Learn through play; Play through learn. At our kindergarten,
we expose young children to “divergent thinking” through educating toys and
activities. It is known as the backbone of creativity. It consists of a
two-step thought process. Example, through building blocks, a child will learn
that he or she needs to use the biggest block at the bottom as foundation if he
or she doesn’t want the ‘tower’ to fall apart. First, his or her mind will run
through the existing knowledge stored. Then, it will create new ideas on how to
use his or her on-hand tools efficiently.
A research on kindergartners’ creativity was carried out by Kyung
Hee Kim, Ph.D., an educational psychologist at the College of William &
Mary shows that creativity
scores have significantly decreased since 1990. To make things
worse, parents nowadays are demanding increasingly on academic achievement and put
less emphasis on creative, child-driven learning. Hence, kindergartens have no
choice, but to revise their educating syllabus towards this direction. According to
Jennifer Keys Adair, Ph.D., an early-education expert at the University of
Texas, this focus on rote memorization is not positive at all to
cultivating strong creative thinkers. She continues, “Children aren't given the
opportunity to express their own ideas or come up with their own way of doing
things. Instead, the answer is A or B or C. There is only one right answer.”
Again, our
kindergarten focus on a balance of activities to ensure your child's thorough growth. Your child at our kindergarten, is not
just to learn about letters and numbers but also other creative activities like painting,
performing and pretending (drama activities).
