We Told Her to Pick One Class and She Went Straight for Mandarin
We gave her a list. Mandarin, taekwondo, swimming, a few others. Pick one, just one, and we'll sign you up.
She picked Mandarin immediately. No deliberating, no asking what the others involved. I remember being slightly thrown by how fast it came, because at five you'd expect the answer to be whatever sounds most like playing.
But it made sense once I thought about where she'd spent the last three years.
The Year She Wasn't Even Here
Our eldest was born during the worst of Covid, and we couldn't bring her into Singapore. She spent her entire first year in Korea, living at my in-laws' place with my wife.
When they finally came over, my wife was doing most of the parenting alone, and it got harder here rather than easier. That's how we ended up with a helper, and that decision shaped a lot of what came after.
We looked at infant care around then. The nearest option was around S$2,330 a month at foreigner rates, which is one of the government-supported operators, not even a private centre. What actually changed the maths is that after eighteen months it drops to childcare rates, roughly S$1,277.48 for the same place. Close to half.
So with a helper already at home, we waited. She started at around two.
Why Mandarin Was Never Really a Choice
Roughly three quarters of Singapore's population is ethnically Chinese, and the school system assigns a mother tongue subject by ethnicity rather than by what's actually spoken at home. Chinese students take Mandarin, Malay students take Malay, Indian students take Tamil. English is the medium of instruction across everything else.
What that means practically is that from childcare onward, a huge amount of what my daughter heard around her was Mandarin and English. We speak Korean at home almost entirely, so she was effectively picking up a third language socially without anyone planning it.
She also got lucky with people. The Mandarin teachers at her centre took to her, and she took to them. There was never a point where she treated it as difficult or foreign, which I think matters far more at that age than any curriculum.
So when we moved to our current place and a close friend of hers started going to a Chinese class, she wanted to go too. That's the whole origin story. Her friend was doing it.
How We Picked the Centre
There were two realistic options.
One is genuinely famous, and her friend's mother recommended it warmly, said the two girls would love being there together. It's a distance away, fine for an adult, a lot for a small child.
The other is directly in front of our block. Walkable.
We work, so it would be our helper doing the drop-off and pickup, and she'd also need to collect our younger daughter from childcare in the same window. The far one didn't work logistically, and I wasn't going to pretend otherwise.
So we booked a trial at the nearby one, half expecting to feel like we'd settled.
She loved it. Specifically, she loved the teacher, followed her around, came out talking. That decided it on the spot.
The Actual Cost
It's billed by term rather than by month. Ten sessions, one a week, ninety minutes each.
Registration was somewhere in the fifty to eighty dollar range. My wife handled the payment so I'm hazy on the exact figure. The term fee was just under six hundred dollars.
Group class, not one to one. Teachers rotate depending on the day and time slot, and that turned out to matter. We'd originally wanted a weekend slot, then found it wouldn't be the teacher from the trial. The others are perfectly good, but she'd bonded with that specific one, so we picked the weekday that had her instead.
Ninety Minutes Is a Long Time for a Five-Year-Old
She's been happy going, mostly. Then recently she said she didn't want to.
I didn't push back on that at all, because honestly, ninety minutes straight is a lot. Secondary and university students get a break after fifty. She's five, sitting through an hour and a half without one.
We're going to let this term finish and then actually ask her whether she wants to continue or take a break. Not present it as a decision we've already made, just ask.
Whether her Mandarin is improving, I genuinely can't tell. Neither of us speaks it.
What I do have is her childcare's development review, which happens every six months. They told us she's not behind the local kids who have Mandarin as their registered mother tongue, and in some areas she's ahead. Our younger one is picking it up too, mostly by copying her sister, which is how she learns everything.
We Don't Do Much Else
That's the only paid class either of them has.
Art happens at home. My wife is genuinely good at it, and their sessions are proper making and gluing and painting, not a worksheet.
Swimming is a family thing. There's an ActiveSG sports centre within walking distance, one of the public complexes you'll find in most towns here, with a pool alongside badminton and table tennis and other facilities. We put swimsuits on at home, walk over, and stay two or three hours.
My wife learned to swim properly and then taught me. Now we both teach the girls, badly but enthusiastically.
About the Education Pressure Everyone Warns You About
I've heard the stories. Parents starting primary school preparation at three or four, Mandarin and English and maths lined up in parallel, the whole machine.
I'm sure it exists. Parents with older children describe it as intense in a way that sounds exhausting.
But I'll be honest about what I actually see, which is not much of it. Our immediate circle doesn't seem to be doing that. Maybe we're not in those conversations, maybe it starts later once primary school actually begins. I suspect the answer is later, and that I'm writing this from the calm part of the curve.
Right now we have one class, chosen by a five-year-old because her friend was going, taught by a teacher she likes, twenty minutes' walk from our front door. If she wants to stop after this term, she can stop.
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