with Jaz and a few other friends that these days, the snakes and their keepers don't lurk anywhere except in their enclosures and during show times, I decided to brave going to the zoo with Faith.

Becos, what has been so irresistible to me and that I think would be loads of fun for Faith was the Rainforest Kidzworld with the water play area. With the searing heat that has been zinging its wave right down on our little island, its no wonder that its a haven for most parents with kids. A rather expensive one at that if one's not a Friends Of the Zoo member - S$18 for an adult ticket. Anyways, it was my own entry fee that I had to pay cos Faith goes in free for under 3 years old.

We met at 10 am at the zoo entrance. Thankfully, Jaz had told me to bring along a stroller, swim wear for Faith and a change of clothes for myself. It was a lot of stuff to bring so Louis had to give up the car for our day of outing :)

Needless to say, the heat was sweltering at usual and the walk to the Rainforest Kidzworld took about 10 mins, with intermittent stops to look and point out animals like the zebra, ostrich, flamingos along the way.

It could have been worse if I had to carry Faith all the way without a stroller. It had been 1 year since we last used the stroller - we stopped using it around the time that Faith started to walk independently. Thankfully, the little girl sat in her stroller and did not fuss at all. She kept calling out for Lecia as we walked just to check that her little friend was still with her on the walk there.

The long and short of it was that we had a blast at the Kidzworld. It wasn't too crowded when we reached there. The crowd really started coming in with bigger, rowdier and older kids around 11-ish am.

Faith was initially hesitant about the water play area and getting herself drenched. Lecia was the total opposite. She was like the proverbial bird set free from the cage. She jumped right into the play area, darted in, out and around the different play zones and essentially went all around with lots of exuberance and glee.

Meanwhile, Faith was slowly warming up, and trying at times to frantically call out for Lecia, who was zapping all around the place. I should have bought my swimming costume and wore it under a shorts or something. Jaz and I were totally drenched, following the kids around. Frankly, we were all for getting wet. It was a great respite from the oppressive heat.

The most exciting part of the water play area was the huge water can that was hanging atop a structure. It would be filled with water and at certain intervals, there would be a bell whistle to alert the kids that the water can was about to brim over with water and send it splashing down below. At which point, all the kids would run to the middle and wait excitedly for the water to come rushing down.

We initially started with the 2 girls sitting on the outermost perimeter. With each time, we would sit a little closer to the action and as Jaz warned, the splatter of water from that huge can was rather impactful and hard. Faith was a little dazed after that particular hard drenching that we stuck to sitting out at the perimeters for the rest of the time.

Lecia? Well.. that girl is such a tyke and a little dynamo. She giggled and laughed through it all, got up after each drenching and ran off in whatever directions.

We played for about 45 minutes and took a break to eat some muffins, biscuits, cheese dippers and fruits. By the time we headed back to the play area after our little picnic, the water play area had gotten more crowded. We played for another half an hour before we had to haul the protesting kids for a shower and lunch.

We agreed to drive to Causeway Point for lunch and had Japanese. Faith had her usual of chawanmushi, some of my handroll (which I ordered so that she could have the nori that wraps the handroll) and shared some items of my bento. The kids also shared a kids meal of fish and chips.

We headed home around 3 pm and Faith fell asleep in the car, all tuckered out from the day's activity. It was an early night for both of us as I was equally tired. Louis came into the room at 10 pm to find the two of us deep in sleep :)

It was the most fun that we both had for such a long time. I hope we have the chance to visit a few more times with Lecia before the next school term and I start my part-time stint.

Did you know?

If you subscribe to SCV Cable and have Playhouse Disney (Channel 34) available as part of your package, did you know that you could get to view quite a number of the programmes in Mandarin?

I think its probably something that not a lot of people know about. Or at least I certainly didn't up until last week when an American Chinese colleague of Louis enlightened me. I was sharing about my desperate search to hunt for more Mandarin DVDs of the usual programmes that Faith watches e.g. Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, My Friends Tigger & Pooh and the likes.

Turns out that like the Dual Sound Mode available for Korean dramas, you can similarly use the same switch on your SCV cable remote control to turn to Mandarin mode for Playhouse Disney - it might work with other channels too?!

The best programmes are Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and My Friends Tigger & Pooh cos the shows are fully in Mandarin, including the songs they sing. For the rest of the programmes like Dibo the Gift Dinosaur, Barney, Word World, Higgly Town Heroes, the dialogues are in Mandarin. However, the songs sung continue to be in English.

