I will be in Taipei from Sept-Nov studying Mandarin at CCU or NTU in Taipei. I will probably be living in Chungho. My 8 year old English speaking son will come with me and I’m looking for any advice about how to make this a good experience for him. I need for him to have something productive and safe to do for 2-3 hours a day while I’m in class. The rest of the time I will homeschool in a broad sense. I’m hoping we’ll find some social contacts for him.
CCU has said they can find him a 1-1 tutor with experience of teaching children for 500 NT an hour. This will be expensive and I think I’d rather study at NTU (smaller classes, closer to Chungho). however, it would be best if we could be in the same location or nearby at least.
Could you put him into the after-school study programs offered by cramschools for first and second graders? The children study English, finish their homework and so on there. There are many different schools near NTU that offer this program. It might take some looking to find somewhere more suitable for your child, and you would have to arrange your Chinese classes for the afternoon. Your child might not lbenefit much academically but they would at least get some social and cultural experience. I remember the average cost of such a program with English as a focus is around 15,000/month but people may have more accurate information, and more “local” programs may be cheaper.
Asiababy, what are those after school study programs called? Is it just ‘bushiban’ or is there a more specific term for the kind of class you are talking about?
I’d love for him to play with the neighbours, & hope that happens. But I can’t just put him out on the streets on his own! I don’t know the neigbours because we are not in Taipei yet.
What is the kids Learning Chinese school? Do you mean Guoyu Ribao?
They are called “an chin ban”. There are all sorts of options, from English immersion programs to ones run by the local schools. As your child is coming just for a few months and you need them to be somewhere safe with supervision, this may be a good option. Your child would get to meet some children and see another kind of school life, which at that age is really the center of a child’s world. I am sure you wouldn’t expect your child to do all the academic work like elementary school homework, they would take along the homeschooling work you prepare for that time.
And the programs I know have quite a few breaks for play and snack and some social ed, too.
An chin ban manages to many courses during summer time.
Like:computer,swimming,reading,play the music…etc.
But it is a whole day school.
Don’t know if your kid can just be there for 2-3 hours.
Or maybe you can try the “tuo er suo”.
He did the expensive 1-1 classes for 3 months at my school. He was quite happy with that.
It wasn’t great for him socially–hardly any other kids to play with–no local children who got used to him, anyway. He was always a novelty to local kids so the interaction wasn’t comfortable for him. We met some nice people with children but folks were very busy so we couldn’t really hang out together much. Taipei kids don’t get much time to just hang out!
Still it was a good trip.
He’s doing well academically back home despite missing 3 months of formal all-day schooling.
The other suggestions made on this forum would really be worth checking out, if anyone else is ever in a similar situation. What I did was expensive, and also not really enough to get him into Chinese in any natural kind of way. He might as well have been having intensive classes in an English-speaking country, because he never got to use the language in play or for any other real purpose. But I did appreciate the peace of mind and convenience that came from having him nearby when I was in class.