How does a Singapore preschool decide on their curriculum? Does their approach to education follow a structured learning or an unstructured learning preschool curriculum? How do they incorporate play and experiential learning into daily learning? We hear about the teaching philosophies and programmes from the educators who shape the curriculum.
Mosaic Preschool
Ms Crystal Tan, Executive Principal
“Mosaic Preschool is a play-inspired Singapore preschool that centres learning around fun and meaningful experiences for the students. We adopt a dual-framework system – UK’s Early Years Foundation Stage framework with Singapore’s Nurturing Early Learners framework. This provides a more well-rounded exposure for the students where they build curiosity for what they’re learning, and they get to strengthen their life skills and confidence to tackle any challenges that come their way. We embrace and celebrate diversity with over 20 nationalities enrolled across our schools. Each child is unique and, through our programme, we aim to unleash each their interests, competence and attitude for life-long learning!
The preschool curriculum is taught by our highly trained and compassionate educators who are committed to bring out the best in each child. We empower children to explore, discover, create and learn through lots of fun engagements. Learning is best done when the child is an active explorer and not the passive receiver. The environment for both unstructured and structured learning also provides the optimal conditions for children to strive and have fun in Mosaic Preschool. There are tons of opportunities to engage daily in sports, games and water play in our large outdoor play area.
Besides offering a trilingual programme, we are also the first Singapore preschool that offers 17 co-curricular programmes under our roof. These electives include swimming, speech and drama, ballet, arts and music, Montessori learning, robotics and coding, and more. They can be customised according to a child’s interests and capabilities, to widen their holistic development and their attitude to learning.”
Bukit Timah campus: 896 Dunearn Road, #05-01
Eunos campus: 168 Changi Road, #05-01 (infant care service provided)
Siglap campus: 20 East Coast Road
6909 0470 | mosaicpreschool.sg
Odyssey The Global Preschool
A word from the Odyssey team
“Odyssey Singapore preschool focuses on preparing children for the real world. They’re nurtured with 21st-century skills, particularly communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity. Admittedly, not every child will leave us a genius, but they’ll leave ready to conquer the world.
Children are directors of their own learning at Odyssey. This ideology guides the projects they’re involved in, their direction of play and their exploration of the creative curriculum, particularly art, music and fitness.
Our preschool curriculum is an amalgamation of unstructured and structured learning, designed to sustain each child’s individual development. Children are encouraged to engage, experience, analyse and solve problems using a heuristic approach.
Early years children (18 months to 3 years) learn most effectively through play and there’s still some structured learning based on milestones for this age bracket. More structure is in place for preschool children (4 to 6 years), especially in the area of literacy and numeracy. However, they’re also allotted time to choose activities and materials they want to engage in because they should be given the freedom to make choices and explore their interests. Their academic learning is curated based on their perspectives, ideas and thoughts, and prepares them for both local and international school systems, . In this instance, learning objectives are met through a hands-on, minds-on and hearts-on pedagogy.
Each classroom has a highly-effective teaching team including a Curriculum Specialist, an English Language Teacher and a Chinese Language Teacher. Our nurturing and caring educators create an environment that encourages children to interact with materials, peers, parents and the community. Learning thus becomes about discovering the world, and children become active communicators, inquirers, innovators and researchers.”
6 locations island-wide
6781 8800 | contact@odyssey.sg | theodyssey.sg
The Schoolhouse (formerly Pat’s Schoolhouse)
A word from the team at The Schoolhouse
“The philosophy of The Schoolhouse revolves around play experiences that integrate different learning areas. This enables a child to acquire transdisciplinary skills such as self-management and communication skills, numeracy concepts and understanding.
Learning guidelines of the preschool curriculum closely follow children’s developmental milestones. A timetable is carried out each day. However, learning is not restricted to the classroom. Children of this Singapore preschool are exposed to different activities that are intentionally curated by the educators to bring meaning to a child’s everyday context.
Educators of The Schoolhouse plan and implement activities that cater to each child’s unique interests, needs and abilities to build on a child’s prior knowledge about the world and achieve learning outcomes for the child.
An example is when a group of K2 children identified a piece of land on school grounds, filled with weeds. After deciding to transform the space into a sensory garden, they created blueprints containing innovative ideas and constructed a model with recycled materials. The completed playground included climbing ropes and plants potted by parents and children.
Unique to The Schoolhouse is the Author Study programme. This gives aspiring writers the opportunity to delve deeply into an author’s life and body of work. The children develop their reading, writing, research and critical thinking skills as they learn about an author’s writing style including language choice and common themes, and draw connections between the author’s style and their own work. The programme culminates with a meet-the-budding-author session, where each child will present their written story to the other children.”
17 locations island-wide
6781 2288 | theschoolhouse.com.sg
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