During the first semester our kindergarten children settled down comfortably, they made valued connections with each other and began to thrive in our child-led stimulating bilingual environment. Our unique research-based early childhood education programme is enjoyed by children aged 6 months to age five.

As said by Benjamin Franklin, “Tell me and I will forget. Teach me and I will remember. Involve me and I will Learn”. At Yew Chung International School (YCIS) our education research proves children learn not only “by doing” but also when they feel safe and secure. Science confirms that a stressed child’s brain will not respond well.

Recently a class of YCIS Early Childhood Education (ECE) Section three-year-olds were exploring to endless depth, their interests of transport and food. Glorious playful areas of focus were provided for the children, connecting to and sharing their daily life experiences.

Roleplay is one of the most insightful forms of play, our teachers are able to observe the children’s thoughts and interests more closely. Through imaginative roleplay, children are able to explore their everyday lives, order their thoughts on different subject matters and explore concepts that we as adults take for granted. It is an invaluable tool in helping children to make sense of the world they live in.

Within our play-based learning environment we seek to promote multiple skills, taking a peep inside our classrooms and you will see:

The Inventor: As they engage in roleplay with their peers around the concept of transport, they share creative ideas and build upon possible hypotheses together.

The explorer: As the children continue to explore their everyday observations, they build more meaningful connections with their classmates, the subjects of ‘octopus cards’ and ‘transportation’ recently came under the spotlight. The children sought to explore this interest in a number of ways from joining chairs together to form cars, aeroplanes and trains; and explored the experience of going on the MTR train. The children were excited to continue discovering this subject more closely in the safety of the classroom and the teachers began discussing ways to make a real MTR train in the classroom.

The engineer: During the recent transport interest the children were very sure that they wanted doors that can “open and shut”, and they offered their ideas to fix this.

The collaborator: With the transport interest continuing, they spent time making and exploring the use of ‘octopus cards’, the children began joining chairs together to make a train, as they explored the subject more closely. They organised a “walk-way” between the seating and contributed their own observations of what is in a station and inside a train carriage. The children worked to develop a mind map of their ideas, observations and plans for their own class MTR.

The communicator: They also strengthened their social development, they learnt how to negotiate and share a common space, as they communicated their intentions and ideas.

The children excitedly explored the MTR map. They shared station names that they were familiar with and found the stations closest to their homes. This has been a keen topic of interest and the children spent a great deal of time chatting amongst themselves. By opting for characters to roleplay as, they built meaningful everyday roleplay actions, as passengers, drivers, and station assistants for example. The communication through play encouraged their bilingual development, expanding their English and Chinese vocabulary. 

If you haven’t been to an Early Childhood Education Information Session to gain a deeper insight to our philosophy, please check our website for upcoming sessions.

https://www.ycis-hk.com/en/admissions/enquiry-n-visit