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.

What is your name?

"Faith!"

Or rather, she manages to say what sounds like "Faye" in response to us asking her "what's your name?"

I don't suppose Faith is an easy name for early speakers. At 1 year 7 months, 3 weeks and 4 days old, she uttered her name for the first time. We were heading back after dropping my mom home when she said her name in the car.

Pleasantly surprised, I praised her for getting her name right and then I popped the question, "What's your name?"

"FAYE!", came the resounding reply from the back of the car.

Tickled, Louis took his turn to ask her again, "What's your name?"

"FAYE!". This time, reply was tinged with quite a bit of pride at her own little achievement.

She made us play a little game of taking turns to ask her her name and shouting her name in pure delight, giggling every time we praised her for it.

Ahhh... it may seem like such a little thing, yet it made our night for Louis and me :)

Laduree macarons

That's right. These are the real deal straight from Laduree's Champs-Elysee outlet in Paris.

Supposedly, they were to be our anniversary present, compliments of our best man in anticipation of our upcoming 5th year wedding anniversary. I said supposedly becos Louis and I adamantly refused to acknowledge perishable goods for presents ;)

In all seriousness, it was the sweetest gesture. CP's like my "soul mate" when it comes to our love for food. We generally share near-exact sentiments about our likes and dislikes of food, food preparations and even right down to how we like our food to be served and eaten. Even though I've yet to try the renown Pierre Herme's famous macarons, the ones from Laduree were what I used to crow about to him.

He called on early Tue morning to tell me that he's only in town for a short one and a half day and wanted to find out if I've got time that day to meet him. He refused to say why he gave such short notice of his return to town nor the reason for which brought him back.

All becos he wanted to surprise me in person with these macarons from Laduree. Lucky guy took a 2-week trip to France to meet up with his many friends there, travelling from the Northwest to the Southeast of France. Along the way, he had himself many a gastronomic adventures too.

Sharing yet another common soft spot for the "caramel-sel" flavoured ones, he made sure there were 2 of them in the box (out of a total of 8).

Thanks, CP. They still taste great! Louis and I are slowly savouring them.

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.

Pay attention to "Me"

After our breakfast this morning, Faith and I were as usual sitting in the living room with the TV turned on to Playhouse Disney.

I had the newspaper in front of me and was thinking to catch up with the day's news. After flipping through a few pages, I found Faith with her Doodle Pro, sitting next to me.

She signalled to me to doodle along with her on the Doodle Pro. Since she was conveniently sitted on my right, I used my right hand to draw vague circles with one of the magnetic shapes while I continue to read the newspapers.

Seeing that my attention was not on her but on the newspapers, Faith stood up and yank up my hand to signal that she wanted me to stand up. I was reluctant to as I wanted to continue reading the headlines. My dear daughter was fairly insistent that I stood up and made lots of noises until I finally caved in.

Then, she bent to pick up the Doodle Pro by its handle with one hand and with her other hand, dragged me into her room. When we were in the room, she clambered up awkwardly with her Doodle Pro and indicated to me to sit by patting the sit next to her.

When I smiled and sat down next to her, she happily started to push the Doodle Pro next to me and make me draw alongside with her. Finally, she had gotten me away from whatever distractions that were occupying my attention to now focus on her. Just her. Alone.

I was highly amused and very tickled. She's following in the footsteps of her daddy. Doing what he does whenever he wants her to focus on something instead of being distracted by the blaring TV in the living room.

Admittedly, I conceit to letting her watch lots of TV programmes on weekday mornings. It arosed out of habit when she was younger and would want to cling on to me. Letting her be distracted with the TV allows me to make up our bedroom, prepare her morning meals, start her lunch porridge cooking, prepare her bath and other morning chores that I otherwise wouldn't be able to do.

Now, its become more of a habit than a need to keep her occupied, especially when she started walking and became more mobile.

It is usually on Saturdays or public holidays, when Louis is around that there's someone else in to play with her while I do the morning chores. During these times, Louis prefers to have the music playing in the background instead of having the TV turned on becos he doesn't want her to be too hooked onto watching TV.

On a few occasions, he would bring her to the bedroom to play when he felt that she's too distracted to concentrate on the task at hand. I hadn't realised that Faith had observed and has now put to use this particular practice to get my attention.

So while I was in the room with her - with no further distractions - we both sang and danced to a few songs after we were bored with doodling. Following that, she pointed to the few books that I left on top of her chest cabinet and asked me to read to her.

I couldn't resist calling Louis halfway through and telling him about what Faith did, even though I knew I was interrupting him at work :)

I'm glad and proud of my little one. She'd used an effective method to get what she wants instead of crying or throwing temper tantrums.

Faith

It has been a really long while since I last sat down to blog. It has been a hectic one month ever since I returned from London and this weekend, I finally get to take a breather.

