the little clovers: November 2014

Champs Talent Competition Invitation

I received many invitation calls from various organisers for the past few months to take part in their pre-school talent competitions, but I rejected all of them, except for this Champs Talent Competition, which requires all schools to present a 10 minute musical skit. I accepted this invitation as I thought it was professionally organized. Hankidz, which was the talent company being engaged to organize this event, would send coaches to the pre-schools to do pre-selection and coaching sessions with the schools. I thought this was a great opportunity for our Clover kids to be exposed to coaching from outside our school, and they would have an opportunity to make use of their musical and drama learning from Kindermusik and Speech and Drama classes.

How we got to the Finals

The pre-selection round was to show Hankidz our past year concert video -- we got in straightaway. To be selected as the finalist of this competition, the Teachers had to submit the skit storyline. My bed-rest advice from my doctor for my pregnancy was ditched right to the back of my mind -- I had a 4-hour long non-stop meeting with Kindermusik educators at my house. We came up with the full detailed storyline within the day. I was quite confident that we would make it, and we did. We got to the Finals. The real work began.

The real and hard work started...

Ten children were selected by our Montessori and Kindermusik educators in Sep 2014 to participate in the Champs Talent Competition (Southern region), Season 2. The Finals was on the 9th Nov 2014, which is Today.

It had been a short period of time for practice, we only had 8 practices before the children went on the real stage. Lots of coaching were done before the Hankidz coaches came from K.L. to see our Clover team the first time in October. After hearing their comments in their first visit, Kindermusik Educators (Shirin, Joanne, Winnie and me) continued to coach the children to work with their facial expressions. It was from incorrect expressions (should show angry face, but they were smiling all the time.), to more and better facial expressions. The children showed so much improvement by the time Hankidz coaches came the second time in November, which was also four days before the Finals. The instrument players were extremely precise in their timing to play their musical instruments at the right times.

Coach KC and Xue Yi were teaching the children on how to make facial expressions.

Stress came from third party which we couldn't control.

There were some hiccups at the vendor who made the props. Luckily, we had Kindermusik Educator Winnie, who is excellent in art, re-making those unsatisfactory prop on the night before the Finals. Her props looked so beautiful. I never had to worry about the work she produced.

At the Finals
The real day finally came. It was Today. When our Clover performance started on the real stage, I was nervous while standing by the side watching them as I was worried about those little mistakes that they had always made during practice sessions. However, they didn't disappoint any of us, every Clover child did their part to 100%, it was their best performance ever!Bravo! I was moved to tears! Hugging and kissing each of these little Clover angels as they walked down from the stage after the performance.

Narrator (Du Ee) spoke clearly with intonation. Main actors were acting with gestures and facial expressions. Instrument players were playing live musical accompaniment at the back.

The last part of the performance - the black bear revealed the Champs as magical cure for the sick monkey. They were dancing to celebrate.

I finally broke down at the backstage. My little boy, Du Ee, came and asked me, "Are you okay? Why are you crying?" He looked worried, he thought I didn't think highly of their performance or they had done something wrong. "I am crying because I feel very very happy to see you all did so well!" I said. (Well, he still looked puzzled.) He and other little darlings came to me and hugged me too.

Our Clover children evolved...

I felt so emotional because I saw how these little children evolved over a short period of 2 months. To let young children like them to understand working as a team was never easy. At the very initial stage of the preparation of this competition, the children were very ego-centric. They only did their part in the skit and lost focus and started playing , talking or laughing while it were their friends' turns to work on the roles. Or they would start to scold their friends who forgot to say the lines or play the instruments. Then, after the 4th practice of much counselling and coaching from us, they seemed to understand it was important to focus throughout the whole skit in order to achieve the best. They were observed to be more encouraging towards one another, and it was not easy especially for the young instrument players to stay still and wait for their turn to play.

Power, Power, Power, Oosh! We are a team!

The Clover Talent Team. Yay!
(From Back Left: Shirin, Joanne, Chaz Yee, Winnie.
From Middle Left: Taryn, Kayla, Trevor, Trishiqka, Ze Ming, Brandon.
From Front Left: Du Ee, Zheng Yuan, Yu Tong, Gabriel.)

They really pulled it off on the real stage in front of 400 audiences very well. I was extremely proud of them. The teachers and their papas and mamas felt the same too.

Although we did not emerge as the top three winners for this competition, our real consolation was that we were at the fourth place amongst the 15 finalist schools. We were the only school with 5- and 6-year-olds playing musical instrument live on stage. We did not spend any money like the winners to get extravaganza costumes, but our down-to-earth performance won so much praises from everyone. This was a great experience for both teachers and students.

At the backstage, waiting for their turn. The face painting was the last minute art done by Winnie.

The three protagonists of the act - Elephant Bonbon (Trishiqka), monkey Piko (Brandon) and Twinnie rabbit (Kayla).

Look at the happy faces. Children are children. (From left: Taryn, Trevor, Ze Ming, Shirin.

The wise old monkey (Ze Ming), elephant Bonbon (Trishiqka) and rabbit Twinnie (Kayla).

Our excellent instrument players Zheng Yuan and Yu Tong.

Hungry...

Waiting restlessly for another 2 hours in the holding room for the other finalist schools to finish their performance.

Our children might seem a bit disappointed for not getting any trophies, it was also time for them to learn that they had not done anything wrong not to win, but there were others who might be better than them in certain ways. We just had to improve on those areas and do better the next time. After all, this is what education is all about.

Gratitude and Appreciation

Last but not least, I would like to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to our Kindermusik educators - Shirin, Joanne and Winnie. They jumped straight in to this talent team the minute I called for them. This is how passionate they are as educators. I am glad to work with talents like them -- we recorded a sound track for this competition within 1.5 hours at Clover. It is with this kind of enthusiasm and talents that we can make things happen within a short period of time.

Also, I can't thank the parents enough to be supportive of their child participating in this competition. They had done much practice with their child at home in order to help us speed things up for we only had limited number of practices before the finals.