Tivoli Anglo-Chinese Kindergarten

Tivoli Anglo-Chinese Kindergarten was established by Carmen Ka-Mun Chan to provide preschool service to professional social strata, when Hong Kong’s first sandwich class housing complex “Tivoli Gardens” was built in Tsing Yi. FormerGovernor Chris Patten and his wife, Lavendar Patten who visited us one month after opening, gave a very positive feedback. Tivoli was established with the purpose of catering to local and international children and has an Anglo-Chinese as well as an International sections to provide a language-rich learning environment.

We believe that every child is born with an innate interest to learn and explore. Early Childhood Education should not be single-mindedly designed to overload children with factual knowledge in order to help them ‘win’ at the starting line. Instead, young learners should seek to improve their moral, intellectual, physical, social and aesthetic skills equally in a safe, happy and healthy environment. In an ever-changing society, we hope that by cultivating children’s holistic development, they will be better equipped in tackling unforeseeable challenges of the future.

Traditional teaching approaches are often didactic, teacher-directed and involve knowledge transmission from teacher to students. Although the students seem to be able to recite a lot of information, their sense of ownership over learning is under-developed, and their problem-solving skills are not exercised, as creativity and self-initiated learning are not encouraged.

All children like games; they like to have fun and tackle challenges. By igniting children’s interest, self-initiated exploration and learning will occur. Therefore, for two to three year olds, games are their best learning tools. Through structured, semi-structured and unstructured play, children construct knowledge through sensorial exploration of their environment. For four to six year olds, children experiment with different ideas under the teacher’s guidance and encouragement. As learning should be child-centered, children will gain knowledge through exploring independently and with their peers, as they present their findings to others. From noticing a problem, working through it, to integrating what they have learned, children and teachers interact closely together to construct knowledge. Through an interactive mode of learning, children's initiative and motivation, social skills, problem solving ability and creativity will be greatly enhanced.

At Tivoli, we place a strong emphasis on language development. Multilingual proficiency provides children with a gateway to numerous cultures and opportunities, broadening both their horizon and social network. We employ qualified native English speakers to teach English at both our Anglo-Chinese Kindergarten (local curriculum) and International Playschool (non-local curriculum). Similarly, all our Putonghua teachers are native speakers who have passed the National Putonghua Proficiency Test. By immersing children in a language-rich environment, we hope that they can learn to communicate effectively and naturally both in English and Putonghua.

Our Anglo-Chinese branch (local curriculum) uses Chinese (Cantonese) as the medium of instruction. Throughout the school day , our Cantonese, Putonghua and English language teachers conduct various activities in the classroom to provide a trilingual environment for children to interact in different languages. Our school notices are available in Chinese and English. For events or activities organized by other bodies, English translation services may be available depending on the organizer.

At our International section (non-local curriculum), the medium of instruction is English, with Putonghua activities conducted daily in a musical activity or Group Time setting. School notices are available in English with Cantonese translation services available upon request.

The classrooms are carefully designed with different learning centres according to themes, including language centre, math centres, leisure corner, reading corner, heart-to-heart (intimate) talk corner, science centre, etc. The activities in each corner/centres have clear objectives providing diversified learning materials with various levels of difficulty to allow children to choose freely according to their own ability and interest. The teachers' role is to be a facilitator and scaffold children's knowledge and ability in order to provide appropriate guidance to enhance children's learning.

The teachers' main responsibility is to ask open-ended questions and provide a stimulating environment to stimulate children's thinking skills. Project learning provides an additional way to a wider range of learning opportunities in the classroom instead of limiting knowledge to the textbooks. Children learn to ask questions, collect information, organise data and report their findings verbally or in other forms, which enhances children's interaction with each other. When parents collect information with their child, they are also involved in implementing the school activities while at the same time enhancing parents-child relationship.