In our bid to make attending her JG Mandarin lessons less painful, we have tried to expose her to as much of the language as we could, in addition to listening to Mandarin nursery rhymes and trying to speak as much Mandarin to her whenever we remember.

Watching all the programmes in Mandarin has certainly improved her understanding of the language. And mine too for that matter!

She could now count from 1-10 correctly when she's in the mood to do so herself without much prompting. I figured that if she's going to spend so much time glued to the tube, she might as well learn something useful from it. So, I've been toggling back and forth between both languages since I've discovered this little nugget of information.

Hoorays to Dual Sound Modes!

Faith's own library card

The wonderful about where we're staying is that the library is really just next to us, separated only by a teeny-tiny little road.

Back when I had more disposable income on hand, I would conveniently borrow from the second-hand bookstores cos they stock up some of the newest releases of books or authors that I like. These days, I go to the library -- its definitely much cheaper as long as I don't incur fines from late returns.

Faith's JG Mandarin class teachers were giving me advice on how to pique her interest in the subject by reading to her at home. Of course, since my Chinese is horribly atrocious, they told me to borrow some simple books with Hanyu Pinyin.

Hanyu Pinyin was a life saver back when I was in school and was occasionally called up by the teacher to stand and read a passage or two. It was what I counted on to get me by without which, I can never manage to read an entire sentence without having a clue what it meant or having the teacher to have to read many words that I couldn't managed.

Louis and I felt that in this day and age, Faith would not be able to get by with the level of [terrible] Mandarin standard that we both scrape by. Even though we don't speak much Mandarin at home, I hope to do whatever bit that I can to cultivate her interest in the language. At the very least, not to view it with as much dislike as I did when I was much younger.

Thus, we've borrowed some simple titles like "Gui Tu Sai Pao" (The tortise & the hare) and "San Zhi Xiao Zhu" (Three little pigs) for her. And while I was at the library, I decided to enquire about application of a library card for Faith and was pleasantly surprised to be informed by the counter staff that I could just do it at the e-Kiosk in the library and get the card instantly.

The library system is linked to OSCAR, and as a Singapore Citizen, all I had to do was key in her birth certificate number, slide in my NRIC and minutes later, I had a brand new library card in her own name.

With the additional library card, I can now borrow more books for her with her own card and rotate them around when I read to her at bedtime.

Faith at exactly 22 months

Faith’s kind of taken a backseat these days, compared to her dad, when it comes to blogging time. Apart from the onset of runny nose and drooling, she is doing great these days.

Her vocabulary is increasing and she’s picking all sorts of things from around her, some good stuff, some not so good stuff, as with all things.

In school, she’s gotten more sociable – she would wave her little hands and say “hi” to some of her friends when prompted, move forward if the teacher asks to use her for some class demonstration or activity, not cry and cling on to me like a koala bear when we enter a class. I’m really happy with her developments on these fronts. It shows that she’s getting more confident and independent in some ways and preparing herself for the day when she has to make friends in school.

Physically, she seemed to have grown a little taller (most of her pants are now shorter) and from many accounts with some friends and mums in her classes, have put on some weight, visible especially from her chubby cheeks. Perhaps, I’ve gone and jinxed it by being so happy and telling Louis about it and right now, writing it down. Well... that is if one believes in such old wives’ tales, which I sometimes do :) Unfortunately, with her current bout of sickness, her appetite has dwindled a little, so much so that she can’t finish her usual portion of 3 little chicken cocktail sausages.

A happy achievement that Louis and I are quite proud of is that she’s now able to play with her Duplo Lego set that we bought as her Christmas present. Initially, she didn’t quite know what to do with it and simply enjoyed destructing whatever structures we built for her. Louis pointed out that its easier to tear the Lego pieces apart than to put them together. He had a point. So, we set down to show her a little how to stack her little Lego pieces.

With that little help, she’s now happily stacking the Lego pieces into a tall structure, as high as they can go or she can stretch. And when its too high for her to reach height-wise, she followed what Louis taught her by laying them on the ground horizontally and stacking them from the side. There were many a proud moments for her when she excitedly came to us and show us her tall “creations”, saying, “See, see...”.

