My world started crumbling in Primary 1 as I sat there and Mrs. Tan, my Mathematics teacher, introduced my class to strange things called addition and subtraction.
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Pablo Picasso Jr.
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My class mates and I sat there befuddled, staring in amazement at the chalk board. We couldn’t fathom why we had to ‘carry’ the 3 or why the bigger number had to minus the smaller one but we still did it. And just when they were begun making sense, two ‘cousins’ of theirs, known as multiplication and division, entered our world and created utter chaos. Sigh. My never-ending struggle continued right up to junior college where General Paper classes unleashed my anger at the world through the pen but mathematics merely handcuffed me with the insane doings of ‘Probability’ and ‘Differentiation’.
Perhaps, if I were given a better foundation and an earlier one at that, would things have turned out better? English astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington once said, “We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about ‘and’ ”. Finding out this ‘and’ is what GlobalKids excels in. Globalkids uses abacus to get the children interested in mathematical procedures.
GlobalKids
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Principal Ms. Karen Lim, and vice-principal Ms. Jessie Choo
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Run by principal, Karen Lim, and vice-principal Jessie Choo, GlobalKids researches and vows to create the whole of a child. As if tackling mathematics does not do wonders itself, GlobalKids adopts a bilingual (English and Mandarin) programme to respond to the demands of the need to know a minimum of 2 languages in today’s world. With an attendance of an equal percentage of locals and expatriates, GlobalKids uses a notebook to document each child’s progress as a form of documentation for parents to stay in touch with the daily happenings of their child.
Besides teaching mathematics with the use of an abacus, the children also get in touch with poetry – English and Mandarin poetry that is. Poems help to express the innermost feelings and even little shrinking violets have been known to just let themselves ‘go’ through the magic of poetry. Located at Crescent Road, GlobalKids has ample space for the little ones to run around and explore. Never a centre to restrict children in play,
GlobalKids also taps the creative side of children by having them participate in fun, hands-on activities.
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Unity in Diversity
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If you’re wondering if the name of the centre has anything to do with it being recognised globally, then well, you are slightly off course. “We have children from all over the world studying here. But that isn’t to say the children have no problems settling down. We had a Swiss child who could not speak a word of English so I personally stuck by him until he felt more comfortable in his surroundings It’s not just me but our entire teaching staff makes it part of the job to go the extra mile for the children,” explains Lim.
GlobalKids hosts its grounds to children from Uzbekistan, Korea, the United States and Amsterdam, just to name a few. By extending the invitation to foreigners, GlobalKids does its part by feeding the children with global knowledge and exposing them to different cultures. Books and things are brought in to aid in the global educating section. As diverse as each child’s background is from the next, the children see the centre as a place of belonging and somewhere that completes their identity.
So before you begin pondering about little Jamie’s or little Daphne’s foundation is Mathematics or even Mandarin, perhaps a click at the Global Kids Website, will makes things a little easier to ponder.