Make Your Child 'Gifted'??

How to Make Your Child intellectually ‘Gifted’? (Is it even possible??) an oxymoron

BUT we can ask - Are Gifted-like Traits teachable and can they be formed?

Here are some commonly known traits of gifted children – highly curious, independent learners, possess a large vocabulary, reaching milestones early, able to grasp abstract concepts easily, be immersed in favourite topics, etc.

My two kids are all of that when they were six or seven years old, but does that mean they were gifted or does that mean we did our jobs as parents? At the age of six or seven, how can one really tell if they were gifted or not? I don’t think I’ve seen a five, six or seven year old child that wasn’t curious, that I couldn’t teach to read a few more words or add numbers, play a new game or grasp an abstract concept through proper use of manipulatives. Even if my kids weren’t that way before, most children that I’ve seen have the capacity to do those things.

Hence, is ‘giftedness’ trainable?

By primary 1, both my kids were among the top of the class, finishing their daily work within minutes because they already knew it. They had all the extra time to do their stuff – playing with blocks, reading their favourite books, crafting artworks, generating original thoughts through the use of various types of construction resources such as Lego, Klikko, Omnifix cubes, doing puzzle solving etc. All this while they were improving on their logical reasoning, spatial, and visual senses. I realized later on that all these playing helped them tremendously in their Mathematics, Science and language. It seems then to become a cycle – work seemed less tedious, and in turn, they could enjoy playing during free time.

And both of them got into the Gifted Education Programme...no prep, no stress!

Our Analytical Critical Thinking programme lies in the above premise - serious fun!

Read more at http://www.gurukidspro.com/analytical-critical-thinking-program.htm.

Also, catch us at http://www.thegiftedparents.com/.

What Good is Right Brain Training?

In the last decade, many centres in Singapore have sprung up to provide the so-called Right Brain training for infants, little tots, and kindergartners. Right brain trainings focus on areas such as mental imaging, observation training, memory linking, photographic memory, speed reading, and photo eye play.

There is also a significant number of online brain training programmes that have come up the last five years seeking to improve similar areas in our right side of our brains. Thus, for time-constrained parents, the alternative may be a good and value for money online brain training programme which they could subscribed to. Right brain training is a good investment especially for young kids between the age of 0 and 3.

A third alternative is for parents to do the right brain training at home. If you google words like ‘right brain training’, ‘right brain resources’, ‘right brain for kids’, it’s rather easy to purchase right brain products for your child. For one, there is a very comprehensive site that sells resources needed to carry out right brain activities at home - http://www.rightbraineducationshop.com/. Another that we found is TweedleWink at http://www.rightbrainkids.com/_new/home.php. (Guru Kids Pro is in no way related to these two companies so please find out more on your own prior to purchase.) There are in fact many more resources on the internet.

According to a few recent studies, while training in those mentioned areas will usually help sharpen children’s cognitive abilities on specific tasks, such trainings won’t bring any benefits to the kind of intelligence that helps children to reason, solve problems and think abstractly. In other words, right brain training alone does not increase fluid intelligence or working memory which is the intelligence needed to do well in (academic) work and in life.

We have quite a number of students who had started on right brain training when they were young. However, the concerned parents started seeing their children’s lack in areas especially in logical and mathematical reasoning when formal schooling commenced. Alas, they had to provide the children with a great amount of tuition to keep up with academic work which made them perplexed. They would often lament, “Why is he unable to cope with Math? He had been to right brain training for 4 years!” Actually, the poor child has excellent cognitive skills, but the lack of exposure to many different types of reasoning and problem-based questions at an earlier age had disadvantaged the child. With high demands from the subjects, the child who is in formal schooling now, may not find sufficient time (to make up for the loss of time) to do problem solving tasks. Easily, he becomes an underachiever!

SO, is Brain Training Worth It then?

Given the results of those studies, you might be wondering if brain training has any value. After all, if it doesn't increase intelligence, then what good is it? While such brain training might not result in an increased intelligence, it does increase help someone improve cognitive abilities in specific areas.

