Shichida

After being in Shichida's waiting list for almost 2 years, at last I was called to enrol ZY for their April intake. Since ZY is already in Heguru, I was contemplating if I should stay on with Heguru or go for Shichida. After discussing this with my sil, she suggested I replace her to take SY to her Shichida class to see the difference myself.

So, I attended Shichida class today at Centre Point, PJ with SY, my 3 years old niece. In the class, there were 6 tiny tables & 12 tiny chairs like the ones in the kindi. Each child is accompanied by their parent.  During the entire session, Alpha wave music was played. The class began with good morning song in Japanese. Next, Sensei read out loud the day & date today. Both day & date were written on a card board which was placed on the white board. Sensei took it down for each child to touch & feel using their little hands for a second. Then they did breathing exercise & activated their super head, eyes, nose, mouth & tongue by touching them with the child's hands. After that the children were given a pair of goggles & snorkle for their imaginary game. Today, they pretended to dive into the sea. The children were asked to close their eyes & were taken to the back of the classroom with their pair of goggles & snorkle to touch the pictures of things in the ocean that were hung up on the walls. Later, they were escorted back to their seats & were told to close their eyes again and imagine that they were back to their class.

Below are the summary of what we did in the class today...

Speed reading:
Audio was played at x2, x4, x8 speed and back to the normal speed. Each child was given a cute little book made from few printed A4 paper, placed in a few plastic sheet protectors before the story was played.

Eye Play:
A marker pen was given to each child to join up the dotted zig zag lines on a card which was placed in a plastic sheet protector.

Photographic Memory:
Sensei showed a picture of a garden with 4 birds at different places to the children just 1 time for 3-4 seconds. The children then were asked to place the picture of the birds on the correct places on their own picture card given by sensei. They were given about 2-3 different sets to try out for the photographic memory part.

Linking Memory
Sensei flashed about 15 cards and repeated 3 times before giving the children their set of cards to arrange according to the sequence sensei flashed them. After making sure the children have put their cards in the correct sequence, they were asked to close all the cards. Then sensei picked out a card from her set and asked the children to pick the same card from their set. We did this about 5 times using the same set of cards.

Flash cards
There were different categories of flash cards shown. Speed was about 2 cards in 1 second.

ESP
Sensei placed 3 pictures on the table; a sea urchin, an octopus & a fish. Sensei then touched the sea urchin picture and said "Oh , this is sharp", then the fish & said "this is soft" & lastly the octopus & said "this is soft too". Next, the children were given their set of pictures and were asked to close them and shuffle them around. Then they were asked to pick out the sea urchin picture by touching the 3 cards.

Math
Sensei showed the children a card with 2 empty square boxes with a plus sign in between and an "equal to 4" sign at the right end i.e. _ + _ = 4. Then she placed 4 marbles in one of the empty square & pointed that 4 plus zero (in the other box) is equal to 4. Lastly, the children were given their sets of marbles & cards to play with mommy.

Chopstick
The children were given a pair of special chopstick where there's a place for their thumb and the 2 sticks are join together at one end. Each child were given a picture showing 3 coloured square boxes which looked like a train. Then they were given a bowl of colourful sponges and were asked to pick each up with their chopstick and place it in the correct coloured box.

The class ended with a japanese goodbye song.

So, despite the fact that Shichida is more famous than Heguru, my decision is still to stay with Heguru; reason being it's convenient to get a carpark at MidValley in the morning and their teaching materials are still new. Last but not least, ZY's teacher seems very professional & she's able to connect with the children well.