Trial @ OurMusicStudio

Baby Reagan went on his 2nd date with sweety baby Fleur at OurMusicStudio 's trial class.

 His mummy dressed him up in his cupid angel's wings, trying to look cute enough to melt his lady's heart...

Baby Fleur is trying to warn Reagan that she can eat up anything, including cheeky boys !

 But Reagan shows no fear. With determination and perseverance, he sneaks up to her and successfully plants a kiss on her cherubic cheeks !

 Baby Fleur shy away... leaving Baby Reagan beaming in great satisfaction.. 

 On his favourite parachute!

 It's certainly more fun with each other around...

(Because when the sun shines, we'll shine together  

Told you I'll be here forever  

Said I'll always be your friend  

Took an oath, I'ma stick it out to the end
Now that it's raining more than ever  

Know that we'll still have each other  

You can stand on my parachute~ You can stand on my parachute~ )

Some snacks after class! Mommy broke the rule again and allowed him to nibble on some fries...hehe!

Trial @ Playdays

The class began with 15 mins of freeplay, keep the toys into the box, sit in a circle, some songs + actions, babies were called up one by one to collect their name and photo to paste on the board, learn about elephants with an elephant puppet, craft session with paint and glue to create an elephant's face on a paper plate, snack time, bubble time , more singing with the teacher playing the keyboard and lastly dancing to the goodbye song. 

I enjoy watching how baby Reagan interact with the other babies today. He would stroke their head or face and gave them as bashful smile before crawling away to the next baby.

During snack time, they had blueberries, biscuits and yogurt drops for the babies. I was really surprised that baby Reagan fed himself and finished up everything, he even asked for more snacks! Baby Reagan is never a good or big eater. He seldom finish his meals at home, even if I prepare similar snacks that the school offered them today. This time I guess probably eating with the other babies together on the same table motivated him to finish up his food. And when other babies asked for more, he wanted to have more too, haha!

 My baby boy emptied the whole bowl all by himself!

It's always a joy to bring my boy to classes and witness his learning journey, love you baby boy, you're awesome, totally.

Trial @ Magic Fiddler

It has almost been more than a week ever since the irksome haze "confined" my baby boy at home. His eczema returned to attack him again and almost every hour I've to butter him up with loads of creams and moisturizers. After the haze and his skin got better, I got daddy to drop us at City Square on his way to work. I've just called up Magic Fiddler and there was a trial class available for us to attend today.

The class began with the "Hello song", rolling of balls to each other, singing with props like egg shakers, silk cloth, wooden sticks etc, jamming with the different musical instruments, parachute fun and lastly practicing on the real keyboard.

Baby Reagan understood when I asked him to greet his new friends in class. He would wave his arms then smile shyly at them. His favorite activity now is chasing after the rolling balls. That's what he did most of the time at home. Therefore, he enjoyed the segment when everyone sat in a circle and rolled the balls to one another. He likes the singing session as well, although he didn't really participate in doing the actions together. He only sat on the mat with his eyes fixated on the teacher, while she sang away. Each time the teacher brought out a new box with the props, Reagan immediately crawled speedily to grab hold of the first item he can reach for inside the box, and started shaking it with all his strength. He was so busy exploring the musical instruments that I knew that he wouldn't even notice if I left the room.

We put all the kids in the center of the parachute as we waved it up and down, singing to a song. Everyone escaped out of it, except for baby Reagan who was crawling around in the parachute, giggling in excitement. Other parents played peek-a-boo with him while he was on the parachute and that thrilled him even further. I believe he loves the parachute activity most!

 Lastly, all the kids were led to another room where they get to be seated in front of their own keyboard to practice the notes they learned earlier, "c" and "d". It's rather amusing trying to teach your 1 year old the right key to press on the giant keyboard. They find it more interesting to bang on the keyboard and creating a racket instead. But it gets me pretty contented each time baby Reagan tried to press the key, and immediately I started visualizing him in a striking tuxedo on a stage, charming the audience with an awesome music piece from Mozart. Yes, I was absolutely mesmerized by my baby boy.