So go ahead, sign up for that brain training programme or download that brain-boosting app. Just be aware of what you are likely to get out of using such tools. Ignore false promises that suggest your child’s IQ will soar and instead, focus on sharpening the specific skills, challenging oneself, and having a bit of fun.

The Gifted Parents that I know generally are able to couple both the right brain and left brain lessons with their children. (By left brain trainings, it definitely DOES NOT refer to tuitions in academic subjects. That’s not what left brain training is about at all. Left brain lessons at Guru Kids Pro introduced children as young as 4 to more logical, sequential, rational, & analytical problems, and focused on the parts of things rather than the whole.) In other words, they know exactly the importance of the Whole Brain activation for optimal learning. In the next post, I’ll talk about the importance of having a Bipedal Mind which I frequently share passionately with our students’ parents.

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BrainWise™ - Singapore’s ONLY Decision Making Course for All Ages

Have you ever said to yourself, “Why did I just do that? What on earth was I thinking?” Perhaps you’ve engaged in an argument that exploded into a war of words. Or maybe you’ve stormed out of a room in a fit of anger or frustration. Or you’ve been so excited that you babbled like an idiot. If so, welcome to the human race.

None of us is perfect – children to adults. From the president whose affairs make headlines to the friend who does not take the car keys away from a buddy who has had too much to drink, we all do things we regret later.

Why? Why do we at times react emotionally rather than respond rationally?

The answer lies in the brain, the way it’s wired, and the short-circuiting that occurs when we don’t stop to think.

BrainWise™ course makes it easy to understand the brain and why people act the way they do. Termed the 10 Wise Ways (http://www.gurukidspro.com/brainwise-singapore.htm), each way explains how it is part of our problem-solving process.

If the letters of the alphabet are a reading tool, the 10 Wise Ways are a thinking tool. Like letters, these concepts are easy to remember, but knowing them does not men you know how to think. It’s just like knowing the alphabet does not mean one knows how to read. We use the Wise Ways to learn how to think in the same way you use letters to learn to read.

You had depended on your family and other adults in your life to teach you how to think. If you were raised in a family or an environment where people hadn’t learnt thinking skills, or had learnt them incompletely, you probably grew up without learning important problem-solving strategies.

Until now, this information has been a well-kept secret – not because people who know about thinking skills won’t share them, but because people who have learnt how to make good choices and decisions are unaware that they learnt skills others have not. They do not realize that people who respond using emotions and impulse are acting on basic “fight or flight” instincts, the only response they know. BrainWise™ lets you in on this secret. The 10 Wise Ways will teach your children how to stop and think, helping them make better choices so they (and you) have fewer problems.

BrainWise™ course will help your children quickly grasp these techniques and use them in their daily lives. Better yet, they will have the tools to teach these important skills to you and others.

The ideas BrainWise™ presents are universal and can be applied to any problem situation. You may already know or be familiar with many thinking skills. This course will help you and your children understand how the 10 Wise Ways work, why they are important, and how you and your children can incorporate critical thinking into everyday life.

Today, ways to prevent problems are not systematically taught at home and school. The BrainWise™ programme has given thousands of parents, educators, counsellors, social workers, and many others the methods to teach the skills necessary to stop and think. They have found the techniques useful for everyone, regardless of race, age, or culture.

As with all learnt skills, the more you and your children use them, the better all of you will become. It takes practice to master thinking, but soon you will be automatically stop and think before you react. This AHA! experience will make your life and your loved ones’ lives at home, work and school happier, healthier, and more productive.

Parts of this article are excerpts from the book How to be BrainWise™ – The Proven Method for Making Smart Choices by Dr Patricia Gorman Barry.

Is GAT Prep Needed? An ALTERNAITVE WAY of looking at it.

Research has shown that many children often fail to achieve a good IQ score due to temperamental difficulties rather than intellectual failings. Psychologists judged this to be true to a significant extent as they investigated the effect of emotional states on IQ scores.

In one study, kindergarten children were tested on their IQ, and then six months later, retested. There was a considerable improvement in IQ. The researchers concluded that the change had been due to anxiety or strangeness of the problems or both during the original test. Research has shown that practice in solving problems similar to those contained in an IQ test can make a big difference to the results. Thus, suggesting that it is the UNFAMILIARITY of the problems which suddenly confront them which throws them off balance. Henceforth, can an IQ test truly reflect a child's potential? And we should never forget the fact that some children warm very slowly to new tasks. It is then not their mental capabilities we are testing here.

