The real challenge begins, now....

On September 25, Tuesday, I brought Renzo to Yamaha Music School for his very first enrichment class - Music Wonderland course for 3 years old toddlers before they could start the real piano lesson around the age of 4.

Okay both Daddy Chan and I did not have the chance to learn how to play piano when we were young, in fact I have totally zero interest in musical instrument. But it's a "No-brainer" decision to send Renzo for piano class as there are just so many benefits of learning it. I deem it as the real challenge to us because we have never sent Renzo for any kind of real enrichment class, basically he just goes to full day childcare on a daily basis. And he used to attend some once a week junior course at "Josiah Montessori" for a few weeks and tried out one session at "My Gym" and that's it. I could not say he enjoys such classes much as his attention span is usually as short as 20-30 minutes and being the "anti-social" kind, ah alrighty I should used the word "introvert" instead, who needs quite a while to warm up, he is just not as attentive and enthusiastic as most other kids in class. Moreover, we have been teaching Renzo on most of his academic stuff such as alphabets, phonics, numbers, colors and shapes, etc at home. We have no idea about how much he could absorb when we expose him to a school environment, to learn something totally new and professional, which both Daddy and Mummy have no knowledge about.

So knowing our son well enough, I've preempted him many times about his piano class (well not the real one yet) for weeks and months. Luckily he is still showing interest whenever we talk about learning to play piano. Indeed my mother is the one who's super into sending Renzo for piano class, after she witnessed his first encounter with piano at a hotel lobby a year ago. And since then, Renzo has been bugging us to get him a piano especially after his every visit to his cousin's house (yes our niece Cherry is learning piano and has a brilliant piano at home that makes Renzo curious and excited every time when he visits her house).

Anyway as Daddy happened to have some other commitment, he could not go for the first class with Renzo, so I had the chance to learn with Renzo together in the classroom. I guess I won't have much chances in the future as we agreed that Daddy will accompany him for his every class since obviously, Daddy has way better note reading ability than me.

We paid for his learning materials in school (that's not included in his school fees), a whooping 100 bucks allows us to bring home 2 textbooks, 1 CD, 1 set of stickers and 1 percussion set.

After entering the classroom, we picked a seat at the corner of last row and Renzo got super excited with the keyboard in front of him, as a result I had to remind him again and again to pay close attention to teacher's (Ms Chan) instructions. Frankly speaking the class at this stage is pretty much the same like other music appreciation lessons that encourages kids to sing along and dance around. But the lyrics and rhythms seemed tougher than those usual lullabies we know by heart. I am sure it helps to arouse children's interests in music but I am not that certain about how much Renzo really appreciates music, it seems that he just wanted to play with the piano most of the time during the class. But of course he was having quite a bit of fun together with others in such a conducive environment, at least for a good first half of the class.

On our way home, Renzo told me that he wants to go to his piano class again next week. But when I played the CD attached to his textbook, which has the same songs Ms Chan played during the class, he gave us a big smile with a surprised look at first (must be thinking why am I hearing this again??), but within 5 minutes, he swapped that disc with his alphabet/phonics disc on his own!! Well, we are not expecting a genius pianist anyway so for now, let's just be patient and let him enjoy what he likes I guess... 

An interesting new word

Renzo has learned the word "die" somehow somewhere and has been using it on many occasions during the past few months. I remember the first time I heard about, and tried to understand this word, I was already 6-7 years old. I cried badly together with my sister at one night in our bedroom, and woke up our father to question him what happens after we die one day. After our father reassured us that everything will be fine, we went to bed with a giant question mark in head and till many years later, we were still in doubt about the real meaning of the word "die" and its impact to our life.

But somehow our 3 years old little boy seems to find the word pretty interesting although we have no knowledge about how much he really understands it.

When he saw a bottle dropped into a pail full of water, he said, "The bottle die already, how?" (excuse his grammatical error here please).

When he saw a dead pigeon on the roadside, he asked me, "Why did the pigeon die mummy?"..

And the most interesting conversation he had with me, was when he saw an uncle riding his bicycle towards us, he screamed "Uncle you don't hit (to) me okie?!!!!!! The bicycle is so dangerous! Must be very careful, if not uncle will hit (to) me and I will die already!" After the uncle laughed at him and left, he cheered up immediately and shouted "Mummy, I never die, mummy never die also!!!"...

Well this kid is just so adorable at time, of course annoying at the same time but I shall save the annoying story for my next post...