ST EDUCATION FORUM 2015

The team from Preschool Market attended the 2nd education forum organized by the Straits Times last Saturday, 27 June 2015.

With a focus on early childhood development, the forum saw like-minded educators from the early childhood industry, parents and experts on the early childhood field gathered to discuss about early childhood education.

Dr Dana Suskind, founder of the Thirty Million Words movement shared about the importance of parent talk. A research conducted in 1990 showed that the lack of exposure to language would affect a child’s entire life. Thirty million words would be the difference between children from disadvantaged background would have heard, compared to the children from advantaged background. Dr Suskind encouraged parents to talk more and provide a rich language environment for their children.

The second speaker, Dr Stuart Brown, founder of National Institute for Playin California, spoke about the importance of play and how play shapes the brain, opens the imagination and invigorates the soul of children. We were really excited to that play is an innate disposition in all human beings and adults should engage in play too! It is also enriching to learn that children should engage in free play for 2-3 hours a day, no learning agenda, no expectation of performance, just free expression of the children. As children choose what to engage themselves in, their innate motivations and talents are revealed. He also touched on rough and tumble play which is usually frowned upon as an outlet for children to develop a management system for their emotions and rules of engagement with other children.

The last speaker, Mrs Carmee Lim, mentor principal of MindChamps presented on music, movement and dance, and how it is able to boost brain growth, language and speech development in children. It was a really fun and engaging session that ended off with the audience joining together in a mass dance!