Brand StoryLil Unicorn:The qualityeducation yourchild deservesA quality foundation ensures a strong, reliable building, onewhich will stand tall and proud for decades, even centuriesto come. This principle can also be applied to the effectearly education has on the lives of an individual. A strongfoundation will ensure a better life for students, and notjust during the duration of their schooling. On that similarnote, a weak and faulty foundation, which is sadly whatwe’re facing today in our education system, would sooneror later cause a person to run into difficulties during theirschooling years . This can be demotivating, frustrating,and a pain to undo.Category of “Best Early Childhood Educationwith Entrepreneurship, Best Finnish AsiaHybrid Kindergarten & Best Preschool(Entrepreneur)”
Brand StoryBabyTalk recently had the opportunity tocatch up with two prominent siblings inthe education industry. They are Ms Anneand Ms Melinda, founders of Lil UnicornAcademy, and through our conversation,we learned more of what the idealschooling environment should be like,particularly at the early stages, or duringone’s early education. For those who arenot aware of this, these ladies have a richbackground in teaching children, wherebyMs Anne was also quoted as saying“There are individuals whom I have beenteaching throughout their entire schoolinglife!” Her sister, Ms Melinda, who tookup teaching Math and Science subjectsin Singapore, happens to also be a civilengineer by qualification. Read on to seehow this has played its own special rolein the school’s success.How Lil Unicorn came to be also has arather interesting air to it, for the foundersdid not decide to start from ‘the bottom’,so to speak, or at the kindergarten andpreschool levels. Rather, they were alreadytrying to make some changes amongsecondary school students before that.“As we were attempting to clean up thatecosystem, we could not help but noticethat this group of students are reallysuffering as a result of a poor educationfoundation,” Ms Anne explained. As theyworked backwards from secondary andprimary school levels, they were still nottruly aware yet of the ‘damages’ to beuncovered ahead as a result of inadequateearlier education.“When we opened our schools and sawwhat was coming in at the primary levelitself, we knew we had lots to undo, plus,we have to offer families a betterfoundation for their kids down from thekindergarten level to start making adifference,” Ms Anne shared.The way kids weremeant to learnThey knew what they had to do and howthey wanted it done, and they also knewthat they had to step away from thetraditional ways if they were to help kidsexcel. Since they already know that theentire system wasn’t doing well in thefirst place, conventionally trainedteachers would not have been right forthe job, that was for sure. So, imagineif you will, the subject of Math, forinstance, being taught to kindergartenkids by an engineer. Before we get tothat, did you know that there are veryfew math-inclined people out therecompared to people who are not greatat math? Yes, studies show that 80% ofall people are not math-inclined. Theissue is, alarmingly, most of our mathcurricula are created for schools by themath-inclined. This means that moststudents learning math are doomed tofailure or poor performance!As a result of her research into how kidslearn best, Ms Melinda came to knowthat kids tend to pick up lessons quickerand more successfully when they areinitially introduced or exposed tosomething, physically. In other words,they need to hold, touch and seesomething first before getting to thepictorial aspect of it, and then only canthey fully grasp the abstract part of it. Asimple example was how Ms Melindaherself introduced mathematics to herthen preschool daughter. “I would dosomething like actually give her twoobjects, sweets as an example. I wouldthen give her three more, and ask herhow many she had then. She would startto count them and conclude that theanswer is five. Only after that will otheraspects of the subject, such as pictorialand abstract come in,” she generouslyshared. “Here’s the problem; the standardway of teaching Math was created bymath-inclined people, hence they aremostly, if not fully, abstract (as in, theyare taught from the beginning itself insymbols such as 2 + 3 = 5),” revealed MsMelinda, a math-inclined engineer herself.Another conventional method of teachingis through rote learning and memorisation,and if we look at the Math subject, youcan see how this isn’t going to end well.“Memorising may work during the earlierstages of learning mathematics, but whenstudents start to learn algebra, forinstance, they’re bound to run into seriouschallenges which will negatively affecttheir performance,” Ms Melinda went onto explain. After offering morecomprehensive explanations of howmathematics should ideally be taught tokids, Ms Melinda added, “Imagine howeasy math can be for school children asthey grow older with all the properfoundation laid out!” “In the meantime,in our kindergarten, the little ones arealready sorting out their x’s and theirx-squares without issue,” Ms Annequipped with a smile! Well, that is thepower of quality education delivered byquality educators, if you ask us. And, dokeep in mind that this is just one example,out of one school subject, whereby theyall need to be rectified for children to besuccessful learners.Lil Unicorn: The best ofthe East and the WestFinland has one of the best educationsystems in the world - a fact well-knownby many. As explained by Ms Anne, theaim at Lil Unicorn was to merge the bestpractices from the East and West to comeup with a curriculum that works, whilestill maintaining important educationelements that most Asian parents arereluctant to do away with. Ms Anne wenton to explain that the solutions to theeducation issues we’re facing in the Eastshould ideally come from the East. “Wecannot fully adopt the whole idea of howthey teach over in the West and implementit here, for that would not work,” shestated. Hence at Lil Unicorn, what they’vedone is anchored the best practices takenfrom Finland to what we already havehere. It’s also where techniques come toplay, such as techniques in counting, aswell as memorising, to the point of beingable to use them for a lifetime!The way Ms Anne and Ms Melinda seeit, and we tend to agree fully, the oldsystem has failed. And leaving things bewhen it comes to kids’ education will justkeep reaping the same old results of themsuffering throughout their schooling yearsand beyond, being miserable, with lowself confidence, and with very little senseof creativity. They’ll also be losing out alot, especially in the Western world whereone would need to be able to conversewell and sell their ideas. The Eastern wayof education focuses a whole lot onacademic rigour, without much room leftover for social and emotional growth -which are actually very important for thecomplete development of children.Children need to enjoy their lessons andhave a sense of fun while learning. At LilUnicorn, adopting some best practicesfrom the Finnish education system meansthat fun and zest are now introduced intothe curriculum, allowing kids to enjoytheir schooling so much that they don’t
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