We’ll probably get her a few more Lego sets cos we think its a good toy that fosters both creativity and finger dexterity, although Faith drives me crazy with them sometimes. She would constantly upend the box of Legos, thrilled to see the contents spilling out and spreading all over the living room floor. After playing with them for maybe 10-15 min, she would abandon them in search of something more interesting. Every day, I spent at least 2,3 or more times, packing these Lego pieces into the box, only to have her pour them all out again in a couple of hours.

Even though its physically tiring and draining these days for me to bring her for 4 days of classes a week, I think its worth it. She’s learning to understand a little Mandarin and looking forward to the one-on-one session with her teacher at JG, where she would follow and read aloud some Chinese words. Of course, the draw for these one-on-one sessions is not becos she’s enamoured of the language. There incentive comes in the form of bribery – she gets a sticker at the end of it.

Her favourite thing to do now whenever she enters the lift is to place her two little hands on the rail, lining the 3 sides of the lift and try to lift herself, feet & all, off the ground, much like the monkey-bars in Little Gym. Even though she’s not able to fully lift herself up, or manages it for like, maybe one second if she does, we still cheer her on.

And music... if there’s anything kids like, Faith loves her music. She’s enjoying her Kindermusik classes very much, enthusiastically banging on the drums with the mallot, or prancing, dancing around. She loves it when I dance with her, so I make it a point to be spontaneous and dance with her, whether at home or outside. It delights her and it makes me feel young[er]... haahaha... And believe it not, she’s enthralled watching DVDs like Enchanted and Mama Mia, essentially, music-based shows. When she wants to watch Enchanted, she would come to me and tell me “Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah, Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah, Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah”, from parts of the scene in the show. And for Mama Mia, she would go, “Honey-honey...” which is the song that Sophie and her friends sing while reading the former’s mum’s diary.

We’re not sure if its the coming of the Terrible-Two stage, but really, she’s starting to throw tantrums and cry when she doesn’t get her way or if she’s upset. This week, she started to slap at me, my mom and MIL when she’s upset with us. I gave her a dressing down each time and send her to naughty corner if she refused to apologise. And boy does she have a stubborn streak a mile wide. Even though she knows she’s in the wrong, she would refuse to apologise easily.

Louis, who saw her smacking my mom scolded her in a very stern and loud voice – she came running into my arms in fright. If there’s something that we are particular about and insistent upon, its respect for one’s friends, parents and elders. Any transgression is unpardonable and treated seriously.

I’m not sure if her recent smacking tendency was something she picked up from the little boy in her JG class. Quite frankly, he’s the only one that would throw things, hit his friends and kick up a ruckus when he doesn’t get his way.

Nonetheless, finger-pointing aside, I’m sure Faith would get to see some other not so stellar behaviour and test them on us as she gets older, whether is it from real-life or reel-life observation. It is our responsibility as parents to guide her and teach her to differentiate what is right from wrong. It is a huge responsibility and a very challenging one. We hope we will be able to do right by her.

New year, new start

The new year has seen a few changes in Faith's life. New classes, new friends, new teachers, new routines and new environments.

By Dec 08, she turned 19 months and along with that, she moved up the age band for all her classes. From being one of the oldest in her classes, she's now one of the youngest. Her friends are now toddlers like her, ranging from 18-36 months.

At the Little Gym, she's now in the Beasties class. We have also switched her from the all English Playnest class at JG to the all Mandarin Playclub class. For the later, it not only meant a complete switch of language used, but the routine that she has been used to is now slightly different and classes are 2 hours, twice a week instead of 1 and a half hours, twice a week. Kindermusik classes would only start next week, so, we'll have to wait and see on that.

As with all changes, there are the goods and bads.

It might be early days still to say this, but I think there are mostly positive changes.

In her Little Gym class, her friends in the previous class were a mix of babies and toddlers, some walking and others crawling. After 6 months of lessons in what was called the Big Bird's class, lesson were not as challenging nor novel anymore.

Being the youngest in her current class, there's room for her to see and observe the older kids at work. They are nimbler, faster, agile and more confident. They provide the impetus for her to venture out of her more cautious nature to attempt to do what they could do. For example, she never taken much likings to bars. After seeing a few of them hanging and swinging themselves on the bar (agile like monkeys, I might add), she was willing to try.

I hope she would be able to learn new skills, ones that would be age appropriate and help boost her confidence level a little higher.

Admittedly, the decision for her to go into an all Mandarin JG class was made with much conviction although I entered Wed's class with a lots of trepidation and anxiety. Would she be overwhelmed, will she understand at all what the teachers are saying given that she doesn't understand Mandarin. Will I myself be able to help her along seeing that my own knowledge of Mandarin is appalling at best and getting worse with disuse?

