Creativity and Lifelong Learning with 79 Light Bulbs + Supporting the High Ability Kid

As a mom of three young kids, I sometimes ask myself, "What have we gotten ourselves into?" Parenting is not an easy task. It's a HUGE responsibility. It's more than just feeding, bathing, playing, educating at home and then sending our kids to school. Those are just the rudiments of parenthood. On a deeper level, I believe that God gave us our children to teach us how to love unconditionally, and at times it may seem, to test our faith. 

I look at my three young kids and see them as untainted works in progress. But as well-meaning parents, we cannot shield them from what is wrong with the world. Instead we should raise them to not just survive, but also thrive in an environment that is uncertain. It is our job to nurture them in a home where they will feel safe, where they will be taught to discern what is right from wrong and then think for themselves, learn to accept consequences, disappointments and failure with grace, have a strong faith system that allows them to understand God's wisdom and concept of timing. On the practical side, we also have to guide them to discover work that brings them fulfilment, teach them how to handle finances, how to deal with different people, how to think creatively and work around problems and never back down from a challenge.

If we are mindful and deliberate about raising our kids to fulfil their life's purpose, hone and support their talents, guide them so they can overcome weaknesses and accept them for who they are, I think we can rest safe in the knowledge that they will be happy with themselves and can stand on their own, and that we have done our job well. Yes, even in these uncertain times when it seems many people  are not thinking right and doing right.

I think it is this desire to raise my kids right that led me to meeting Joy Sua Go of BrainRX, KIT101 and now, 79 Light Bulbs. She has come up with the most amazing programs that are a blessing to both parents and children alike. Why a blessing to us? I asked her to share how her passion for learning and love for her kids have come together to offer these programs that will allow us, in her own words, "courage in self-expression and an open, adaptive mindset" which she believes will allow us to continuously grow in mind and spirit in the best and worst of times. This also serves as an invitation to attend their first ever event, "Supporting the High Ability Kid" which will help parents and educators understand and support gifted children. Please read on.

Creativity and Lifelong Learning with 79 Light Bulbs + Supporting the High Ability Kid 

By Joy S. Go

There is something about being in the driver’s seat of my mini-me’s uncharted lives that I find so daunting yet exciting. 

I’m a mom to a young teen and a tween. Balancing that desire to respect my kids’ wants and that conviction to do what my husband and I think is right and needed for our kids’ future is a tough yet delicate work-in-progress. One thing is sure: I discovered I very much enjoyed teaching my kids, understanding how their minds work plus why they act the way they do, and guiding them to improve what needs to improve. This revelation came only after I became a mom, and it totally changed my perspective on my values. Eventually, this paved the path for me to introduce the BrainRx cognitive training program from the US,

BrainRx brain training programs consist of intense mental exercises that sharpen the core skills the brain uses to think, learn, read, reason and pay attention.

BrainRx is especially helpful for struggling students, kids with ADHD, seniors who want to sharpen their memory and those who have had brain injuries and just about anyone who wants to stay sharp, as the exercises help improve thinking, memory, reasoning, and focus.

the KIT101 art program, 

Tin: This was Berry during her trial class at KIT 101. She was first taught the fundamentals of drawing a face using grid lines. Then she moved on to actually painting a portrait. 

I was amazed at what she could do in one session, with guidance from the art teachers at KIT101 of course

She was made to choose the colors she wanted for her portrait, they even taught her the concept of shadowing.

With Teacher Taka of KIT101, guiding Berry through the finishing touches of her portrait. We signed up for the Exploration program right after. It was amazing seeing how Berry's drawing and painting skills improve in just one class. 

and now, 79 Light Bulbs.

79 Light Bulbs offers quality activities promoting creativity and lifelong learning. It aims to inspire new ways of thinking and living, so we can be "the best persons we can be by our own standards." According to Joy, it will help us parents in our journey to raising our kids to become happy, productive and creative adults.

Friends ask how I come up with these ideas. To be honest, I just do what I feel is right. While I love being curious and learning so I can improve myself and my kids, it turns out that I have been incorporating the same passion in the three programs I’m doing—albeit subconsciously at the start. Beyond their common goal of improving minds, they’re really all about empowering parents and kids.

If there’s a ‘reason for being’ for 79 Light Bulbs, it’s this phrase that popped in mind one day: “Creativity is the wellspring of authenticity.” When we listen to our inner voice and let our creative essence (a.k.a. soul, creative spirit, chi, or mojo) flow and shine in the way we think, speak and act, through our choices and decisions, we honour and are being true to our selves. 

I created 79 Light Bulbs to help promote the value of creativity and lifelong learning, with the underlying goal of empowering ourselves and our children. It really takes a village to raise a child, much more a creative child. I hope to engage friends, parents, teachers, support personnel—all guides in our children’s lives to participate in a learning journey to raise our children into happy, productive, creative adults. With courage in self-expression and an open, adaptive mindset, I believe we can continuously grow in mind and spirit in the best and worst of times. 

