Liu Si Kun Music and Arts Kindergarten

REVIEW 1:

"Pros: Music and art emphasis: individual one to one piano coaching daily. Activities: roller skating, martial arts, ballet, arts and drawing. Academics: Mandarin, English, Kumon mathematics. English lessons (daily) by English native speakers. Fun, nice and big school environment, interesting indoor 'Fun Dazzle' playground.

Cons: 20 students per class (with 2 teacher and 1 assistant). Classes are conducted in Mandarin except for English."

REVIEW 2:

My girl has been in the school for about 4 weeks. She seems to be adapting quite well except for the initial first 2 weeks which is not unexpected given that it is a new environment.

Now she looks forward to going to school on those days where they have activities that interest her, for instance, rollerblading, ballet and martial art classes.  It is a different activity everyday.  She loves her daily piano class and has definitely made significant improvement after attending about 20 lessons. They have about 18 piano teachers in the school, so I think the child's performance very much depends on the teacher assigned to him / her.  Fortunately, my girl has a very good teacher who is very patient, easy going and she makes her lessons very interesting.

The school makes an effort to keep parents updated through :

- had a 1/2 day session recently where parents could sit in the class (with lessons as usual)
- children will have a "mini" piano performance all parents (of the class) 2x a year
- the child's daily piano activity is being recorded in a book
- once a week, the teachers will put their comments (about the child's performance / progress) in a book

Her class teacher has played a very important role in helping her to adapt to school life.  She is now definitely a less fussy eater ! And she is also motivated to learn to use chopsticks at meal time.

The only drawback (at this juncture) is the school offers very basic English lessons.  My girl told me that she could be the English teacher as things taught were too simple / basic for her."

REVIEW 3:

Pros: not expensive. Cons: the kids are required to sit still and behave according to the requirement of the teachers. I do not think they have enough free play time. The teachers are native Shanghai women who speak no English, and sometimes they chat in dialect. Once we observed the play time of the class, and saw my daughter ran to play with kids of a different class in the playground and was bullied. She cried there for quite a few minutes, and no teacher ever noticed her leaving or crying. They kept chatting. We took her away and deregistered.