Routine-wise, there are some slight variations here and there, compared to her previous class. By and large, they do pretty much the same activities though. The class starts off with free play, some song and dance, self-introduction, art & craft, puppet show, playground, snacks and finally, a bit more song and dance to end the class.

Worried that she might not understand what was going on, I tried to translate and co-relate some of the activities to her English Playnest class. Only to be told by the teacher later not to translate as it might result in the child being dependent on the parent to translate the activities for them instead of them learning to pick up the language all on their own. Oops... this is one of those times when doing less is more :)

Faith was unfazed by the fact her friends, teachers and the language used were different. Of course, she couldn't understand most of what they say, but by some gestures and incentives, she managed fine. She still dance, twirl and clap enthusiastically during the song and dance parts, never mind that she's never heard any of those songs before until that day.

By the end of the lesson, I was pleasantly surprised and proud too by what my little one had achieved. She could repeat 2 words; 你好 - Ni Hao (How are you) and 谢谢 - Xie Xie (Thank you). Each child took turns to be sitted in front of a teacher and was incentivised to follow and read aloud with her the themed words on the flashcard. The incentive was a sticker for repeating the word "Ni Hao". And upon getting the sticker, the kid was asked to say "Xie Xie". Back home, she happily repeated the word "Xie Xie" to the amusement of my mom and Louis.

Overall, it was a good start and a good session for us, bar for one incident.

Her class is a small one, with only 5 students including Faith. Three of them were existing students of the class from last year (1 Caucasian boy, 1 Eurasian boy and 1 Eurasian girl). Faith and another younger boy were the only 2 newbies, with the latter transferred from another JG branch's Mandarin class.

In one of the sing and dance, we were all gathered in a circle, each mother/caregiver standing by the child's side. Suddenly, unprovoked and without reason, the Caucasian boy rushed forward and pushed Faith hard on her chest with his hands, causing her to fall backwards on her butt.

It was so sudden and unexpected that I couldn't even stop it. I was shocked but not too concerned. One of the teachers told him it was wrong to do so and brought him back to stand next to his caregiver (I believe she's a maid). Thankfully, Faith wasn't hurt, and neither did she cried at being pushed.

A few seconds after he was led back to his place, he again rushed forward to repeat the same stunt with Faith. Thankfully, another teacher was anticipating it, along with myself. I held onto Faith while the teacher blocked him from attempting his feat a second time. Again, the teacher led him back to his place, where his caregiver had not moved from her spot to at least try to restrain him.

I could peg this boy as one who is active, boisterous and maybe a tad exuberant. In another earlier activity when the teacher was playing hide-and-seek, he rushed forward to find her and gave her a good hard smack on her back. We all laughed off this incident, with myself thinking that he just didn't understand how to restrain himself.

For the remaining session, he attempted another once or twice more to try to "target" Faith, either by snatching her toys or just shoving her aside when she was near him. The few attempts, the caregiver made some feeble attempts to stop and admonished him.

When we were at the playground later, she somewhat flippantly explained to me, giving me the impression that it was not the first time that he did something like this to another kid. He might sometimes pick on a kid, usually a girl. However, she said that the next day, he would have forgotten all about it.

I wisely held my tongue about it, becos I was still fuming a little that she hadn't rushing forward to stop the child after his incredible first stunt of pushing Faith, or even if her reactions were slow, to at least move her butt instead of standing where she was. The fact that she never once apologised and her laissez-faire attitude about him having being rough with other kids before sounds to me like a lame excuse rather than a reason.

I don't exactly blame the boy, becos he might be young and not know better. However, I do expect that his caregiver be more alert and responsive to his behaviour.

And so, I held my tongue and only said "hmmm..." to what she told me. I knew that if I had allowed even one word to slip out, it wouldn't have been anything nice. I didn't want to kick up a big fuss at what might [hopefully] be a one-time incident, especially since it was only the first lesson.

Towards the end of class, when he again tried to be rough with her while they were playing on the playmat, I told him firmly that he had to be gentle. He then gently used his hand to try to stroke Faith's head.

Like any mother, I am very protective of my child, although I know that in the course of her growing up, she might meet other kids who are just plain mean or being bullies. I would have to learn how to handle such situations myself and/or to teach Faith how to handle them too. Even till now, I still go through the incident in my head and evaluate the various reactions I should have taken or would take if it ever happens again.

