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.

 

Guru Kids Pro