Our upcoming event “Supporting the High Ability Kid” on October 15 focuses on an area where few trainings are available locally. This is not about making the brightest kids become brighter but rather, learning how to support and manage them as they experience their challenges.

Our speaker, Ms. Clarinda Choh, is the gifted program director of Hwa Chong Institution, one of the 6 known independent schools in Singapore that attract the top 5% of their national cohort.  With over 16 years of experience in teaching, administration, policy and leadership programmes in various schools, she is most happy to engage with us.

We hope to attract parents and educators to listen, learn, converse with a highly knowledgeable resource speaker, and get ideas that we can perhaps use in our lives and communities. What does it take to guide and support a high ability child? How should we address their cognitive, social, and affective needs? This workshop will take both parents and educators towards understanding the pathways of a high ability child including the foundation support for holistic development.

For details & registration, please visit http://www.79lightbulbs.com/current.html

BrainFit Jr for Brainier Kids

Our brain is an organ, but it also behaves like a muscle, because it can be trained.

For instance, my mom and dad like to work on crossword puzzles and Sudoku puzzles to keep their minds sharp.

I remember, I used to be bad at math, but because of constant practice, I grew to love it, and found it fun. In high school, I used to have to answer 30 numbers of math problems a day, and I would  bawl my eyes out (yes at 13 haha!) because it would take me up until evening to finish when I first started. But in a couple of months, I could finish my Math homework in an hour, with plenty of time left for the fun stuff.

BrainFit Studio’s Jeanette Co thinks of our brain this way, “If you think of your brain as a vessel for knowledge, like a bowl holding water, BrainFit helps you make sure that bowl gets bigger and stronger, and that there aren’t any leaks, so that you can hold more for a longer period of time.”

I met Jeanette just this summer, when I enrolled Xavi at BrainFit Jr., one of the brain training programs that BrainFit Studio offers year round. 

Jeanette shares that BrainFit Studio was founded in 2001 in Singapore, with the aim to transform lives by improving learning capabilities, boosting performance, shaping behaviours and increasing intelligence through high-quality evidence-based neuroscientific cognitive training programmes. Her partner saw the value in it, and so they decided to bring it in.

And because the brain is like a muscle, they liken brain fitness to physical fitness. If physical fitness is developed through strength, flexibility, endurance, speed, and coordination, brain fitness has five pillars too: sensory-motor, attention, visual, auditory, and social-emotional. 

Xavi's program, BrainFit Jr., is a headstart program for three to five year olds which help kids develop their fine motor coordination and core stability, but also their ability to listen to and follow directions, take turns, and recognize feelings. Perfect for kids who are about to start pre-school, even big school.

As with the BrainFit Studio framework, BrainFit Jr. programmes are especially designed to build brain fitness foundations in the 5 core areas of: 1) Auditory processing 2) Vision processing 3) Sensory-Motor processing 4) Attention & working memory 5) Social-emotional processing.

I got to watch Xavi in class, and while the activities look simple and fun, they're actually designed to nurture and exercise his brain.

They usually start with an auditory processing activity, like reading a book, and then doing a Q&A to check if the kids listened to the story with attention. 

Trampoline motor-planning jumps target his sensory motor skills.

​This activity is called "Judo Jumbo", where the kids need to balance, is for developing his sensory motor too.

Catching balls is for vision processing, so he can watch where the ball is going, making sure he can catch it.

Playing with modeling clay...

...and coloring sheets help develop their ability to focus and keep their attention on the task at hand.

They are also taught social-emotional self-regulation so that they are better equipped to handle their moods, learn to relax, and deal with various social situations. 

Like regular school, there are days he had to bring some home activities, for me to practice with him.

After his first 90 minute class, Xavi underwent an assessment to check where he was at in terms of brain fitness. Jeanette shares that the goal is for their kids to be able to show improvement in terms of speed and understanding over the course of a program.

I think his time at BrainFit has borne fruit in fairness, his teacher at pre-school says that he's super ready na for big school, and I have nothing to worry about!

The thing about brain fitness though is that its better to start early. For one, it helps develop the habits of a lifetime—not to mention reap the benefits from an early age. BrainFit Studio in essence, helps our children rewire their brains to be fitter, and that means processing information faster and more accurately. Literally making our kids, quick and sharp.

BrainFit also shares some tips and suggestions on how we can encourage their kids to build up their brain power. Try this at home!

1. Play with puzzles. Puzzles are great tools for developing your child’s spatial processing skills. They require kids to recognize patterns and make associations between shapes, so the next time you’re looking for some quiet-time activity, maybe take out that puzzle box—then challenge your child with puzzles with more and more pieces.