Let's take the above and analogise it to the General Ability Test given to 12-year-old children when they have to apply for the direct school admission. For children who have never seen these questions prior the actual test, is it the anxiety or unfamiliarity that throws them off balance or are they simply unintellectual enough to do the test?

I am not advocating that all children should go for any prep classes. This is NOT my intention. In my opinion, the playing field for this GAT is not level, AND it is never going to be so. Isn't this the same for all kinds of academic pursuits - PSLE, O Level, IB programme, A Level, even in the University? Aren't almost all kids get prepped for all academic pursuits?

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Critical Period of Learning

Two decades ago, it was already widely accepted that our ultimate, adult levels of creative talent, intelligence and social effectiveness are determined long before the start of formal schooling, during the first five to six years of life. Successful development during this critical period of growth will be reflected in the achievements of later childhood, adolescence and adulthood.

BUT it's never too late still if your child is below 9 years old. At Guru Kids Pro, we always advise parents on the gaps that have occurred and the remediation you could take to patch up those gaps so that your child can achieve academically in the many more years to come.

The Gifted Parents™ Workshop is coming your way soon!

Talk to us soon!
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What is Hot Housing?

There was a post on "Is this considered Hot Housing?" which I posted several weeks ago. One main response which I frequently got queried on was - So, can I hot house my child to become a genius attending university at an age several years ahead of his/her peers?

 

Well, I would like to make clear my own stand to this type of ‘hot housing’ approach. The cases we often read about in academic journals, popular books or internet blogs are the success stories. For all attempts that failed, we do not know exactly what happened, nor do we know what price – to parents and child – that failure had brought. I am certainly not criticising the great desire of parents to encourage the development of their child’s full potential. How could I when that is precisely my purpose in crafting my curricula for pre-schoolers and early primary school kids! Neither am I advocating any methods, approaches and procedures which are adopted. Different methods suit the needs of different children. My main concern of the ‘hot housing’ approach for this purpose is that it is unnecessary and cannot possibly work with every child. In many cases, the results might turn out to be exactly the opposite of what was initially intended.

 

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The Gifted Parents™

Is your child gifted? Even if we are not sure of the answer, I am certain that you must have given some thought to the question. There can only be a handful parents who have not hoped that their children possess some special talent or ability which will help them do well in life.

We question the talents of our children but not the parenting skills of parents. I wonder how many of those parents who are so keen to discover if their children are gifted would be equally eager to find out if these children had gifted parents?

The fact is that gifted children begin with gifted parents. By that I do not mean parents who are exceptionally intelligent, highly educated, extremely successful, or even being gifted persons themselves. They may be any or all of these. But take heart, none is an essential component to be gifted parents.

Guru Kids Pro will be holding a series of workshops in the coming months that aim to empower young parents to become gifted parents - The Gifted Parents™ Workshops.

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The End of IQ (and the Dawn of Working Memory) Posted by Dr Tracy Alloway & Dr Ross Alloway (Oct 28 2013)

The following is an extract from the post:

If you are proud of your high IQ, stop reading now. Your IQ is an anachronism, and its reign is coming to an end. IQ, a measure of intelligence dependent on one's knowledge of specific information, has lost its relevance in the age of information. There is far too much information to know in our global society for any test to measure it adequately. Moreover, IQ won't help you in the things that really matter: it won't help you find happiness, it won't help you make better decisions, and it won't help you manage your kids' homework and the accounts at the same time. It isn't even that useful at its raison d'être: predicting success.

We know this because we followed school children over a six-year period and found that their IQ score at 5-years-old wasn't very helpful in determining their grades at 11-years-old. On the one hand, schools that rely on IQ to identify the best students may be missing a lot of them, and on the other hand, students that are rather clever, may be missing out on opportunities only available to those with a higher IQ score. Beyond the classroom, ... read more at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-alloway-phd-and-ross-alloway-phd/iq-tests_b_4168628.html.

