Dripping Colours Montessori, Desa Parkcity, Kuala Lumpur

For the first six years or so of life, children’s minds are at their critical learning time-frames. In fact, a child’s mind can be likened to a blank canvas during that period, whereby their experiences and whatever they are exposed to influence the ‘content’ of it. Fill it up amiably, and the outcome will be great, and vice versa. At Dripping Colours Montessori Preschool, as its name subtly implies, the emphasis is on establishing the kind of foundation in early education that will reap the best results for children by the time they are ready for school.

After a short pre-opening in late 2018, Dripping Colours began to see its first batch of students rolling in from around February 2019. Kiddy 123 recently enjoyed the honor of speaking to its founder, Ms Penny Leong, who hails from a primary school teaching background. She shared with us her astonishment when she found out that a couple of her younger relatives did not loath kindergarten as she had back in the day. “I noticed that my niece and nephew actually loved going to kindergarten, and that intrigued me so much,” stated Ms Penny. “They actually told me that they felt bored at home and would rather spend time in their kindergarten! Wow, I was totally amazed, as I recalled never feeling that way when I was a kid!”, she continued.

After a few career changes, and inspired by her niece and nephew’s love for their kindergarten, Ms Penny, together with a few friends, then decided to push ahead and open up their own kindergarten with the aim of providing quality yet fun education for little ones. Thus, Dripping Colours came to be. Ms Penny was, one time, handling all the daily operations of Dripping Colours, which included attending to the front desk. As the kindergarten grew in reputation and flourished, trained staff have been employed for such tasks while she mostly superintends.

Small group learning for more precise and focused attention

Unlike most Montessori or Montessori-based kindergartens out there, Dripping Colours is able to offer the advantage of smaller classrooms with fewer kids to teacher ratio. It is deliberately established this way to ensure that each child gets the attention and guidance he or she would need to thrive and develop. In fact, as explained by Ms Penny, their Desa Parkcity branch had only accepted no more than 40 or so students for the school year, ensuring more focused attention for each student.

Unique categorisation

While the common practice in most kindergartens is to divide or categorise its students according to their ages, at Dripping Colours, students are grouped according to their level of capabilities instead. “This has proven to be immensely helpful for each child in the long run, for regardless of age, children have their own unique strengths and weaknesses which teachers can work on. This kind of classification which does not prioritise on age, makes it possible to ensure that each child receives precisely the kind of help and guidance he or she needs to thrive,” Ms Penny explained to us, patiently.

Small learning groups of between 5-8 students ensure a level of manageability for teachers that are unsurpassed by others, but by no means does this imply that less work is needed from teachers! In essence, a teacher is expected to provide the kind of attention that a child critically needs to catch up in his or her development. This is something that very few other kindergartens can, or are willing to provide. At Dripping Colours, the extra efforts put in by the teachers often speak for themselves!

Daily updates for parents’ benefit

Ask any parents whose child attends kindergarten and they will surely lament about the lack of updates they recieve about their child’s progress until it’s too late. In most cases, updates are received at the most, once in each term. Well, that is never the case with parents whose children attend Dripping Colours! Here, parents are kept aptly updated on a daily basis, and every query they may have is acknowledged and responded to. This is done via their own unique system called Dripping Colours Parent. “It is a very detailed report to keep parents abreast on their child’s day at school, and it covers everything from the child’s lessons learned on that day, the worksheets used, what the child had eaten, as well as all the activities for the day too,” she generously shared. Plus, photos are also often included in these updates!

Testimonials and appraisals for Dripping Colors Montessori Preschool are aplenty, and many of them are parents’ observations on the many ways their children have improved and how much they have learned. Plus, bringing this to full circle is that many of them are about their children’s love for their kindergarten - a reminder of what inspired the setting up of Dripping Colours in the first place!