I have never sent my kids to academic enrichment classes before. However, I had once let XX join a 3-day Math holiday camp during a school holiday period because I did not want her to waste her time at home doing nothing much. Also, I believe holiday camps are fun and kids are bound to enjoy the learning-through-play camps. When YH had the opportunity to attend KidStartNow’s story-telling themed Chinese enrichment holiday camp, I was really happy and excited for him. I knew he would enjoy the many activities in the camp as what was written in the brochure that promised to be full of fun!
The theme of the holiday camp is Underwater World Adventure, which kept me thinking on how they nurture Chinese using such a theme. Before the day of the camp, YH received this invitation!
On the first day, I took YH to the class. He was greeted warmly by the Chinese teacher, Hong Mei 老师, who already knew his name through my registration with the enrichment centre. That helps to break the ice quickly between YH and her. Hong Mei 老师 spoke to the kids in Chinese, never once used an English word even though some kids spoke to her in English. YH is perfectly fine with Chinese as our main language used at home is Chinese. At first, upon seeing the other kids were rather young, I was worried that YH would feel out of place and find the class boring. This class was for 3-6 years old. I am sure every parent will know that a 3-year-old and a 6-year-old are very different in terms of maturity. However, I realized that my fears were unfounded as the class progressed.
At first, Hong Mei 老师 asked YH to choose a cap in the shape of either a fish or a crab. That brightened YH’s face. YH chose a crab cap.
Then as all the kids arrived, they entered a room with many underwater themed decorations and props. There was a monitor which had a digital reward system that showed how many gold coins were awarded under each kid’s name. Whenever, the kids participated and answered correctly, Hong Mei 老师 would enter into her ipad and the coin level would increase. No one was penalized for wrong answers. This reward system had motivated the kids to respond eagerly and after every participation or quiz, they kept their eyes on the monitor to see how much coins they had earned. YH loved this very much and he tried to raise his hands to answer each and every question. He and other kids participated eagerly and I think this is a clever system to get the kids talking and participating in Chinese with an element of fun!
We, parents, meanwhile could view all the class on-goings in a monitor screen at the waiting area while waiting for our kids to finish their lessons. Isn’t this such a considerate arrangement?!
I find that KidStartNow’s class structure focused very much in fun learning in Chinese. They know that kids nowadays dislike Chinese and have low confidence in speaking it. Hence, they structure the lessons with a story theme to entice kids’ interest first, then they focus in building their confidence in the Chinese language by engaging them in games, role plays, and active participation with the rewards system. They really aim to create as much speaking opportunities as possible for the kids to get them using the Chinese language. The kids may not know it, but they start to speak Chinese with more confidence and their interest in Chinese get cultivated. Interest in a subject is key to learning the subject well.
Even though YH only participated in 4 days of holiday camp, his feedback after each lesson was positive. In addition, my observation of the on-going lessons convinced me that this enrichment programme is different from many rote-learning methods in other centres. I would highly recommend to parents with kids of age 3-6 for a fun learning experience to start off their interest in learning Chinese.
If you are thinking of cultivating your kids’ interest in Chinese, read this brochure for an introduction on the lesson structure:
More details can be found here:
Nursery classes: http://www.kidstartnow.com/special-offers/nursery
Then, now for the GIVEAWAY!! KidStartNow is very generous in giving away a COMPLIMENTARY TERM OF CLASSES to ONE reader! That’s equivalent to 3 months of lessons and it’s worth $450!!
I think that’s really, really sweet of them to let me share a good programme with my readers!
N2: Sun (9:00 – 10:30am)
K1: Sat (11:15 – 1:00pm)
K2: Sat (9:00 – 10:45am)
Now, if you read from the brochure above, the classes would have started by the time my giveaway ends, it’s partly my fault for posting this review so late as I was really busy with the December whirlwind of activities! However, DO NOT WORRY! KidStartNow has a complimentary revision class on every Wednesday afternoon (1 hour), subject to prior booking and is first come first served. They have told me that the winner can join the class from the second or third lesson and join the revision classes to catch up. Wow! Such flexibility, I thought this is really something that I have not heard of from other enrichment centres.
So, if you are interested to join in the giveaway, please do the following steps:
1) Like my facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/kidsrsimple)
2) Like KidStartNow facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/KidStartNow)
3) Leave a comment on my blogpost on one reason why you want your child to attend
4) Share my facebook post with your friends and let me know in the facebook comments, remember to turn to public audience so that I can see, or do it anyway such that I know you are sharing!
This giveaway ends 9 Jan at 23:59 and shall be announced on Kids R Simple facebook!
Good Luck!
Disclosure: YH enjoyed his Holiday Camp very much with compliments of KidStartNow in December. Many thanks to KidStartNow for giving away this complimentary term classes to one of my lucky readers. I am sure kids will enjoy their fun lessons if you do enrol with them. And of course, all opinions here can’t be anyone else’s, they have to belong to me copyrighted!! Enjoy!
What a great idea, also nice you can watch on screens to see what’s happening!
I really like the idea too! We, parents, always want to know how our kids behave and what is taught in the class. Watching the on-goings on the monitor is really much better than peeping through the small window on the door! Besides, we would not be interrupting the class!
This is such great idea. I never thought that children may feel unconfident speaking in Chinese, or perhaps, even dislike it. To be bilingual (or even more languages) is a such a gift to the mind of the person and the world in general. I find those who are able to straddle more than one world to be some of the most perceptive people I have met.
