Art and music trial classes

We've been meaning to enroll Yiu Yiu for some enrichment classes for some time but had been too lazy to look around and do our research. However, Yiu Yiu has been getting increasingly interested each time we talk about it so we thought we had better let her try out some classes and gauge her interest.

Last Saturday, we enrolled her in the Little Da Vinci Creative Kids Art trial class at the Da Vinci Creative Kids centre near our house. She was very eager to join the class and even chased hubby and I away when her class was about to start. It was only a small class with less than 5 children.

When we went to pick her up 1.5 hours later, we were shown her handiwork for that day.

And here are the teacher's comments:
• She has got steady hands and can colour pretty well, without colouring out of line.
• She can mix and match colours, and uses most colours available, and not stick to few select colours.
• She has a good sense of shapes, and can draw them correctly when asked to, indicating good hand-brain coordination. I was surprised at this remark and I told the teacher that it should be normal since she's learning about shapes in kindy too. The teacher then told me that some children, even those 5-6 years old, may recognize shapes but have difficulty drawing them out when asked to.
• She's able to follow instructions – she was asked to draw squares while some of the other children were asked to draw triangles or circles. She told the teacher that she wanted to draw triangles too, but when the teacher explained that she needs to complete drawing her squares before she can draw triangles, she obeyed and didn't make a fuss.
• Lastly, the teacher commented that she's extremely TALKATIVE!!! :-)

On Thursday evening, I took her to Anne Musikschule Performing Arts Centre (AMPAC) near our house to try out the Music and Movement class for 3-4 years old. Again, she was very eager to join in and promptly chased me out of the room. It was again a very small class with four children, including her. Apparently the room is normally curtained but for some reason, the curtain was taken down on that day so I could observe the class in action. They engaged in a variety of song, dance and movements, before moving on to some simple instruments, in this instance, the xylophone and drums. Also, due to parents' request, they had also incorporated keyboard into the class, not so much for them to actually play, but more to teach the children the correct way to handle the keyboard, how to place their fingers, etc.

The teacher's comments were:
• She can concentrate for a long period of time.
• She's very participative and takes lots of initiatives in trying out the different apparatus.

In both instances, she enjoyed herself tremendously so we ended up signing up for both classes.