Since my first article on Heguru in October last year, I’ve received many questions about the program and how it has benefitted my children. Time flies and both my daughters, Lauren and Georgia have been attending Heguru Education classes at OneKM Mall for more than eight months now. It’s time to share about the progress they made since day one!
 

Georgia in Toddler Class

When we started Heguru last year, Georgia was a month shy from turning 1 year old. To be honest, I didn’t expect any progress from her. After all, she was just a baby and all that I hoped for, was for her to enjoy the activities.
 

Attention Span and Confidence

Compared to just three months ago, Georgia’s attention span has improved tremendously. She could now sit through the entire 60 minutes class with minimal fidgeting. To think that she used to get up and ran away halfway through the class! Now, she could even repeat some of the words after the teacher.

Georgia seems to enjoy the hands-on activities during classes. Here she is proudly walking up to the front of the class and pick the right answer for link memory exercise.

Love of books

I’ve always wanted to instill the habit of reading in my kids. Unfortunately, I’m not the most consistent mum when it comes to reading with them. That’s why I’m always happy to see both Georgia and Lauren picking out books on their own and handing them to me, so I could read to them.

That’s not all, they are able to stay focused for a prolonged period of time, reading two to three books at one go isn’t an issue at all.

Yep, they picked those books out by themselves when we had to wait for our classes to commence.

Language capacity

Now, I’m not sure if second child tends to talk earlier but Georgia totally amazes me with her language capacity. She started speaking in short sentences at 17 months old, and surprised us with her ability to communicate at such young age. She could understand instructions well, even complicated ones like, “Go to the room and wake jie jie up” (Yes, I make her do my dirty work for me!).

Compared to her sister who was only babbling at the same age, Georgia has less frustrations and meltdown moments. It’s because she could tell us what she wants and it takes less guessing on our part. We are able to attend to her needs immediately.

By the way, have you ever had a full conversation with a one-year-old? So cute! Georgia could understand my questions and answer them accordingly. Simple ones though.. like “Would you want yogurt or bread for breakfast? Yogurt? Mango or blueberry flavoured?” Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves here.
 

Lauren in Preschooler Class

Expanded vocabulary

Lauren, oh Lauren. If literate Lauren can read this, please know that I love you. But you took a loooong time before you start saying more words beyond mummy, water and breasts (for milk).

I’m happy to report that Lauren’s vocabulary has exploded in the past few months! Not only does she remember the words we’ve learnt at Heguru, she is able to apply them in sentences too. It’s been a real treat whenever I hear my chatterbox says words like unwell, experiment, temperature, and
many more.
 

Good memory

 
In Heguru class, she is able to arrange twelve picture cards according to the order correctly. I didn’t have to help her, or rather, I kind of got lost when it got to the 6th cards, so can’t be of much help!

Not only is Lauren great with short term memory exercises, her long term memory is surprisingly good too. We went to a live Hi5 show five months ago. Recently, she saw a recoding of the same show on YouTube, and said to me, “Mummy, we saw this show, isn’t it? We were there.” Trust me, she doesn’t say the same about shows she hasn’t been to.
 

Quick to learn

The thing with having good memory is that it helps with learning. I’m entering bragging territory here by saying my kid really is a quick learner. She’d come home from kindergarten with a new song she’d just learnt and remembers every word.

Here’s a grainy video as proof. She knows every day of the week! *proud mummy grinning ear to ear*

 
It also helps with the fact that I only have to tell her something once and she would remember it. I attribute it to the memory training lessons at Heguru for this. For example, we have family members in Australia and Malaysia. I told her once where everyone is – Ethan, Aunty Lynette, Ah Kong and Ah Ma live in Sydney, Australia, while Kung Kung (my dad), yee yee (my sis), Rohan and Mithraa is in Malaysia. One day, after our recent trip to Kuala Lumpur, she was flicking through photos on my phone and told me, while pointing at a photo of us in front of Petronas Tower, “Mummy, this is Malaysia. Rohan and Mithraa lives there.” Link memory works!
 

ESP

I’ve always been skeptical with the ESP activities conducted during Heguru classes. I mean it’s just down to 50/50 chance if a kid can pick the right answer, right? Well, unless my child is psychic. Lately, Lauren has become picky with eating green vegetable. So naturally I did what a good mum would do and hid all the vegetable underneath rice or noodles that I’m feeding to her.

I’m surprised when she said, “There’s vegetable in the spoon!” I was sure it wasn’t visible. Okay, maybe she understands her sneaky mother very well. But how do you explain this?

On occasions when we do ESP inspired activity at home, she surprised me with 90% accuracy in picking the right answers!

I’m a little spooked out but I guess all those right brain extra-sensory activities really work.
 

Confidence

Love to learn

Lauren brought out the flash cards we have at home as got me to question her. The girls loves learning new words.

 
This is a big one for me. I believe at this age, it isn’t what the kids already knew but it’s the life-long love for learning that determines how successful they’ll be in life.

My kids clearly enjoy going to class. There had been Friday nights when they refused to go to bed, all we had to do was say, “Lets sleep, so you can wake up bright and early for heguru class” and they’d agree to sleep right away.

I believe Heguru, being their first ‘schooling’ experience has provided a fun and engaging learning experience which sealed my kids’ love for learning.
 
This article first appeared in The New Age Parents e-magazine issue April/May 2016.