You can bet that I'll definitely be on the lookout for any repeat behaviours from both the child and his caregiver on Fri's class. If it happens again, I'm certainly going to do something about it.

However, I do hope it wouldn't happen again. After all, I would like for both Faith and myself to be able to enjoy these classes. Then again, these are all part and parcel of life and perhaps, we might just have to learn sooner rather than later how to deal with some unpleasantness that will pop up once in a while.

Pat's Schoolhouse

Last week, I was at Halifax Road, checking out the facilities of the Chiltern House branch there. There was a Pat's Schoolhouse just 2 doors away and I decided to take a look.

Was telling my cousin before about our shortlisted choices of pre-nursery schools and she told me to consider and check out Pat's Schoolhouse too. So there I was, even though I wasn't having any high hopes, carrying out what I thought would be necessary due diligence.

The school occupied a bigger compound, compared to the other schools that were lined up along that stretch of Halifax Road. I made my way in through what was supposed to be the front door and tread in an empty stretch of corridor, in search of the usual reception lobby. There was none. I saw an open door with 2 persons inside and knocked hesitantly on the door before explaining the reason for my interruption.

The woman sitting nearest to me was chirpy and friendly. She bounced up and started to talk to me, bringing me on a tour of the school for about 1/2 an hour. I was skeptical right from the beginning, quick to dismiss it as one of the usual run-of-the-mill type of school. At the end of that half hour, I changed my earlier opinion. I was actually excited about the prospect of the school.

What strike me most about the school was its philosophy and teaching method. In all, none of the schools took pains to run through the curriculum with me in detailed. But this lady took me into an existing class and started to show and explain to me about the alphabet charts stuck onto the walls of the class.

I can't remember what was the method of teaching called, but it was adapted from a person from the UK, who had first developed it for under-privilege students (similar to the Montessori story). Instead of placing emphasis on learning to recognise and write all 26 alphabets, children were encouraged to associate words & stories to each of them. For example, C is for Clever Cat, H is for Harry Hat & K is for Kicking King. The beginning sound that the tongue makes in pronouncing all the words is the same as what the alphabet would sound like i.e. C makes the sound "ker".

The idea behind it is to lay the foundation for each child to be able to then use the alphabets to construct and deconstruct words in order to help them to spell and read in future. This concept became clearer when I went into the classroom of either a N2 or K1 class - couldn't remember which.

In this class, there were works of the children's mathematics assignment pasted up on the board. It was a colourful array of A4-sized papers, with different drawings, drawn and coloured by the children, each accompanied by another small piece of paper on which a mathematics problem was written.

Just as an example, one of the work on the board was of 2 trees; one with 15 green apples and 7 red apples, painstakingly done. On the paper attachment of that artwork was this accompanying paragraph, "There are 15 green apples on one tree and 7 red apples on the other tree. How many apples are there altogether?".

A few things strike me as I looked at all these works by the children. Firstly, these were all grammatically correct paragraphs and written very legibly. Secondly, even though it was only 2 sentences in that paragraph, it required a few skills of the children at that tender age to put together - the ability to transfer their creativity of a thought-out scenario on paper by way of th drawings, to form and construct proper sentences in English, to spell every word and also, to create a mathematical problem at the base of it.

I asked if these problems were all created by every single child and if they had had help at all. The proud reply from the lady was that yes, it was all based on the individual creativity of every child, although there was help given by the teacher for the spellings. That was when she went to a nearby shelf and started to open up a few exercise books of the children to show me what she meant.

Initially, I was a little confounded. In one of the exercises, there were two paragraphs of words written. Top paragraph of words, while in English, seemed to be filled with typos and words that I couldn't decipher. The second paragraph read correctly and mirrored the mathematics problems that were pasted on the artwork.

The lady started to read the entire first paragraph aloud to me and that was when it dawned on me. I couldn't remember the spellings but a few words strike out at me. Friends was spelt "frans" and altogether was spelt "altogada".

In essence, the children were told to construct in English a mathematical problem and write them down on their own. These were the first para of every exercise books, the ones that were filled with wrong spellings, although some were correct. They then go through these with the teacher, who would then help them with the grammar and spellings.