 I think baby Reagan has started to show interest in music, or I shall rather say he enjoys creating noises...that are music to his ears.

Trial @ GUG- GIfted Babes

Baby Reagan 's trial class for the Gifted Babes bilingual programme at Growing Up Gifted school. I knew that they have a segment on zoo phonics as well, and so I was quite confident that Reagan will enjoy it. We arrived half an hour early and so the teacher opened up a playroom for us to wait inside.

 Once again, baby Reagan was mistaken as a baby girl by the teachers there, haha!

There were two teachers in class, one spoke in mandarin and the other one in English. Since it is a bilingual programme, both teachers work together in such a way that one will instruct in English, the other one will translate in Mandarin and vice versa.

 The lesson began with free play as usual, recite a couple of poems, rhymes, Introduce letter "X", bringing out a fox puppet and painting a picture of a fox with bare hands. During snack time, the school doesn't provide the snacks and parents are supposed to bring their own. Next, the teacher read them a story book about bears-hunting. The book was quite small and by this time, most of the babies were quite distracted and tried to move away from the mat. After the story ended, they took out some props like fake grass patch and brown pillows, and the babies were to walk/crawl over them and pretend they are in the forest hunting for bears. I think this segment was quite interesting as effort was made to link the previous story to the sensory play. Reagan enjoyed the part when I held him to walk over the grass patch with his bare feet. He kept looking down at his own feet and then looked up at me with that satisfied smile on his face. Lastly, the teacher surprised the babies by bringing a lifesize bear into the classroom and announced that they have found the bear!

Next, the teacher continued to introduce items that made the phonics "X" sound , like "boX" and "foX." And after that, she began the zoophonics recitation, the segment I've been waiting for! Like a proud mama, I knew that baby Reagan's attention span during the phonics segment is going to impress everyone. Baby Reagan sat very attentively throughout the entire alphabets and even waved his hands along with it. It was enough to surprise the teachers and some parents there as it was rather an unexpected response from a 1 year old baby who came for the first trial. Of course I then explained that baby Reagan has been exposed to alphabets at a young age at home and also in the previous classes he attended, and so now he enjoys any activities related to phonics or alphabets.

Lastly, we moved over to the music room to sing and dance a few nursery songs with the teacher playing the keyboard, before we ended the class with the goodbye song.

Overall the entire lesson structure is quite similar to Bibinogs, although different animals are used for the zoophonics, and the space at GUG is much bigger. If to compare the teachers, Bibinogs' ones are louder and more engaging, which made the class more lively. 

Discovery trial @ BlueHouse Nursery

Blue House nursery is one of the few Reggio Emilio inspired preschools in Singapore and it is also where I first got to learn about this approach. It doesn't follow a strict or sequenced curriculum as teachers follow the children's interests and allow the child to lead.This education emphasize on the formation of creative intelligence, free thought, trust, and learning through interactions with their parents, teachers and their environment. It builds on the culture that respect childhood and the development of the child's ability to be independent, explore freely and communicate their ideas.
Reggio Emilio view the environment as a living organism which the children respect, learn and share a relationship with. Therefore the layout, the design, the arrangements of objects and materials used are all specially selected to encourage learning, discoveries and problems solving.  

Today Reagan and I made time to drop by the school to join their Baby & Toddler Discovery Program at the school's atelier.

 I haven't seen a more spacious and pretty classroom like this. The school really made an effort to turn this room into a very comfortable and conducive environment for babies learning and exploring with their parents. In fact, this is the kind of room and ambiance I would enjoy an afternoon away chilling with my girlfriends with some cakes and wine haha!

Overall, the atelier is a spacious room with a few different stations that provides different learning activities or stimulating objects that are either recycled or easily found in a household. The babies are free to explore around the classroom with their parent. In the mid of the class, the teacher will gather all the children together to sing some songs, then they are again free to explore the room and lastly when time's up, everyone gathers again for bubbles time. 