There is now a highly affordable way to enhance your child's Working Memory. Simply visit
http://www.gurukidspro.com/jungle-memory-program.htm to find out what other parents have already done!

Guru Kids Po

Is this considered HOT HOUSING?

Some might say that when high ability children go for learning support such as seeking external help outside of school is ‘hot housing’, especially to get into the local gifted education programme (GEP), I seek to disagree to a certain extent. There are a few good reasons why these high ability children might benefit from additional learning opportunities.

1.          The high ability learner might be significantly ahead of their peers in a subject and may be in danger of being bored unless there is an opportunity for them to stretch their potential outside of school.

2.          The high ability learner could be underachieving at school in one or more subjects and could benefit from extra learning support outside of school.

3.          The high ability learner needs access to alternative forms of support which the school is unable to offer.

4.          Just as star athletes train with skilled coaches, high ability learners need guidance from well-trained teachers who are able to challenge and support them in order to help develop their intellectual abilities as early as possible.

5.          There is no strong provision for young high ability learners.

Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability. ~ John Wooden

At Guru Kids Pro, we believe that continuous effort is the key to unlocking your child’s potential. Thus, our stimulating and fun curricula are developed to bring out the full potential of each and every individual child.

Positive Thinking For Your Kids

Positive Thinking

 

Partly due to the simplicity of the concept and partly under the perception that positive thinking is only a surface action, positive thinking is often underrated by many people. However, many gurus have told us that positive thinking one of the main hallmarks of self-improvement. Anyone who is serious in improving themselves should and must practise positive thinking.

 

At Guru Kids Pro, our students are taught positive thinking through our communication with them as well as the many positive quotes we put up at our studio and classrooms. Over a period of time, our students internalise them through their verbal expressions and thoughts, and we also see a manifestation of positive thoughts in their work.

 

The use of positive thinking quotes when you communicate with your child can have a huge impact on their level of positivity. Teaching and encouraging positive thinking in and for children is gaining importance due to the realisation of having the right mindsets for achieving success in life.

 

Subscribe to our Positive E-cards to encourage positive thinking in your child. It’s FREE with no terms and conditions attached! Cheers to everyone with positive thoughts! Find out more at http://gurukidspro.com/positive-cards.htm.

 

 

Keeping Young Minds Sharp

Keeping Young Minds Sharp ~ Stimulate Your Young Child’s Cognitive Development

Parenting our children in this 21^st century is definitely a lot more different compared to the times when we were parented as kids.

Parents’ concern for their children’s cognitive development has increased dramatically over the last 10 years in Singapore as children’s life chances are influenced by their performance in formal schooling. Formal education has taken on more importance than ever. There is now a particular emphasis on fostering children’s intellectual or cognitive development. In addition to attending to their children’s physical and emotional wellness, parents are encouraged to focus on children’s cognitive and intellectual needs.

Hence, childhood has become “scholarized” with children spending more time engaged in intellectual pursuits.  Many affluent parents attempt to “educationalize” the home environment by promoting academic activities and integrating educational aspects into leisure time and routine aspects of daily life, fostering children’s cognitive development at every opportunity. Toymakers, academic experts and other professionals collectively call on parents to deliberately foster their children’s academic skills.

At Guru Kids Pro, we indulged in the experts’ proven research that cognitive development can be sped up; parents are encouraged to cognitively stimulate their children, assisting their progress through each stage. This notion that parents should deliberately foster children’s progress forms the bedrock for current childrearing philosophies. It also forms the foundation for Guru Kids Programs for young children.

Lifelong Benefits of Positive Reinforcement on our Children

Lifelong Benefits of Positive Reinforcement on our Children

In my many years of teaching, I have encountered numerous children with behaviour challenges. I have notice a pattern of negative reinforcement by both parents and teachers in their attempt to stop behaviours that are detrimental to their academic results.

Let’s first look at how human nature reacts to negative and positive stimuli:

-           All of us, both children and adults, want to avoid negative stimuli such as canings, getting yelled at by the boss, or disapproving looks.

-           All of us, both children and adults, want to receive positive stimuli such as hugs, compliments by the boss, or approving looks.

