Columbia Academy

Columbia's Cerebrum Enhancement Programme

Columbia's comprehensive CEREBRUM ENHANCEMENT PROGRAMME is created by one of our founders, Ms Emily Ho. Through her research, she has designed and developed the programme to fulfill our philosophy of developing each child to his/her fullest potential. The programme aims to enhance and improve the child's development in the following areas.

Literacy Focused Approach

Our programme starts the child on the road to literacy at the age of 2. The child will learn pre-writing and pre-reading skills while in playgroup and progresses to writing complete sentences by Kindergarten. Phonics is used to support the child's reading experience. The child is also immersed in a whole language environment to enhance his or her literacy acquisition. Science concepts and knowledge (Discovery of the world) are also incorporated into literacy lessons. Besides language literacy, the child is also exposed to many different age appropriate mathematic concepts. The child will progress from learning number placement while in playgroup to solving problem sums in Kindergarten, which all leads to greater math literacy.

Inquiry Based Learning

Inquiry-based learning is an approach to learning that emphasizes the student's role in the learning process. Students are encouraged to explore the theme, ask questions, and share ideas, with the teacher as a facilitator instead of the primary source of information.

Creativity

Not to be confused with art, which is also an integral part of the programme, creativity in Columbia’s context is the ability of the child to solve problems using both conventional and out-of-the-box methods. We foster and encourage the child to come up with his or her own ideas to problem solving.

Creativity is associated with the right hemisphere of the brain. Many of our activities trigger the use of this half of the brain. Art, Speech & Drama, Play-pretend, Dramatic Play and many other forms of play are integrated into our daily timetable in order to cultivate creative thinking.

Musical and Artistic Appreciation

Our programme introduces many music, songs and dances to the children. Our year end concert is an event worth waiting for. The children will be put through their paces for a few months to practice their moves to put on a professional show at the end of the year. Throughout the year, our students also attend plays staged by local or overseas troupes. We also engaged professional speech & drama teachers to supplement our programme. The children not only learn about acting, they also learn new vocabulary, new ideas as well as thinking out of the box during these speech & drama lessons. They are also molded to be more outspoken and confident.

Critical Thinking Skills

Our programme is sprinkled with many activities to encourage the children to think logically and deductively. While creativity relies on the right hemisphere of the brain, logic relies mostly on the left hemisphere. The students are encouraged to use logic to predict outcomes and sequences in many classroom situations and lessons.

Financial Literacy

Mr. James Tan, the co-founder of Columbia Academy, is the co-creator and author of the Financial Literacy for Preschool Programme. This programme emphasizes on a values approach to teach financial literacy to young children. An emphasis on healthy living is also used to help students learn about these good values. This will help the students achieve Health and Wealth in their lives.

Character Development

A person's moral and character is usually molded during his childhood years. At Columbia, we understand that it is our responsibility to help develop our children to become good citizens in the future. Therefore, our programme monitors the children moral development and early intervention will be used to help correct any misconceptions the child may have and help them determine for himself right from wrong.

Social Skills

The programme refines the child's social skills to enable him to be well liked by adults as well as his peers. The programme monitors the children's behavior and if a child displays too much aggression or withdraws from his friends, the teacher will spot and correct such behaviors using counselling and other proven strategies. We also believe the best method to increase self confidence and self esteem in children is to empower them by increasing their knowledge, problem solving skills and abilities.

Gross Motor Development

Various activities geared towards developing the children’s muscles and co-ordination are also integrated into the programme. These activities are fun and many of our young friends are always looking forward to them.

Examples of such activities are our Gym classes, outdoor playground activities and play, annual sports meet, morning music and movement etc.

Conclusion

This excellent programme is designed to encourage the alternate use of the left and right hemispheres of the student's brain throughout the day. During certain activities, such as problem solving, the student will use both hemispheres of the brain effortlessly as both sides have been exercised throughout the day. Therefore, the programme is very effective in helping the student achieve his or her fullest potential.