First Trial Star

For the longest time, my mom has been bugging me about little dude not being madaldal yet.  So, just to pacify her, we went to a developmental pedia a few months ago and had Marcus tested.  Turns out, and as we expected, he's perfectly fine, even advanced in some areas.

The doctor, however, recommended that we start sending our little one to a toddler school in order to have more interaction with other kids.  Since both hubster and I are working, Marcus is left with just the yaya (who I bet would rather text and watch telenovelas than talk to my son) the entire day.  There are also no kids of his age within our neighborhood so there's really limited "communication venues".

Hence, we are now on hunting mode for a toddler school for Marcus.  Right now, my major considerations are:

1. Proximity - At this point, I don't think I can bear the thought of having to entrust my boy's safety to a school bus service of some sort to take him to his classes.  Plus, I wouldn't want to stress him out with byahe pa lang so we're really aiming for a school that's close to where we live, walking distance, if possible.  The good news is, we have 4 schools within the village so I'm hoping at least one of them qualifies.

2. English as medium of instruction - I always believed in teaching my little dude English as his first language because I thought Filipino can inevitably be learned anyway.  We talk to him at home in English and we kind of force yaya and our families to speak to him in English too. Although I learned from my other co-n@wies that it isn't easy to learn Filipino once he's used to speaking in English, I still want him to be taught mainly in English.  When he grows older, sa dami naman ng mga nag-ta-Tagalog, I'm sure he'll learn din naman.

3. Appropriate Teaching Methods - I want the learning interventions to be well thought-of, scientifically-proven kumbaga.  I am not comfortable leaving my child's learning to a bunch of teachers who are not properly educated themselves to specialize on young minds.  Also, since this is just toddler class, I am expecting the teaching techniques to be fun but educational and age-appropriate.  It's not supposed to be very academic at this stage (baka magsawa sya kaagad and end up hating school by the time he's a teen) so I guess it should be really more "play-based".    


So anyway, we went on a trial class this week and now we have some idea how the usual classes go.  Not sure if we're going for this one already but one thing's for sure - my little boy IS ready to mingle with classmates! He had so much fun dancing (and screaming!) with the other kids.  Too bad I didn't get to take photos (took a video though) except for this, which I thought was really cute.

I hope you can still see the star stamp on his hand.  He really loved this!

Hopefully, we'd be able to have another trial class in the coming weeks so that little dude can officially become a school boy. :)