What was incredible was that even though the children might not have learnt to spell every single word at that age, they were using their best efforts to decode and deconstruct the words according to how they would pronounce them. Hence, while "altogada" was the wrong spelling, you can't quite fault the boy for spelling it this way becos it kinda sounded like that. And I thought altogether was a fairly long word to spell at that age.

In short, what was taught to the children at N1 & N2 to learn the alphabets through sounds would later on help them to read and recognise words and in turn, help them to spell.

Coming out from the tour, this progressive teaching was what impressed me most! And it was done in a way that was fun but at the same time, achieving the goal of helping children to prepare for primary school.

Each of the Pat's Schoolhouses also came with a music room with a teacher that was solely dedicated on providing music lessons to the entire 150 students of the centre. That room had a piano and different types of percussion instruments too.

Apart from that, the lady also explained to me that they use a lot of cooking lessons to teach and interest the children, employing the use of the 5 senses like touching and smelling etc.

The outdoor playground facilities weren't much to crow about really. There's just the usual array of outdoor toys in the small little porch out front. The emphasis of the school, as I can see is very much on developing the children academically, albeit in a fun way.

Unlike the long waiting list for SJCK, Pat's SH appears not to have such issues. Registration for N1 in 2010 only opens in Jun 09 and the lady assured me if one registers by Aug or Sept, there shouldn't be any issues about vacancies. Of course, after she shared with me the school fees, I could figure out why. It costs an astounding $909 (nett) before subsidy per month for a half day (starting from 8.30 am to 12.30 pm) session, 5 days a week at N1.

On the bilingual focus, Pat's SH is similar to CH, in that there seems to be an equal spilt of English and Mandarin activities each day.

I found out later that the woman who tooked me on the tour and spent considerable time explaining to me was the principal of the Halifax Road outlet :) No wonder she seemed to know every detail at the tip of her fingers.

I shared this with Louis after the visit to the school. We agreed that the curriculum and teaching method sounded fantastic. Our reservations were of course, the cost and also the fact that for most of all Pat's SH outlets, it is only a single session for 1/2 day classes, which starts around 8.30 am. The only exception is its Claymore Road branch, which has an afternoon 1/2 day class.

Nonetheless, the ranking of the schools have somewhat changed with this visit. We see CH & Pat's SH to be on par, followed by SJCK.

Registration for Pre-Nursery

It may sound like we're jumping on the bandwagons of the typical "kiasu" Singaporean parents to think about registering Faith for pre-nursery when she's only 19 months.

Let me assure you that we're not. At least, not going by the queue number that we've been allocated for one of the schools.

Louis and I have kinda procrastinated for a while about this topic of putting her name in for pre-nursery at some of the schools here. In fact, we've talked about this a few months ago. One thing lead to another, we did not match words with actions and thus, only found ourselves exploring and evaluating a very short list of schools for consideration now.

The number that we're talking about is... two (2) schools :)

Being a current Julia Gabriel student, she has some sort of priority preference (over normal walk-ins) for pre-nursery at any of the Chiltern House schools. That plus the fact that we are comfortable with the philosophy, curriculum and calibre of teachers, it was a no-brainer that we would consider Chiltern House for her pre-nursery.

Next on the list, through much vouched-for recommendations and word-of-mouth from various sources, was St James Church Kindergarten (SJCK).

We managed to arrange for a visit to both the Chiltern House (various locations) at Turf City & SJCK this week. Here's Louis and my sentiments on the 2 schools, based on the tour provided.

Chiltern House
Concept and philosophy wise, it came as no surprise to us that there's not much explanation or selling needed to be done for CH becos of its affiliation with JG. The admin person who took us on the tour and who explained about the school was very personable, articulate, knowledgeable about the school programmes, syllabus and approach. In short, if one is already a student with Julia Gabriel, I would think the integration or change to CH would be pretty smooth.

The school is housed in an old 2-storey bungalow. Not sure how long the premise has been in used, but while the general conditions of the school appears to be well-used, it was clean and well-maintained.

The Turf City branch is the largest of the CH schools, with 3 outdoor playgrounds for the kids.

St James' Church Kindergarten
I have to say that I was most impressed by the sprawling ground and near-to-nature concept of the school. Becos the school is located in Dempsey, there were things like fruit orchard, herb patch, fish ponds, rabbit huts within the school premises, which would provide the school students with more exposure to mother nature beyond just the normal playgrounds.

Perhaps the expectations of SJCK was higher becos we had heard from many friends and colleagues who highly recommended it. However, we came away from the tour feeling a little disappointed and not particularly impressed with the curriculum or philosophy except for the facilities.