In the absence of any prolonged stimuli, most children (and even adults) will attempt to attract attention by creating responses which provokes the negative stimuli from the parents and teachers (and for adults, their bosses).

Why do children attract attention by being ‘naughty’? Well, most of us DON’T believe in rewarding expected behaviours. For instance, when our children behave in socially accepted manners, we believe that is EXPECTED. When they do well for their tests, that is EXPECTED. Thus, what do you think a child will do when he/she feels a need for attention? Do well on a test? No, because it is expected of them to do so. There will probably be no positive stimuli though he/she does well. Soon, it becomes a cycle of negative stimuli and poor behaviour between the child and the parents. 

Let me give you an example.

Tom gets an A on his test. His parents praise him and thinks that it is EXPECTED. However, for this next test, he got a D. His parents thinks that he did not put in his best effort. For the next test, he got another D. This time, he was harshly reprimanded. Tom gets yet another D and his parents take away his smartphone as they believe he must have played too much. Tom stops trying hard altogether. He resorts to acting out to get attention in class and at home. Over time, his poor behaviour escalates to get the same amount of attention. His parents finally scheduled a meeting to find out why Tom gets into trouble in class. At home, they equally have problem disciplining him.

The following is another pair of parents who have taken time to understand positive parenting techniques and the importance of consistent positive reinforcement.

Samantha gets a D on her test. A compliment is followed by constructive questions. Samantha changes her study habits. Samantha still gets a D for her next test. Her parents stayed by her and taught her in constructive ways what she could improve on. Her parents even scheduled a meeting with Samantha’s teacher. The teacher works with Samantha. Samantha will probably do better in her next test.

Regardless of the results, Samantha still has support from her parents and teachers, and is not alone, which is very important for her continual positive attitude towards academic work and life.

Let's carry both these scenarios into adulthood...

Using mainly Negative Stimuli
Tom graduated from the polytechnic with Bs and Cs. He's working at a company and is a hard worker. He does what he's told at work because he doesn't want to get into trouble. He shows up to work regularly and has had a few promotions.

Using mainly Positive Reinforcement
Samantha graduated from the polytechnic with As and Bs. She started out as a junior executive in a local firm. Samantha knew she could do better than that. She worked hard employing the same positive reinforcement techniques her parents had used with her to improve her self-confidence. The customers, co-workers, and the company’s senior management staff appreciated her positive attitude and hard work. Samantha asked questions and was not afraid to try or suggest new ways of performing daily tasks at work. She is now the manager of the firm’s new outlet with a very busy schedule as she is taking courses to further improve herself in the evenings.

Conclusion
Though the above two characters are fictional, the results are not. The main building blocks for both leadership and innovation is self-confidence and a fearless mindset to achieve tasks even in the face of temporary lack of achievement. It is only with consistent positive reinforcement that a child develops self-confidence to persevere and to develop and initiate creative ideas.

 

Do you want your child to want to do the right thing

or be afraid to do the wrong thing?

At Guru Kids Pro, we emphasis the importance of positive reinforcement to develop self-confidence, perseverance, and determination to overcome challenges through a series of hands-on as well as pen-and-paper activities.

Spatial Intelligence in Children - Training Does Matter!

Spatial intelligence in children – training does matter!

A relatively neglected yet crucial tool that all children should have is spatial intelligence.

Are we able to improve a child’s spatial thinking skills? Many research and experiments suggest that we can – and by a substantial margin. What exactly is spatial thinking? Scientists defined it to be when we visualise shapes in our ‘mind’s eye’. Architects and engineers – when they design buildings, chemists – when they contemplate the 3D structure of a molecule, and even surgeons – when they navigate the human body, have extreme high spatial intelligence.

Here’s a classic mental rotation test – a measure of spatial intelligence. Are these two shapes different or are they identical and merely oriented differently?









Spatial skills are only one component of a person’s overall intelligence. But research suggests that this aspect is an important predictor of achievement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Wai et al 2009). New  research suggests that a preschooler's visual spatial attention ability predicts his future reading skills (Franceschini et al 2012). Thus, the reason our General Ability Tests (GAT) for Direct School Admission (DSA) and Gifted Education Program (GEP) incorporated the spatial component.

So, can we help our children develop their spatial intelligence?

