Leap Schoolhouse Trial

Few weeks back, Hubs and I signed baby Reagan up for a trial class at Leap Schoolhouse during the SmartKidsAsia event at Expo. The admin staff mistook her for a little baby girl. It is not surprising as we get that all the time. Usually people either assumed Reagan is a girl (regardless how boyish we dressed him up) or ask us "baby girl right?" I  always smile politely, "it's a boy...that looks girly :) "

Our cute little baby "girl"

First 15 minutes is free-play time like most schools. Reagan must have thought that he is at Bibinogs school because immediately he crawled to the playmat to look for his favourite toy, the ring hoops. Of course he was disappointed that he could not find it. The toys were quite limited as well.

The next 15 minutes was gym time at the gym room where he had fun chasing a colourfull ball around. However he started whining for me when the teacher tried to make him go through some gym obstacles.
After the exercise we returned back to the classroom for snack-time, which was supposed to be brought along by parents themselves. Luckily I got some organic baby biscuits for him but he was more interested in trying to dive his way to the fan and the television in the room. Baby Reagan manged to sit through the entire story-telling time, but he started to get a little cranky during the craft session. I knew he is going to need his sleep soon because before his lesson, we brought him to visit his grandma and he did not have much nap there.

For art & craft, the teacher passed each baby some shredded papers of different textures and a glue stick to stick them together onto a paper. Baby Reagan recently loves to hold small items in hands and investigate them like a forensic scientist. I find that it's a good way to encourage sensory play as he can learn and explore. So usually I don't stop him and even find more items of different sizes and textures to encourage him to touch and feel. Unfortunately, sticky glue stick is not one of my approved items.

Baby Reagan never has an issue with returning things back, however he burst into tears when daddy tried to take it away from him. This was a wake-up call for us as we have all along taken Reagan's good behavior of returning things back for granted. Never one time did Reagan react that adversely when we took his things away.  Daddy insisted that he might have learned this new negative habit from the other babies in all the previous classes he used to attend. Each time the baby refused to return the toy, they will use the screaming, whining or crying tactic and the teacher or the parents will return the toys back to calm the baby down. Reagan must have witnessed it many times, and had learned to use the same method to prevent us from taking away his glue stick today. However in my opinion, I felt it's probably part of a growing up stage of a baby. Daddy refused to condone his behavior and took the glue stick away, which led to a melt-down. Mummy practiced her usual method..."The art of distraction". So in the end, we won by calming him down without returning him the glue stick, yeah! We do not want to let him think that he can get his way by whining, crying and of course humiliating us in public hahA!

Anyway back to the lesson, I think the teacher really tried her best to capture the attention and make the lesson fun and lively. However without his favorite rapid cards flashing and alphabets phonics, I don't think baby Reagan is enjoying as much as the other babies. Nevertheless, it was still overall a good experience, but probably not one of the preferred schools that suit baby Reagan.