Monday, January 19, 2009

School Hunting Again

It is school hunting time for me again. I posted my dilemma here before on whether we should send Bela to big school or not this coming school year. We really wanted to enroll her at St. Theresa’s College in Quezon City as it is the closest school in our area that we really like but the youngest age that they can accept is 5.5 years old. Our second choice is Colegio de San Agustin in Makati but we would really prefer a school within the Manila or Quezon City area as we don’t want to stress Bela with traveling to Makati everyday.

And so our decision, we will just move her to a progressive school in the Manila or Quezon City area this coming school year as she will have to go to school five times a week now and we will just decide again next year if she is ready for big school or not.

I took a leave from work today and I will be on leave again tomorrow to check out more schools. We visited two schools today – Early Achievers Learning Center along Sgt. Rivera in Quezon City and Child Preschool in Tomas Morato. Bela was able to attend a 1 hour trial class at Early Achievers today (I will make a separate post about it). After her trial at EALC, we checked out CHILD school and so far we like their curriculum better than EALC. I will schedule another trial class for Bela at CHILD preschool next week.

Tomorrow, Bela will attend a trial class at Mind Specialist School along D. Tuazon Quezon City. We checked out this school last year. They have the same curriculum and methods at Toddlers Unlimited but for some reason, Bela doesn’t like to go inside the classrooms when we checked it out last year. Let’s see what will happen tomorrow….

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Happy Wednesday! Bloghoppin' here... Hey, I have an interesting tutorial for you that I have written myself. It is about adding Adsense on your Single Post in XML template. I hope you'll like it! God Bless you!

Elle Marie Oplas' mama said...

O my!!! you travel everyday from Quezon City to Makati?!!!

My daughter is also with Toddlers Unlimited... Lambs class:-) It's sad that you are leaving TU...

Unknown said...

Hi. I have been posting like crazy because I ran into a lot of threads on schools in QC. And because I am so happy with this school I discovered, I want to share it with all those looking for progressive schools for their kids.

I visited a school, Akademeia Schools, Inc. a few months ago. It is a school for the highly able, which means their curriculum is enhanced and enriched. I visited it a few months ago and will be enrolling my 3 kids in that school.

The favorite things I found out about Akademeia when I visited are:
1) Each student has an Individualized Education Plan. So they all have unique challenges, behavioral modification plans, etc.

2) All their activities aim to touch the eight multiple intelligences: Linguistic intelligence ("word smart")
Logical-mathematical intelligence ("number/reasoning smart")
Spatial intelligence ("picture smart")
Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence ("body smart")
Musical intelligence ("music smart")
Interpersonal intelligence ("people smart")
Intrapersonal intelligence ("self smart")
Naturalist intelligence ("nature smart")

3) They address visual, auditory, learners. They can even adjust projects, seatworks, etc to the learning style of children.

4) They have a MINIMAL HOMEWORK POLICY because they believe children need time with family and to pursue other hobbies and skills.

5) If your child is into sports, instruments, etc. , they are lenient with absences and help your child catch up.

6) They believe in using the world as their classroom. They have many field trips, resource speakers, competitions, and even online experiences.

7) They have many other subjects not offered in traditional school.

They believe it is the teacher's responsibility to teach the students so they don't agree with tutors except in certain cases plus they take it upon themselves to make sure the students learn

9) Religion is an optional subjects but they have a service leaning subject. They built homes tru gawad kalinga and have raised funds for Ondoy victims. I think they also teach the less privilege.

I can't say enough good things about this school. My kids sat in for 3 days and they didn't want to go back to their current school. LOL.

Hope this helps.