I was told that the Principal of the school was very a dynamic and impressive lady from friends who were lead on the tour by her. Unfortunately, I can't say the same of the VP. From the tone, body language and the way she conducted the tour, one gets the impression that she was going through the motions and would have preferred to spend her time doing something else.

Neither did she seem particular enthusiastic when we asked her about how bilingual classes were conducted. Her reply to us was that there are both an English and a Mandarin teacher in each class, that there's not a lot of emphasis on "structured learning" as pre-nursery children still learn a lot through play, and that the presence of 2 teachers in 2 languages provide exposure of the languages to the students.

When we pressed for further information on the rough amount of time or activities that children were exposed to in English and Mandarin on a daily or even weekly basis, she seemed a little impatient with us, or our line of questioning. Her reply was that in each day of school, only about 20 mins would be devoted to "structured" lessons. There would be some days when the English teacher would read to the students and other days when the Mandarin teacher would do other activities with the students.

In short, it was not much of an answer to our questions. We got the sense that she's not very sure of the answer herself.

Overall
The stronger selling point for me in CH was its bilingual focus. By that, I mean going beyond just the fact that each of its class has at least an English and Chinese teacher on hand. Here, the school has a systematic and concerted approach towards exposing the children to both languages by fostering what I would term "compulsory activities" in each language.

Meaning, based on what I'd gleaned, that in a typical school day of 3 hrs (or was it 3 1/2hr?? I forgot), activities would be broken down into 30 mins intervals. While some activities would be done in English and others in Mandarin, there would be times when the class in split into 2. One half would have to do a specific activity with the English teacher, the other half with the Mandarin teacher. Then, they would swap.

SJCK appears to be less structured - there would be some lessons conducted in Chinese though the VP who brought us around the tour was a little vague as to how much.

The reason why Louis and I are placing more emphasis on exposure to Mandarin is becos we currently only speak to Faith in English. She has zero knowledge and exposure to Mandarin, save for whatever Chinese TV programmes that we watch.

At the moment, we are ranked 95th on the waiting list of SJCK for the class intake in 2010. There are only about 5-6 classes for pre-nursery per year, with a maximum of 14 students per class. Based on simple arithmetic, the school is more than 100% oversubscribed and we're only in calendar year 2008!

In all, each school has its pros and cons and judging from the web reviews, there are certainly proponents for either school. The most important thing however is what we think will benefit Faith as an individual most.

There is another option for now - which is to place Faith in Julia Gabriels' pre-nursery when she turns 3. The benefit of this third option is not only that she gets the Julia Gabriel learning method which we like, but also that she only needs to go there 3 times a week instead of 5.

This gives us the flexibility for us to do things with her on the other days if we want to, without over-tiring her out - she is still a child after all and we have the benefit of me being a SAHM to guide, teach and play with Faith. Hopefully.

Salamat Hari Raya & Children's Day

We were encouraged to deck out in ethnic wear for today's class at Julia Gabriel in celebration of Hari Raya and Children's Day.

Faith's finally able to fit into this pink cheongsam dress that I had bought in H&M in Dubai nine months ago. I had thought it would be fun. Turned out that there were only 2 kids that were dressed in ethnic clothes :)

As a result, she received many compliments on her dress.

These pictures are my few favourite that I took of her in her little pink cheongsam dress.

End of Term 3 Party

This has been a busy week for both Faith and I -- Faith having to attend 4 classes and me busy being a chauffeur-mom. Its the last week of the term for both Little Gym and Julia Gabriel. We needed to make-up a class for Little Gym, hence, the additional day of lesson on top of the 3 classes that Faith goes to weekly.

Friday marks the end of the Term 3 party at JG. I had no idea what to expect of the party since it was my first time but I signed up to bring some home-made eggless chocolate and banana mini muffins for the party. Turned out that there were lots of food at the end -- the kids don't eat that much really :)

It is also the last day for Sugita, the teacher in Faith's class, as she has resigned from the school. Even though we'd only attended 5 classes towards the tail-end of the term, I really liked and enjoyed Sugita's classes. She obviously loves all the kids, is extremely perky, very patient, fun-loving and a great and interesting story-teller to boot, making her classes a great deal of fun.

