If you were a 90s kid who played the first generation of Pokemon – Blue, Red, and Yellow – you’ve possibly gone on to have children of your own and your current focus is on training them to be the very best that ever was.
But deciding on a preschool has more real and lasting effects than deciding between Charmander, Squirtle, or Bulbasaur, so we took a trip down to My First Skool to find out what has changed since our times and was surprised by what we found. Kids are now learning skills to tackle challenges at hand and even how to navigate tricky social situations at school!
Here are some things that have changed since our time that you should take into consideration:
Where would adults get our daily updates if not for our Facebook feed? The older generation will be heartened to hear young tots are keeping up with current affairs.
News of Joseph Schooling clinching Singapore’s first Olympic Gold to S.R. Nathan’s passing and legacy are now topics put into the classroom context, cleverly repackaged into lessons that gets the students reflecting. Whether it be their aspirations to athletic greatness or realizing their ability to contribute to the nation, preschoolers today take away a lot from trending news.
Never again can the younger generation be faulted for political apathy when they’re started so young and your relatives will be enthralled as your child chimes in when current topics are discussed at family gatherings.
Back when we were kids, art lessons revolved around printing shapes with potatoes or cutting construction paper with jagged edged scissors. They never reached the level of sophistication that is currently imbued into My First Skool’s creative art lessons, where kids are learning about the artistic strokes of Van Gogh and Picasso as early as preschool!
No longer are we raising a generation of Singaporeans void of creativity and artistic flair, with children taught to paint, sculpt and even reinterpret the works of top notch artists in strokes of genius imagination.
These are lessons that hone their muscle control and coordination, where they can openly express their feelings, develop self-discipline and fearlessly experiment with colors, textures and designs.
Nothing will beat the pride you’ll feel as a parent when they present to you their recreation of “Starry Night”.
There’s a quote that says “everyone you’ll ever meet knows something that you don’t.” That includes bright young children with untainted perspectives of the world, who can teach us a thing or two from their innocent worldviews.
There’s a role reversal in the My First Skool’s Chinese program, where teachers let the students take centre stage and teach. Teachers begin by revealing a storyline, then hand over the platform to the children, in this interactive class segment that provides props, costumes and even sock puppets for them to narrate their own renditions in Mandarin.
These guys are encouraged to be participative, curious and given the creative freedom to explore the storytelling process. By acting out situations in Mandarin they’ll be comfortable understanding, speaking and reacting bilingually in both home and school settings.
There’ll come a day in your child’s life when they’ll try to wheedle their way into getting their first pet. The last thing you want to do is play bad-cop, dampening their hopeful faces as you lightly break it to them that they’re not ready for the responsibility. My First Skool has just the solution – Animal Corners – which eases children into the duties of animal care-taking.
From slimey snails to cuddly hamsters, kids are taught to handle these animals, care for them, and lend a hand in cleaning the enclosures. Class duties these days include way more than simple sweeping of floors or cleaning the whiteboard because there are more serious responsibilities.
Say sayonara to pokemon and tamagotchis with Animal Corners, where kids aren’t just mindlessly caring for virtual pets. They have to roll up their sleeves, get their hands dirty and even record their daily observations. The class pets also make for a brilliant class-based follow-up to the My First Skool’s annual field trips to the zoo.
To help get parents involved in their children’s development, My First Skool gets creative and rolls out events like Restaurant Day.
Restaurant Day is when preschoolers are taught the value of service, as they become little waiters and waitresses for the day and through this interactive role-play, rise to the occasion and be responsible caretakers of their own restaurants.
In this engaging event, masak masak which was once considered child’s play, has real life applications and is one of the more creative ways children are empowered for tasks at hand, inculcating self-confidence in their own capacities and shaping their belief that there’s no job beneath them.
The Science Centre should start awarding Young Scientist badges to preschoolers, who are now trained from 4 years old to understand the basics of science.
Learning is brought out of the classroom, where My First Skool takes kids on a quest of discovery, collecting leaves of all shapes and sizes and catching caterpillars from the garden. They’re even taught leaf classification and to identify leaf shapes and textures.
It’s a complete sensorial experience and teachers no longer have to battle distractions to capture the class’ attention with demonstrations of science experiments like adding baking soda to vinegar. By showing children the simple science behind everyday reactions, their imaginations could be sparked, resulting in the next big Singaporean invention!
Many of us have never been able shake off our fear of public speaking, but this will not be a problem for the next generation. In segments like classroom Show and Tell, teachers decide on a theme and the kids embark on a “scavenger hunt” for anything in class that falls into the chosen category.
When I was there, the theme was “solids”. The kids demonstrated a knack for thinking out-of-the-box with objects, with a cheeky boy choosing a chair so he could sit on it while waiting his turn as he confidently exclaimed “chairs are solids!”
Do you remember “minting” your own coins by placing a piece of paper over some coins and shading out its silhouette? Monetary transactions have more legitimacy in “sushi bars” that children run in designated Dramatic Learning Centres at My First Skool.
Here, the kids learn how to buy their own food and the concept of money in addition to regular lessons.
Teaching children the concept of money and how to navigate social interactions by treating their classmates and teachers with respect and courtesy is the end goal of these sessions, where children take turns to assume different roles – from cashier to customer.
There’s never a silly question at My First Skool and children are never asked to hush so they won’t interrupt the teacher. Inquisitivity is actively embraced, and mid-lesson questions are warmly invited and addressed, so that everyone – from the asker to his classmates around him – can learn!
Open houses were once only at the junior college, polytechnic and university level, but now preschools are conducting their own primary school “open houses”, where K2 preschoolers are taken on excursions to primary schools in preparation for their P1 transition.
My First Skool’s comprehensive Primary School Preparatory program not only teaches children skills like how to interact with their peers or deal with bullies, but the K2 classes also get to visit a designated primary school where they’ll attend classes, meet older children, and are assigned their own primary school buddy for a day! Parents can even tag along on the excursions to these primary schools.
Where were Primary School Preparatory courses back in our day? Kids these days are out to ace school from day one, with My First Skool’s first class curriculum that guarantees your child quality education with their inquiry-based curriculum. Now children will have their formative years filled with learning experiences that are not only concrete but also tremendously fun.
Discovering the “extraordinariness” of their environment forms the basis to learning at My First Skool and children have a say in what they learn in class with Inquiry Projects and curious children find out topics that actually interest them .
There’s a My First Skool curriculum and service to meet your specific needs – from infant care services to their specially designed Skool-Ready© curriculum – that ties in with Ministry of Education’s (MOE’s) Pre-school Curriculum Framework.
Level-up your child’s knowledge, skills and dispositions in the six domains of Aesthetic & Creative Expression, Discovery of the World, Language & Literacy, Numeracy, Motor Skills Development and Social and Emotional Development and you’re setting them up for one mega-evolved preschool experience at My First Skool.
This post was brought to you by My First Skool.
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