Definitely, there is compelling evidence showing that people, young and old, can improve their spatial abilities with practice. In fact, numerous experiments report the same results. After a period of consistent training, people, young and old, do improve their spatial thinking skills. Simple activities such as spatial rotation tasks and mental paper-folding tasks can help children improve their spatial intelligence significantly, sometimes even with short periods of training. Similar strong positive results have been yielded in other experiments where adults were randomly assigned to practice spatial skills by playing certain action video games. Hence, it’s never too late for anyone to improve their spatial intelligence!

What Parents can Do

Use Spatial Talk

Parents are capable of influencing young children’s spatial thinking by exposing them to a rich vocabulary of spatial terms such as ‘tall’, ‘wide’, ‘circle’, ‘rectangular’, ‘bent’, ‘edge’, ‘corner’ etc.

“Preschool children who hear their parents describe the size and shape of objects and then use those words themselves perform better on tests of their spatial skills, researchers at the University of Chicago have found.” read more at http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2011/11/09/learning-spatial-terms-improves-childrens-spatial-skills.

Play construction games

Challenge your kids to recreate a design from a picture.

The WISC IQ’s Block Design test is a standard way to measure spatial skills in children. Kids are shown the “blueprints” for a structure and given a set of blocks to recreate it. You can do the same thing at home with wooden blocks.

Play with tangrams and jigsaw puzzles

Puzzle-solving ability and spatial intelligence are highly linked. In a recent longitudinal study, it was shown that the more frequently young children worked on puzzles before the age of 4, the better they performed on a test of mental transformations of 2-dimensional shapes when they were 4 and a half (Levine et al 2011).

Practice mental rotation skills

You may like to use painted blocks and asked your child to draw out what the surface of the block will look like when you rotate it once, and when you rotate it twice.

There are also many paper-and-pencil brain teasers that involved mental rotation skills.

At Guru Kids Pro, we engage your children in all activities that develop their spatial intelligence!

 

GAT for your child's DSA

At Guru Kids Pro, we prep your child for his/her GAT (General Ability Test) for the Direct School Admission (DSA) on an individualized basis. You may book individual time slots that are convenient for your child. We customized the prep for your child.

We believed in catering to the needs of every individual child as there are great differences between each and every child's learning styles, strengths and weaknesses.

Is it necessary to prep for GAT? Well, it's the exposure that matters, not comprehensive practice. Thus, we advised only a certain number of hours for your child.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
~ Theodore Roosevelt

Queen's Road Studio

 
 

Guru Kids Pro's new studio at Queen's Road, 3 min from Farrer Road MRT (circle line). It's just next to West Lake Restaurant.

Tuition versus Cognition

Tuition isn't a bad thing BUT MAYBE improving cognition may be the answer

Tuition isn't a bad thing. Tuition classes can ensure that kids are able to keep up with the syllabus, better prepared for their lessons at school and have consistent revisions. Their parents, usually with both of them working full time, may not have the resources, time and knowledge to coach them on a regular basis after a tiring day. (Exams these days are so much tougher than our times! If we compare the Math papers today with those which were set a mere 4 years ago, one cannot miss seeing the great difference in standards.)

Education Minister, Heng Swee Keat, has said previously that excessive tuition can be harmful and result in boredom among school-going children.

"It actually inculcates a ’kiasu’ syndrome... it’s making things worse. As it is now, a lot of kids are not having a childhood," said one parent.

As a teacher, I cannot agree more with Mr Heng and the parent. Excessive amount of work kills all creativity in the child. I have seen many bright children who, at 6 years old, are so full of life, curiosity and creativity. Alas, by the time they are 12, you could barely see a glint in their eyes!

On the other hand, I have also seen a handful of children who flourished without the need to do excessive amount of work or attend numerous enrichment lessons. Having worked with gifted kids and had done an extensive research on the parenting styles their parents had adopted, I realised a CRUCIAL REASON why their kids are deemed ‘gifted’ (we are not referring to those who are very highly gifted or are prodigies as their giftedness is an in-born trait).

