Enrichment Classes - To send or not to send?

We are those parents who believe in sending the children to enrichment classes for learning and experience. We think that these enrichment classes offer external stimuli which the children may not experience at home.

On the other hand, there are parents like one of my girlfriend, Mokkie, who believe that the childcare centre environment will provide sufficient stimuli and learnings in their appropriate age, and it is not necessary to enrol them in additional classes. She is of the view point that if these children learned far ahead of their age, they may lose interest in learnings later on. Certainly a valid consideration. However, so far the twins have positive experience in the enrichment learnings.

Since 18 months old, we sent them to Kindermusik at Tanglin Mall for "Our Time"(for 18mths-3 years old) music lessons. In the 45 minutes lessons, the teacher will sing or play the CD music and used various musical instruments to engage the toddlers, who were accompanied by one parent. The toddlers also learn some nursery rhymes, opposite words like "high vs low", "up vs down" , action words like "stop", "fly", "row" etc, all through the music. There were lots of actions and you would not be bothered that your toddlers will get bored during the lessons. In fact, normally at the end of the each lesson, the teacher will read a story, usually from famous child author like Eric Carle. The music used is very engaging and my twins love them till today. They could even recalled the dance actions of each song and "replayed" them at home.

The twins thoroughly enjoyed the course and looked forward to the weekly lessons even though they were initially shy, a litle fearful of the group setting and merely passive in their actions. I still remember Asher cried for the first two lessons because he was afraid of the "noise" (our house is a quiet resort); not anymore since.

The Kindermusik "Our Time" course is suppose to spread through 4 semisters (3 months for each semisters). But after 6 months, we think that the stimulation had stagnanted and decided to switch to another slightly more "academic" course at Growing Up Gifted in United Square. We could have stayed in both courses together, but that would be too taxing in monetary terms, the weekend time and for the twins, especially when you enrolling two children at a time.

At Growing Up Gifted(GUG) weekly, one and a half hours, toddlers' programme (18 months - 3 years old), it consists of

• 30 minutes of"project time" - art work of various form, edible work using food, some science project for older todds;
• 30 minutes of "Zoo-phonics" - teaching of alphabets phonics using animals, introducing "zoo bag"(consists of things beginning with the letter of the day) and the 3-letter word of the day;
• 20 minutes of other rotational activites like singing, story book telling etc.

My twins totally love the programme, particularly the project work, you could clearly see their eyes brighten up each time. They also like the "Zoo-phonics" time but during the singing session, they would usually stand aside and watch despite some encouragment to participate. Perhaps they were too shy at that time, so we did not really "push" them during that time.

I think that the GUG one and a half hour programme is actually a little long for younger toddlers, particularly under 2 years old, as the children are required to sit down most of the time. Some of their classmates who were under 2 years old were merely running around the classes; in fact, towards the end of the class, the twins were mostly a little restless too, even though they were more well-behaved.

Nevertheless, some of the things that they have learned in GUG are "more advanced" than the peers and my twins still talked about their GUG schools till today. They have since stopped the GUG lessons last September after they were enrolled in the Childcare centre.

There are actually many enrichment classes for pre-schoolers that we have "researched" and the programmes are also quite interesting eg. Shichida Brain stimulation, Julia Gabriel, Gymboree, The Little Gym, Lorna Whiston etc. We have chosen those that best fit our twins and budget.

Kindermusik : http://www.kindermusik.com.sg/
Growing Up Gifted : http://www.gugifted.com/
Shichida : http://www.shichidamethod.com/
Julia Gabriel :http://www.juliagabriel.com/
Lorna Whiston: http://www.lornawhiston.com/
Gymboree : http://www.gymboree.com/
The Little Gym : http://www.thelittlegym.com.sg/