It is amazing how time just flies. In the one month, Faith has gone through a rapid transformation from being our "baby" to a girl who now not only understands every thing we say to her, but who has also continually surprised us with her little achievements.

Close to a month ago, Eve had bought a Bruin Bear Light and Sound activity cube shape sorter. It is essentially a toy which allows Faith to match the shape and colour of the blocks for insertion into the container.

Initially, Faith did not seem that keen on the toy and this thing about matching the shapes did not seem to really keep her interest. Instead, she was keener on using the toy phone that was attached to the toy. I had however, occasionally sat down with her just to show her how to insert the blocks - from the easy shapes to the more advanced cubes which were multi-faceted.

A week thereabouts transpired since I last sat down with her and the cubes as I had come late almost every day of last week. Yesterday thus, I was actually quite amazed when she was able to sort out the toys and inserted the all eight blocks into the matching holes with no prompting or direction.

Eve too was quite shocked as she had only thought that Faith was able to insert the circular block (the easiest block), but had no idea that Faith was now able to tackle the rest of the blocks - even the more complicated flowery and crescent shapes ones.

Both Eve and I have a lot of reasons to be proud of Faith. Faith has grown to be a caring and affectionate girl who never fails to smile when she picks our faces from the crowd, or who runs to the door with the key whenever she sees me at the doorstep. And with less and less prompting, she is now initiating her own hugs, byes-byes and goodbye kisses to for example, my mum and dad whenever she leaves their home over the weekend.

Where we used to have to nudge her to "hug and kiss nai nai and ye ye", she now runs to them to hug them, before she makes her way out of the door. Occasionally, she still needs a reminder to look at people when she waves good bye - especially when she is preoccupied with a toy, but all it takes is for us to chide her once before she does the right thing.

Just today, we had Cherry and Terence over for dinner. And both Eve and I were extremely proud of Faith. Not only did she really behave herself at the dinner table, she also listened when told for example, to eat with her spoon, or to return the watch to Aunty Cherry, or to pack up her toys.

Eve and I speak to her like an adult and amazingly, she understands our every sentence. We now do not even gesture like we used to have to - for example, we used to have to point to the toy basket to signal for her to keep her toys - now we just speak to her, as if she were a grown-up girl.

Indeed, sometimes, Eve and I are secretly sad of how fast our little baby is growing up. In the past, where she used to cry when we left her with my mum and dad, she now waves her goodbyes to us whenever we leave her there.

When I take her aside to discipline her, you can tell she feels hurt and is aware that she has crossed the line. When I ask for her help to set the IKEA table and to help me with the chairs, she now just pulls out all three chairs without any further prompting. And when I ask if she wants water, it is always either an emphatic no or yes. And at night, before her bedtime, her routine of brushing, wiping down, kissing us before she sleeps, and waving to me "goodbye" comes so natural to her now that it was as all this is now effortless.

In no time, our little baby has grown up to be someone we communicate with just as we would talking to an adult or teen. And Faith is all of 19 months.

What Eve and I are sure of, we will continue to give Faith all the love that we can so that she in turn grows up to be a confident and loving girl. I am sure we will miss the babyish side of Faith, but we are also proud that Faith has come so far in so little time.

Animal sounds

Our little budding vocalist has just started to be able to mimic animal sounds. Here, I mean the term "mimic" very loosely becos her little tongue's still trying to get around all the difficult words and vowels, even simple animal sounds :)

A friend had given Faith a book titled "The Very Busy Spider" by Eric Carle. The story featured different types of farm animals and the sounds that they make. I had been reading them to Faith as part of her bedtime ritual. And was quite taken by surprised myself one day when I casually asked her as usual what sound a tiger makes and she said "rrrr...".

Encouraged, I tried asking her to tell me the sounds of other animals that were commonly featured in some of her books and was rather tickled when she tried in her still somewhat babyish babble to make coherent sounds.

Just so you'll know and be amused, these are the animal sounds that Faith's capable of mimicking at this point in time.

Me: What sound does a tiger makes, Faith?
Faith: rrrr.... (a very meek tiger if there’s one)

Me: What sound does a cow makes?
Faith: mmmm... (like the appreciative sound one makes of a good meal)

Me: What sound does a dog makes?
Faith: hoo-hoo-hoo (makes huffing noises)

Me: What sound does a cat makes?
Faith: mmmm... (same sound as that for a cow)

Perhaps she'll get better at it soon, or perhaps not. Either ways, it doesn't really matter very much to Louis nor myself whether Faith speaks clearly or not. The key thing is that she's learning how to speak, at her own pace, in her own time.

Meantime, we get most of what she wants to communicate with us, either through words, baby signs, grunts or her pulling us to show us what she wants.

There will come a day, sooner than we would have like, when she would be speaking so clearly that we wish we could pretend we don't understand what she's saying.

For now, we're getting a lot of amusement, laughter and parental pride at her mini achievements at learning to speak.