Singapore’s education is bilingual. Many kids here speak English at home and in school. And Chinese is indeed a challenging language to learn with the strokes and lack of practice or opportunity to speak. This is the problem many kids face here. They need to speak more, read more, use it more, to be well-versed in it. I agree with you that being multi-lingual is such a gift and I admire people who are too!
What does it mean when you say the education is bilingual? Are all the kids taught all languages in both English and Chinese? Or is it like here where you can go to school either in Finnish or in Swedish and then you have some classes for the other language? Or some other system? Interesting! And the education methods of the class sounds great!
Our teaching medium is in English and Mother Tongue (Chinese/Malay/Tamil) is our second language taught in school. Some subjects may be taught in Chinese depending on which school your child attends. This second language is compulsory. It’s interesting to know that you can choose Finnish or Swedish as medium of teaching! Which is more popular?
Ok, that is interesting! There is a lot of talk now about having bilingual schools here but currently only less than 5% have Swedish as their mother tongue, so Finnish is by far the language of the majority, even when it comes to number of schools. But as they are both official and officially equal languages (not everyone speaks Swedish, but most people can at least communicate in Finnish), there is a paralel system for everything. A law determines if a region is bilingual (all public services have to be offered in that langauge as well) or monolingual and if that languages is then Finnish or Swedish. And there are regions up in the far north were Sami is one of the prevelent languages. (btw, we do have other school languages as well, eg you can go to school in German, Russian, French or English but that is not a public service required to be offered in a region. We also have something called “language bath schools” were, typically, Finnish speaking kids are from the age of kindergarten taught Swedish so that they gradually go from being taught in both to an all Swedish teaching but virtually being taught Swedish, in these schools they learn it as a means for learning other things).As to sceond languages, by law all have to learn the other domestic one language as well as choose another third language at school (mostly English but depending on the school you can choose between many), but the amount of how much you need to study a language varies a bit. So 3 languages is a minimum, most choose 1 or 2 voluntary languages as well. How does that work in Singapore? Your kids go to an English speaking school and are taught Chinese as well, right? Do they have to learn some Malay or Tamil as well? Or can they choose to learn them? May I also be so curious and ask what Chinese is mainly spoken in Singapore? Is it Cantonese? As you may notice, I’m pretty interested in multilingualism andlearning languages 🙂
Such an interesting language system in Finland! We speak Mandarin, pure Chinese. Cantonese is considered a dialect and this generation is losing it. We can only choose 1 mother tongue for 2nd language. Either Chinese, Malay or Tamil. In secondary schools, some can opt to study 3rd language which will be a variety to choose from but the popular ones are Japanese, Korean, German, French. Mulitilingualism is indeed intriguing 🙂
Wow! What a class – I love how positive and reward based it is! Looks like YH had a blast! I love that the parents could watch and see what was going on, as a mom, that makes me trust the class and teacher so much more!
The class is definitely engaging for young ones. I think rewards based learning is a first step to entice the kids to stay on, then next is the fun activities. The school sure has its own way to encourage kids and takes care of parents wants as well.
P does the Chinese enrichment classes provided by his school. He definitely needed something – we pretty much just speak English at home (except for key words like “ice-cream” or “chocolate” which he now knows in several languages… 😉 ). It has helped a lot – although he’s still a long way behind the native speakers.
I’ll have to think about this for school holidays. The trouble is, school wears him out a lot as it is and he really needs the break by the time weekends/holidays roll around.
You are right in relaxing for the weekends. For 2 years, my gal has not been touching any academic work in the weekends but play. However I know this is not going to last from this year on. The enrichment classes are really for the young kids to have a fun time while learning. I have seen the class myself and it’s totally stress free with lots of fun activities. I wouldn’t recommend sit down classes knowing young children will never absorb this way 🙂
My daughter is going to primary one next year. Normally we are speaking English at home so her Mandarin is not very good. I hope that her Mandarin will be better through this enrichment class and speaking more confident in Mandarin.
Thanks Kelly for participating! I believe the class will be engaging for her. It’s really more for the little ones age 3-6. At this age, they learn best while having fun! 🙂
My child doesn’t speak mandarin at all time although he could understand fair bit. I thought this is a good opportunity for him to start at his young age. With interesting environment & passion teacher, will help to build his interest toward Chinese. Looking forward.
Your boy will like this! It’s very fun for the young ones and they’ll be encouraged to speak in Chinese. Thanks for participating!
Impressive program! My kids never had the opportunity to learn Chinese language. Although we have Chinese schools here, most are very expensive!
Yes, as most of us here learn Chinese, they have many schools for this and many parents are willing to pay to get their kids learn it well.
Do theu have classes for n1…my girl chinese is horrendous..i believe to put the fun in learning a new language at an early age …
Hi Jaime, I have checked with KidStartNow, and they told me they have no classes for N1 at the moment. Maybe you can KIV KidStartNow and enrol her when she turns 4? One way to improve Chinese from young is to introduce Chinese TV programmes to her if you do not speak the language at home. I feel there’s not much harm in exposing kids to some TV. Reading in Chinese helps alot too! The idea is to let her be exposed to as much Chinese as possible.
My girl hates to talk in chinese.
Hi Cynthia, I hope your girl will like Chinese eventually! Kids learn fastest in a language at a young age! Remember to do the steps mentioned to join in the Giveaway! Good luck!