Grooming Talk – Singapore Montessori For Children

Walking into the room with the small colourful plastic chairs was reminiscent of walking down memory lane – a time when we all went to kindergarten for our first taste of formal education.

Welcome to Montessori for Children, a popular private school for young children of preschooler age.

With the continued emphasis on education by society, it has become inevitable for parents to kickstart their own children’s education earlier by enrolling them into such schools. According to many parents, the Montessori method has helped their children excel at what they are good at. It is interesting when I learnt that besides teaching children alphabets and numbers, they are also taught life lessons including how to groom themselves. As the Chinese saying goes, “a good habit takes three years to cultivate”. Thus, the focus on grooming has to start from young so that it becomes an integral part of your lifestyle…just like how it is second nature for us to shower, brush our teeth and wash our hair.

But in order to teach the children well, the directresses (whom we commonly call class teachers) must first be equipped with the knowhow so to transmit the necessary skills to the children. And lest you think they were bored, think again. The directresses enjoyed themselves endlessly. I can hazard two reasons for this.

First, the roles were now reversed. For once, they could become ‘children’ and listen to the professional grooming director share his experience. Second, the directresses-now-turned-‘children’ could sit in the oh-so-cute colourful plastic chairs and enjoy each other’s company as they come from different campuses in Singapore.

With my ‘children’ divided into two camps – one English and one Mandarin, I had the enviable task of switching between both languages and catering to both their needs and questions. If you ask, I had fun…And so did they too! If only…if only…The icing on the cake would have been if I had the chance to sit on that small little colourful plastic chair and take a picture with it as well…:)