Let's discuss what's get children started from 1 years old to 5 years old . Please share which center is good and bad.

can we start from 0month to 12 months?

There's no bad centres.
Its just their method of approach to the children.

anyone heard of Shichida method?

How bout Kumon? My cousins went to Kumon and their homework is really tough for their age, and yet my cousins performed really well and enjoyed their classes.

kumon i found is too much work. the students keep learning new things and not enough time to evaluate or stop to think.

Really? But my cousins seems to be doing find. They're seldom simply throw tantrum simply because they didn't get what they want. They always ask "wh" questions and how this, how that. Why couldn't they have another bowl of maggi. Why they cannot watch MTV. They're 6 and 10 this year. They went to kumon when they're 4-6. Since they went kumon, they're much better in their behaviour, they look forward to their next class. Very competitive. and they have basketball classes for boys, ballet for girls. There's also badminton and hip-hop. But I heard hip-hop was scraped. not too sure. It's been awhile since I see them.

hackwire - for someone who's on LYN so long, I thought you'd at least post up your opinion right on the 1st post. it's best that way, 1st post gets the ball rolling better ya know.

considering the # of children attending such places vs the # of families in Klang Valley alone - I'd say not many parents are sending children to such places.

most would just pay the nanny or day care center, ranging from 500 to 1k per month per child if I'm not mistaken. In many cases, the child is taken care off but not lose out on the education - their mental and motor development.

ok goldfries, will do that next time.
Kumon have many centers around now . i think not all are the same as proclaimed. So what's really good for one , may not be good for others. Perhaps, a good creative education or a better system are PS3 games. Many children can be good in analyzing and making good decision in gaming too.

First thing first, please understand the different in between Children development centre and kindergarten.

There are kindergarten offering courses for infants as young as 18 months up to 6 years old. Most of them do offer "day care" services too with the price of RM250 +- for half day and RM600/RM700 for full day. That's the standard price of it, but I do come across some that claiming to be "special" but actually nothing special other than chopping a lot on the parent's wallet. Hence, it's best to do some survey around first.

As for children development centre such as Kumon, Math Monkey and etc, these ARE NOT a need but only additional/optional for the children. They are only offering program/courses they are best at, but not covering it fully for all the other areas such as physical, psychology, emotions and etc. These centres do have their good point too but think again, do your child really need them?

Well, as for my understanding of Kumon is just a place where the parents send the children there to do work. The style of it can be copied by doing a lot of repeatable work, then slowly progress from one to another with time limitation. Hence, check on the worksheet properly, each of it with a column to fill in the time frame the child used. As for the workers work in Kumon are basically NOT professionally trained as EDUCATOR. THEY ARE NOT EDUCATORS but only FACILITATORS because they aren't required to teach at all. What they do is just marking all the worksheet with the answer sheets prepared, then prepare the homework sheets for the students, once a while they'll just ask the student some simple questions based on the worksheets and that's it. So, mind me if you'll want to send your child to these kind of centres at such price? Their mathematic is good, no doubt about it because of a lot of enforcement through the worksheet, but think again, what's education to you? Is it just about calculating 123?

p/s; I've done research on Kumon and also visited a lot of their franchises to sit in for observation as well evaluation.

you have a very good point here. my niece is been tortured by the grandparent to go to tuition, ballet class, kumon, school homework and she is just standard 2. Kumon is so repetitive and as similar like working in a Factory Production area or Assembly plant. This is Japanese style and it's their way of surviving the nuclear holocaust at one time. Look at now, time had changed and Japanese also no longer hold to Samurai Philosophy.

anyway, being a good parent , smart parent, relax parent , educated parent , emotional parent etc.... are all totally different and need focus .
When is the right time for kids to enter the learning circuit after the Play circuit.

The play circuit i believe is where childs are sent to gymboree or any art classes, music lesson, swim etc.
I am not worry about education as yet as i think this will develop by itself. the child have lots of time for curriculum education but life education matters most of all.

for me, it's just spend time to play & teach my kid. that the best, no pressure & it's good for developing relationship