Thanks GUG!

Today is the M’s last day at GUG (Growing Up Gifted) United Square. We have been attending this once-a-week 2–hour playgroup class (for children from 18 to 30 months) since the start of the year. One of the main reason we chose this programme then was that it was parent-accompanied.

At GUG – a kindergarten with programmes for children from 8 months old to 6 years old (K2), children above 2.5 years old can progress to the next stage of independent classes. But since we’ve decided to start M on half-day childcare soon, she won’t be moving on to that next stage, at least for now.

Nonetheless, we are happy to say that we’ve enjoyed ourselves over the past 9 months. It certainly provided me bits of ‘social life’. Being in the class meant we can discuss events that happen during class after that, like “remember what we did for project yesterday?”. And one of the things I really like is I can sing all the songs she learns in class. They always come in handy when we’re in the car, because M can be quite a ‘monkey’.

M has also learnt the sounds of all 26 letters of the alphabet. GUG adopts the Zoo-phonics system of teaching phonics where each letter of the alphabet is associated with an animal and an action. For example, if she see the letter ‘i’, she would sometimes point to it and say “inny inchworm, e e e” while bending her index finger. Although she still gets some of the actions or sounds mixed up sometimes, it’s a big achievement already in my opinion.

Besides a segment on phonics, each 2-hour class includes music and movement, a 20-min Chinese segment, art and craft or science project and of course a break for snack. Even though all kids are accompanied, there are 2 teachers (and 3 during the chinese segment) taking turns to conduct the class (max 12 kids) and control the kids. A good ratio, I think.

But of course with kids in this age group, the class can get noisy and even chaotic at times. And I must say the teachers have shown their professionalism in dealing with these challenging times. I also find that most of the teachers have a good command of English (or Chinese) and are able to manage the kids well. They also seem to be young (in their 20s and 30s) and genuine. I believe this has led me to have a preference for younger teachers as mentioned in an another post about choosing a childcare centre for M.

So thanks Teacher Az, Teacher Aida, Teacher Siva and Lao Shi! We had fun

p/s: The photo above was taken during the Children’s Day celebration last week.