Curious Academy

There's this new enrichment centre in town, the Curious Academy, that is running the Glenn Doman programme. I've been wanting to let L try out the session and finally managed to do so a couple of weeks back. Yah this is a delayed post. Anyway, the reason I was attracted to Curious Academy wasn't so much the Glenn Doman programme, it's more the child friendly setup and the other 'side' programmes they have, i.e. cooking, music, dance, art, swimming, etc. It would have been the perfect one-stop centre for all the non-academic extra curricular activities, and they have 2 very nice playgrounds (one indoor, one outdoor) that will keep the kids occupied for hours. The only problem is that you need to join their core programme, i.e. the Glenn Doman programme, to be able to join the other programmes. Darn!!

How was the Glenn Doman programme? There's actually 2 parts to the programme, the physical component (think Little Gym, Flykidz) and the flash card component. For the physical component, the kids go through a little obstacle course, e.g. roll down the ramp, get onto the monkey bar, jump on the trampoline, swing on the hang bar and go back to where they started (something like that). 3 different physical circuits were introduced during the lesson, and in between each circuit, flashcards were introduced. So the session went something like this:

• Free play
• Clean up toys
• Sing hello song
• Physical circuit #1
• Storytime + flashcards (words from the story)
• Physical circuit #2
• Flashcards (same words for reinforcement)
• Physical circuit #3
• Flashcards (facts). For the session we attended, they were shown pictures of primates and given some facts about the species shown
• Good bye song

I think L enjoyed the class (well she enjoys every class she's ever been to) although she refused to go into the class and was screaming at the top of her lungs when I took her in (that was because she wanted to stay and play with H in the indoor playground). When she finally stopped wailing, she started participating. I think the physical activities will do her good - she did most of them but not all; some she was actually afraid to try like swinging on the trapeze. But the glenn doman bit (i.e. the flashcards), I'm not sure I'm at all convinced. It's not that I don't believe in the effectiveness of flashcards, I just don't think it's the right way to teach a kid to read. I still believe in giving the kids solid grounding in phonics. Besides, I don't really need L to know how to read at this age. Learning how to read is not my main objective. But I must say I'm pretty impressed with L's memory. One thing for sure, my little L's concentration is amazing. When the teacher was flashing the word cards, she was the only one concentrating. After flashing the cards once, the teacher actually tested the kids by holding up 2 cards and asking the kids which card showed the word she said (e.g. she held out the words "winter" and "snow" and asked which one is "winter"). Both times she tested L, L got both words correct. I'm not sure if she just fluked it, but the teacher was pretty amazed.

I'm actually quite torn with my decision - on the one hand I like the place, I like the physical component of the class and I would love to get L into the other non-glenn doman programmes they have; on the other hand it's pretty expensive (and crazy) to pay a premium for glenn doman when all I wanted was the physical / gym component. I could easily join the Little Gym or Flykidz for half the price.

So I guess I'll have to give this a miss.