 These ‘gifted’ children have an excellent working memory, a wonderful long-term memory, high visual-spatial skills, as well as high logical & reasoning skills. When I dwelled behind the histories of their childhood, a distinct pattern emerged. Almost all of these ‘gifted’ children were highly stimulated in their early childhood years. They were exposed to toys and games that stimulated their visual-spatial skills, logical-mathematical skills, verbal-linguistic skills, and reasoning skills.

What then do I see in children who performed mediocre or poorly in their academic work? Most of them are have poor working memory, short attention or focus spans, low spatial-visual ability, and poor reasoning skills. Basically they have cognitive gaps which need remediation. This does not suggest that they have any underlying learning issues or difficulties. I am certain that I have cognitive gaps too but am thankful that it did not impede my learning much back then. As all of us age, these cognitive gaps will start to widen again unless we take steps to stop it.

Many research papers have shown that the important years to develop our cognition is between 0 and 6 years of age. This is an important window period which cannot be neglected. Thus, the government’s strong support to improve the quality of preschool education is a very much awaited welcome move.

 

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Accelerating Your Child

Perhaps the most general objective of education is that it cultivates excellence. But at Guru Kids Pro, we want to help each child achieve his/her optimum intellectual development, happily of course.

The intellectual development of a child is no clockwork sequence of events; it also responds to influences from the environment. At Guru Kids Pro, we provide challenging but usable opportunities for every child to forge ahead in his/her development. Experience has shown that it is worth the effort to provide the growing child with problems that tempt him/her into next stages of cognitive development.

Every child has the innate potential to move along faster through the various stages of intellectual development in areas such as Mathematics, Science, and languages.
Experience highly challenging yet fun and stimulating activities by signing your child up for our trial lessons.

Luckiest Thing in Life - HAPPY CHILDHOOD

“I remember Abraham Maslow, a psychologist, who once said 'Almost all creativity involves purposeful play.' If my own kids have to spend all or almost all his/her time doing academic work just to be good enough, then it’s truly sad. They wouldn’t be able to have the luckiest thing in life – a happy childhood. Thus, from a very young age, my two kids would enjoy purposeful play which helped in many areas of their cognitive development. I would also remember to let them have free playtime to stimulate their planning & organisation skills.

Being an MOE-teacher & started teaching the upper levels, I saw the constant struggles most children had in their upper primary years, and this would continue into their secondary school years. Hence, I wanted my own kids to do well in their primary school years without the high stress. I read up on proven, well-researched pedagogies on childhood parenting, motivation and pre-school education, and as time progressed, on gifted education pedagogies. I had indirectly 'prepared' them well for advanced work which they, & even myself then, weren't aware. I have written Guru Kids Pro’s curricula for the young minds based on all my extensive readings, collections, and most importantly, my experiences with, not only my own kids, but with more than hundred children I have taught over the last decade.”

~ chieftrainer, Ms. Katherine Law, M.Ed (Gifted Education)

Fallacy - Marketing Fallacy

Many parents, when they send their kids to any preparatory courses, often like to ask - What is the percentage pass?
Well, how do you justify the number given to you? Also, does it mean that if there is a high percentage pass, your child is one of them, or vice versa? Of course, the number may seem to give a peace of mind. But I would take this as a fallacy - a marketing fallacy.

At Guru Kids Pro, we do not like to give any numbers to mislead parents as a high percentage of passes does not mean any child who comes by stands a high chance, and vice versa. We look at each child individually!

Every child is different. Every child's strengths and weaknesses differ. Do be alert to what a centre can provide for your child's needs by talking to the teacher(s).

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. ~ John Dewey

Memory Skill

Assess your child's ability to remember patterns

You will need items such as crayons, blocks, or strips of paper in green, red, and white. Show your child the pattern below and ask him or her to copy (or draw) the pattern using the materials you provided.

 

Nursery-Kindergarten:

 

 

 

 

Lower Primary:

 

 

 

 

Middle Primary:

 

 

 

 

 

Upper Primary:

 

 

Tickle Your Mind

A man is wearing black. Black shoes, socks, trousers, coat, gloves and ski mask. He is walking down a back street with all the street lamps off. A black car is coming towards him with its light off but somehow manages to stop in time. How did the driver see the man?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Answer:

It was daytime.