The Bub in the Belly

Ryan finished off Edudrama at Julia Gabriel Centre for Learning a few weeks back. As I have mentioned before on this blog, we've decided that we won't be continuing next term.

Apart from the fact that the English and Mandarin classes will be held at separate locations from next term, we are not keen for a few other reasons.

For the English class, we feel that, in certain aspects, Ryan is too advanced, although he is the youngest in his class. According to Teacher Alexis, the main focus of the class now is to introduce the letter sounds and to familiarise the children with the alphabet. Ryan is more than familiar with the alphabet and letter sounds. I'd mentioned before that, at the start of the class, when all the names of the children are on the white board, Teacher Alexis will point to the first letter of each name and ask what's this? Ryan is the only one who identifies the letters (he shouts them out!). He is also the only one who can read his name. When Teacher Alexis points to Ryan's name (without saying it aloud), Ryan doesn't say anything - instead, he crawls over to the front of the classroom to acknowledge his name!

Another reason is that the class is not focusing on speech and drama at this stage and that was the area that we were targeting when we signed Ryan up. Teacher Alexis said that, at this stage, it is good enough for Ryan to have the courage and the confidence to get up and go to the front of the classroom to present the show-and-tell (and he does do this), even if he ends up not saying anything.

Actually, Teacher Alexis said that Ryan is doing fine. However, the fact that Ryan is doing well actually supports our decision to pull him out, because we feel that he doesn't need the class (at this point). We might consider enrolling him again when he's older, when the programme focuses more on speech and drama (this is when the children reach kindergarten age).

For the Mandarin class, we think it's not enough to help Ryan. Whatever is introduced in the weekly class is wasted because we don't practise it at home, so it's really pointless for us. Richard is seriously thinking of enrolling Ryan in a Mandarin pre-school!

Be that as it may, I think Ryan definitely had a lot of fun in the programme so the last day of class was a pretty sad one. Thank you JG! Ryan had a wonderful 1.5 years under your care!

After that, Ryan fell asleep for a little while, as our group adjourned for dinner in Tiong Bahru. Ryan woke up in time to have some rice, but he was generally not in the mood for socialising. He spent most of the time nursing. Nevertheless, we had a good tummy-filling time catching up with everyone and, all too soon, it was time to go home.

We recently received official confirmation that the Julia Gabriel Centre for Learning will be moving out of its premises at Evans Road at the end of this year. All Mandarin classes will be centralised in their new Mandarin setup at Rochester Mall, called Chengzhu Mandarin Centre. Their English classes will be transferred to their branch at Forum.


I think this is a fantastic development because it means that the children will have a wholly Chinese environment, rich with language and culture, which I think is the best way to learn the language. From the programme information of Chengzhu Mandarin Centre, it looks like the Mandarin Edudrama will be revamped and presented as 1.5 hour classes called "Language Learners" and "Language Skills". Other specialised Mandarin classes will also be offered, eg. "Cultural Arts", "Mental Arithmetic", "Han Yu Pin Yin", "Creative Writing" and "Mandarin Expressions".




Another consideration is that we are planning on sending Ryan to Berries next year for Mandarin enrichment. We realised that we would have to rearrange our weekend schedule to accommodate this, maybe even drop a class, but we never got around to deciding anything. It was a bit of a headache so we pushed the decision off. Perhaps this development points the way out - drop both classes at Julia Gabriel, which leaves us with Berries, swimming and Shichida. A good mix of Mandarin enrichment, something sporty/physical, some mind-training, and still lots of time to play and explore. It all falls into place, no worries.


Actually, according to the programme description at Chengzhu Mandarin Centre, the new Mandarin Edudrama class for Ryan's level (Language Skills) will incorporate not only speaking and listening, but also reading and writing, which makes it similar to the classes offered by Berries. Julia Gabriel programmes are known for their speech and drama elements so I suppose the new programme will still retain that strength and Berries will still have an edge on reading and writing (at least for now) - that's my personal "unprofessional" view, as I have not attended any classes with either centre.


So assuming that the two sit on opposite ends of a see-saw, which side do we sit on? Well, we choose Berries, because we want to start focusing on reading and writing Mandarin (and learning these skills in a fun environment, which is what Berries is known for) and secondly, because there is a branch near where we live.


We do feel that the speech and drama instruction in the Julia Gabriel Edudrama classes has been good for Ryan (I will post a review later) so we'll look into similar classes for him when our weekend schedule frees up a bit in the future.


So it looks like the coming term will be Ryan's last term with Julia Gabriel, and certainly his last term at Evans Road. Oh well, as Richard said, "We had a good run and it was fun while it lasted". We will always have fond memories of Ryan's 1.5 years there, all the loving teachers and all the fun times.

[All photos taken at Oversea Restaurant in Beach Road on 19 June 2011.]

For English Edudrama last Saturday, Ryan had to present something for Show-and-Tell. I decided to give him something extremely basic and simple, so I packed these paper puppets for him.

I actually made them a few weeks ago for Ryan to play with at home. If you have Eric Carle's book, "Brown Bear Brown Bear, What Do You See?", you'll recognise them. I traced the outline for each puppet from the book onto tracing paper, transferred the outlines onto drawing paper and coloured the animals with crayon and colour pencils. After cutting the shapes out, I taped a disposable chopstick to the back.

I had the idea to make them because we were enjoying the book so much and I wanted to use the opportunity to encourage Ryan to use more descriptive words - brown bear, red bird, yellow duck, etc.

As it turned out, Ryan didn't say much during Show-and-Tell, he was too busy "flying" the red bird around, but the other children loved the puppets and were eagerly shouting out each animal's name!

In other news, I mentioned that, after the previous (Mandarin) Edudrama class, Richard and I made a windchime to help reinforce the words "feng ling" (Mandarin for windchime). Well, I pointed to that thing every morning and evening saying, "feng ling! feng ling!" and I recited the windchime poem in his Edudrama book whenever I had the chance. Well, I'm pleased to report that Ryan seems to have absorbed the lesson! He actually said (a mangled version of) "feng ling" the other day when I pointed out the windchime to him! I'm so happy that our efforts paid off!

I will try to think of a way to reinforce this week's Mandarin lesson, which was "qi qiu" (balloon). If you have any ideas on that, do share!

[This post also appears in our Learning at Home section.]

Ryan started his term at Edudrama on Saturday. We signed him up for both the English and the Mandarin classes, which are back to back. Each is an hour long, a total of two hours every weekend.

The classes follow the structure of Playclub, except there is no arts and crafts segment, no snack time and no outdoor play. The number of students in class is also half the size of Playclub (and so is the classroom). We signed up for the parent-accompanied classes and Richard accompanied him for the English class, while I took the Mandarin class.

Ryan is the very youngest in both the English and Mandarin classes at just past 29 months and he got lots of loving attention from the teachers. I think he enjoyed the class, and so did I, but I'll let him take in a few more sessions before I form a firm view.

On Sunday, Richard and I tackled a little crafts project - we made a little wind chime for Ryan! In Mandarin Edudrama, Ryan (and I) learned the Mandarin characters for "wind chime" (feng ling) so I thought we could reinforce that by making one!

Ta-da!

We used bells, drinking straws, chopsticks and string. We added some beads for weight and to make it "pretty".


The construction was not really something that Ryan could help with much, so he just played with the beads and straws while Richard and I sorted it out. The design was done by Richard, I was just the manual labourer.

We hung it in the doorway of our little kitchen and will probably leave it up there for a little while. I shall point it out to Ryan everyday and say "Feng Ling!"