2. Master Memory. Memory, also known as Match-Match or Concentration, can be done with special cards (even ones with your child’s favorite cartoon characters) or even just your run-of-the-mill playing cards. This helps your child develop a sense of visual memory, and it can be played solo or with friends and family. Once your child is a master at the standard game, you can try to add some challenge with variations like Zebra (where cards of the same rank can only be paired with cards of the opposite color, such as a queen of hearts or diamonds only being paired with a queen of clubs or spades) or by laying out the cards in random or complex patterns rather than in neat rows.

3. Level up your Simon Says game. Teach your child to listen better and build his auditory memory skills by acing Simon Says. This helps him recognize auditory cues and pay more attention to what is being said. To offer a little more challenge for older kids, make the instructions more complex. Rather than saying, “Simon says touch your nose,” try a combination of instructions like “Simon says touch your nose, step to the left, and jump up and down three times.”

4. Build things from scratch. Playing with clay can help toddlers and kids develop their sensory-motor skills, and for older kids, Lego toys and DIY models are great tools as well. This is especially true of more challenging models such as historical replicas of ships, planes, or cars, as these can have a lot of different-sized parts that must all be put together based off photos your child uses as a guide.

5. Dance the day away. Another activity that amps up your child’s sensory-motor coordination is dancing. The need to perform specific steps and moves while anticipating a series of other moves to come will help kids improve their sense of balance and praxis, or planning and sequencing skills.

6. Walk in someone else’s shoes. One key emotional trait to develop in kids to ensure that they make good choices in social situations is empathy, and what better way than to encourage them to experience things through the eyes of others. This can be as simple as asking a child “How would you feel if someone did to you what you just did to your sister/brother/friend/classmate?” after an incident. Another thing might be to use storytelling and even movies and TV shows, and ask your children to picture themselves as the main characters of the stories, but also as the supporting characters and villains.

If you are interested in enrolling your child in a specific BrainFit program, the first step is a Cognitive MAP Assessment. In the same way a personal trainer will first try to determine not just a person’s level of physical fitness but also the areas that need the most improvement, BrainFit Studio’s program starts with a series of tests and exercises designed to identify your child’s brain’s fitness level and the strength of each of the five pillars. This assessment will be used to customize a program that will help your child achieve brain fitness in all five pillars, through a combination of the five training regimens. 

• SMART Moves involves improving sensory-motor coordination. Exercises for this fitness program includes enhancing fine motor strength with the help of special putty, using a vibrating “Wiggle Pen” to improve control (and handwriting), and other activities that help your child achieve better balance, endurance, and so forth. 

• SMART Vision is all about visual and spatial processing. Some exercises may challenge the child to process shapes, colors, and directions they read while performing physical activities like jumping on a trampoline as well as a series of hand-eye coordination exercises, drawing exercises, tangrams, and even specially designed computer programs and apps to develop this area of the brain. In a Singaporean study of the exam results of boys who took six months of SMART Vision training in 2001, schools reported a 25% increase in overall marks, a 35% improvement in English, 50% in mathematics, and 12% increase in foreign language skills. 

• SMART Listening helps develop auditory and language processing skills. BrainFit Studio uses a scientifically proven program designed to improve attention, comprehension, and auditory memory. These use cute and colorful animations to make the experience more fun for the child. 

• SMART Focus uses neuro-feedback technology also used by NASA and the US Air Force to monitor kids’ brains while they perform exercises to improve attention and memory. Don’t worry that your child will be hooked up to wires like something out of a sci-fi movie, though! This equipment looks more like a biker’s helmet, and it tracks the active parts of your child’s brain while he engages in specially designed programs that train his brain to focus better. Following SMART Focus training, a test group of kids showed an average improvement of 12% in attention and 14% in impulse control.  

• SMART Emotions is all about EQ; it teaches social-emotional self-regulation to help kids handle their moods, learn to relax, and deal with various social situations. These are achieved through a workshop course designed with sessions for just the kids as well as ones with the kids and their parents. Through guided role-playing and other activities, children learn how to express and handle their emotions in efficient ways and deal with social situations that may not always be comfortable.

To learn more, visit www.brainfitstudio.com, Facebook.com/BrainFitStudioPhilippines, or one of the following Philippine branches:

GREENHILLS: 

3F 224 Ortigas Avenue

Greenhills, San Juan 

Tel: 725-8500; 668-2719; 0917-5991992

MANILA:
Unit 7, 140 MayhaliqueSt corner Masangkay Street
Broadview Towers, Santa Cruz
Tel: 554-0381; 0917-7761689

QUEZON CITY:
412 NS Amoranto Street corner Speaker Perez
Barangay Maharlika, Quezon City
Tel: 216-4130; 0927-5593574; 0917-5732107

BGC:
9th Avenue Preschool, M Level
ACTIVE FUN Building
9th Avenue corner 28th Street
Bonifacio Global City, Taguig
Tel: 0906-4504416

DAVAO:
Unit 3B Bajada Plaza
J.P. Laurel Avenue, Davao City