The ChildCare Centre

Although I've woken up earlier, we still didn't manage to arrive at the physcician's on time. Renee had woken up a few times complaining about 'dry throat'(thirst) and asked for water - for a change, daddy tended to her requests, ;).

I had not planned to cook her lunch to the office today but since her tummy's not well, I thought it's best that I still do so.

True enough, she's got gastric flu! Oh man... I've been taking her un-finished food!

At the office, she was bored 'cos I didn't pack alot of her stuffs along 'cos we have to bring our filtered water over. Daddy had complained about the taste of the water at the office(even though I've given the air pot a good wash every day) and I couldn't agree more - probably it's due to our tastebuds being used to drinking filtered water(no chlorine taste, etc) now. We don't have bigger containers, so from tomorrow onwards, if I'm going to be there, we would be bringing 2 bottles(cool) and 1 small jar(hot) of the water to the office, heee.

The fatique has finally got to Renee when her dua pek left and she requested for me to carry her so that she could sleep on my arms(I didn't bring my mat along 'cos she had been so positive about not going to sleep in the office, but I still brought her smaller bolster, lolz). She fell asleep almost instantly and had quite a good nap til the chatter of daddy and his visitors at his office next door. And guess what she did? - she went to sit on the floor in daddy's room! lolz. It wasn't very nice so to get her out of the office, I told her to follow me down to the childcare centre to have a look, which was unplanned at all. Hmmm, the centre is pretty spacious and some of its curriculum seems pretty ok to me but when the teacher explained to me, I'm not sure if she'd be confused later when it comes to phonics since Montessori is using their own method(when we resumed school with Kinderland or another preschool). Other pointers to note :

- most activities are conducted within the half hour range(except for Montessori activity- which is 1 hr and nap time - 2 hrs allocated). Montessori lessons are not based on an overall general teaching but according to each individual child's 'standard'. There's pros and cons here, good in the sense that if your child is learning faster, he/she can progress and learn more without being 'held back', bad thing is, our formal schooling system is not adopting this method, so he/she might be too advance for his/her own good in a way OR even perhaps, unable to re-adapt back

- individual work(which I think it's good for personal concentration) and group projects

- yoga and speech & drama as part of their curriculum

- the children were hving their speech & drama enrichment when we arrived and some kids were seen walking outside the particular room? Kids of various age(1-2, 2-3 and so forth) were all seen gathered together in the same room when we were invited to view the 'activity' but it had ended and it had seem quite 'messy' - maybe it's due to school bus fetching time.

- mandarin also only half hour

- I asked how different they're from Montessori and was told that they're infact the authentic Montessori although many people are confused as they have the foreword 'Modern'.

- 3 sets of uniform needed to be purchased for full day care students but they'd be changed out of it to home clothes at noon right after the shower so I don't really see the need for 3 sets, especially when they're usually in the air-con room.

When back at the admin office, Renee was led by the N2 teacher to the earlier room where they were doing some free drawing but the asst teachers were merely doing their own doodling and the kids were doing theirs 'cos I think it's activity time(til 7pm when the actual pick up time for CC). Personally, I feel a little involvement/guidance from the teachers would be better but I wasn't there to observe further, so can't really tell much. However, I guess I really shouldn't expect too much of this when it comes to a C.C. set up... Arrrggggh, such dilemna! I hadn forgotten to ask about the food menu and the 'bath' method - maybe it was because my heart wasn't 'in it'. On the other hand, Renee, as usual, had enjoyed her moment there and hadn't want to follow me back to the office til we told her that she's to tell her daddy that she likes it there and wanted to go there.

I shared with daddy what I've observed and during our discussion, Renee fussed about going back there, aiyoh! Ya lah, what she saw was the classroom props, children's work and participated in the free drawing, surely she'd love to go, :D. But I still have my reservations, so we'll see..., besides I'm waiting for a favourable reply from principal of Kinderland.