The children were told to dress in their party clothes, which I gather to mean to dress up. The teachers were all togged up in their best gears too, instead of the usual JG t-shirts. The big nice toys were all hauled in to provide lots of indoor fun play, followed by some welcome songs, party snacks, more play and then out to the playground.

Having taught Faith to shoot the hoop with a round ball, Faith had a blast dunking all sorts and sizes of balls into the basketball hoop. She also had a turn riding her favourite toy car and also pushing Ria (the other girl in the picture) in the same car later.

As Faith seems to settle more comfortably to the routine, environment and new playmates at JG, I'm also starting to enjoy myself too. I too have made friends with a few of the mothers there.

In fact, two of them remarked to me on separate occasions that they were "envious" that Faith is such a well-behaved and calm girl in class. Hahaha.... yeah.... my little one takes on a slightly different persona in class, especially the way she eats.

At home, give her some biscuits and crackers and she would be busy stuffing them into her face like there's no tomorrow. Yet, for the last few snack time at JG, while all the other kids would similarly be cramming their biscuits into their already filled mouth, Faith would take dainty little bites out of hers. She would slowly and patiently finish each biscuit, wait a while or take a sip of drink before she takes another one. Eating it with the same exact slowness.

She would be one of the early ones to arrive at the table for snacks and yet, the last to leave -- taking her time to "savour" the snacks. The funniest thing is that when all the kids and moms have left the table, she would surreptitiously cram a few biscuits into her mouth!

Give her another few more classes at JG and perhaps, she might show more of the exuberant behaviour that she exhibits at home.

Trial @ Julia Gabriel

We were exploring other options and activities for Faith, and decided to let Faith attend a trial of the Playnest class at Julia Gabriel. Rohini has been raving about the class earlier and had asked if I was interested to join, as Partha had been going.

Now that we're back from our trip and it seems that we might not need to travel for a while, we thought we would try out some other activity. Also, this is in view that Faith would be having her last class at Kindermusik this Friday. Not that we're unhappy with Kindermusik, but we wanted to explore other options and see how the different activities stack up.

The playnest classes run twice a week for 10 weeks. We would have preferred to sign her up for the Mandarin classes but at her age group, it requires her to go for 3 classes per week. Faith's already going to Little Gym every week, and we felt that if we sign her up for the Mandarin classes, it would be too many classes that she's attending.

I liked the class and I think Faith does too. They seem to do a little of everything in the one and a half hour class, but I figured that given the kids' short attention span, there's just about enough time devoted for each activity to pique their interest and move on to something else before they get bored.

The class started with some free play, followed by the singing of some songs to introduce everyone in class, a mystery activity -- which was reading for this session, followed by some simple art & craft, snack time, free play indoors, outdoor play and finally, singing and dancing to end the day.

Faith seemed to enjoy the snack of organic teddy cookies. Towards the end, she stuffed all the remaining teddies into her little mouth, making herself look like a puffed up hamster hoarding her seeds :)

Ohhh... she really enjoyed the outdoor play. They were given the free rein to run around the outdoor playground.

The activity that she enjoyed the most while out in the playground was sitting in this little car, which I would then push her around.

When the teacher called for all the kids to head back to the class, she was reluctant to go in. In fact, she grabbed my hands and motioned that she still wanted to sit in the car some more. When I told her that we needed to head back to class, she bawled and cried :) Still, I managed to coax her to head back by telling her that daddy was waiting at the classroom for her.

Thank goodness her daddy saved the day. He was standing outside the classroom indeed when we made our way back to class. All her tears were forgotten as she gave a big wide smile and ran into his embrace to greet him.

And she held his hands and led him back to her class to join her in the closing activity, which had the teacher and assistants playing the keyboard, doing some upbeat dance and song. Our little girl perked up at her favourite activity of singing & dancing. She stood up and did her little jiggle, bent and clapped her knees and clapped her hands enthusiastically.

Overall, I found the class to be lively and spontaneous. The teachers were well-spoken, loving and great with the kids. And they seem to be rather multi-talented too, being good story-tellers and singers at the same time :) The school were also careful with the hygiene of the toys that the kids played. After every activity, the teacher and assistants would go around collecting the toys in separate trays, stacking them up to be cleaned and washed.

After the class, we signed her up for the remaining 2 weeks lessons. We'll see if we could sign her up for the next semester at the end of it, i.e. if Louis is not expected to travel. The key reason is that we would not be able to do make up classes (except if she's ill and a medical cert is produced) and the school does not provide any refund if we were to go away on a trip midway.