We reached the school  25 minutes early and so we got ourselves comfortable on the sofa and I read him some children books from the bookshelves.
When he entered the atelier, he couldn't even wait for me to put on the socks and crawled away by himself to explore one of the stations. Now Reagan is at the stage of yearning to touch , observe and explore anything he can lay his hands on. Especially things that can move or things that he can make sounds with.

He enjoys the station with all the metal and shiny objects and kept clanking the cup and pot together to produce noises, which somehow kinda amused him.
He also love the water play, where toy animals are thrown into the icy coloured water and children are encouraged to pick them out with their hands or with the scoop provided.

This trial class provides us a good experience understanding the Reggio Emilio style of learning. There was not much of a teaching involved from the teachers since it is basically a child-led exploration program. I think he did enjoy himself since there is totally no restriction for him to crawl around and touch everything in sight. However I didn't sign him up on the spot for the package , mainly due to the long traveling distance from my home to the school and also of course the hefty course fees! With just one hour of exploration and not much of " structured lesson plan" involved, I'm unsure whether it really justifies the cost. I guess I'm still one of those typical Asian moms that are more willing to pay for class that focus on academic as well and has a proper curriculum, compare to one that base on mainly just free-play and exploration. And to prove my point, Reagan and I were the only Asians present right from the time we stepped into the school.

I believe Asian or Singaporean parents are more willing to pay for academic schools like Kumon, Mindchamps, Adam khoo etc... and probably not on a program that focus on total free-play. Well, anyway baby Reagan gets to play everyday! And from the trial class, I've gotten some ideas on how to provide him the same Reggio Emilio approach at home, especially the ideas on turning recycled items into certain fun activities for him. I'm sure he would enjoy it the same :)

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.

Trial Class @ Julia Gabriel Centre- Playnest (6-18 months)

I've been contemplating to go for a trial at Julia Gabriel Centre, especially when many have compared it to Bibinogs, the playschool that baby Reagan is currently attending weekly. 

I took the 1pm time slot but due to the congested traffic at Orchard,  we were nearly 20mins late when we reached the school. Fortunately the first 20 mins was free-play time with the toys laid out on the mat, so I guess we didn't miss out anything much. There were around 5 other babies and parents with 3 teachers in the class.

After the toys were kept, all of us sat in a circle and sang the greeting and introduction songs. The teacher brought out a bear puppet and went around interacting with the babies. I made Reagan give the bear a big "Hi-5" and encouraged him to pat it gently. Next is sensory play and the teachers distributed different types of spices such as cinnamon, star anise..etc for the babies to explore with their sense of smell. Reagan was very well-behaved during snack-time as he sat at the children table, waiting patiently for the teacher to fill up his bowl with some organic biscuits which tasted quite tough and tasteless. Next is the outdoor play-time at the indoor playground outside the classroom. Reagan gets to play on the slides, mini ball-pit and the different car rides. Lastly is music and movement as the teachers played the piano and sang a few songs accompanied with actions.

Firstly, I'm quite impressed by the facilities, with an indoor playground and their own library where the kids can borrow storybooks. I also enjoyed the music & movement segment which was very lively as the teachers sang out loud with the piano-playing. But to compare to Bibinogs, both of them have really devoted and dramatic teachers, but phonics and the mandarin segments are not included in Julia Gabriel's playnest course. Furthermore, there are TWO free-play sessions during the lesson which I wonder if it's necessary to have repeated free-play time.

Anyway I've registered a new term for Reagan at Julia Gabriel since he left one more month with Bibinogs before his term ends, and I thought of a change of a new environment for him. However last week Reagan was having fun in his Bibinogs class and he recognizes his teachers and had much fun during the story-telling and songs sang in Bibinogs class. He is still loving his zoo-phonics and can focus very well during that segment. Therefore I made a decision to sign up Reagan for another term at Bibinogs, and deferred the Julia Gabriel course to the month of July instead, as I do not want both schools to overlap.