Legoland

I have always been something of a critic about the sheer number of classes that HK parents send their kids to. A well-known HK child shrink has openly said that the biggest problem she encounters with children she sees in HK is that they have no time just to play themselves and feel huge amounts of stress.

I perhaps should admit that it is laziness and lack of time for me to srot it out that means Eve attends nothing at all. But I also partly wonder what more she would get that she doesn't from her playdates, time in the playground, and reading and play at home. At a party the other day I found myself chatting with Mums, all of whom have children the same age as Eve, as they discussed the discipline at a class called "Soccer Tots". Eve will only do what you tell her, sometimes, if she is really in the mood to and the moon is in it's fifth cycle, waxing over the yard arm or some such. The idea of trying to take 20 one year olds, most of whom don't speak, and try to teach them anything as complex as team sports just defies belief. I, for one, don't want the first full sentence Eve utters to be the offside rule (although I suspect the Boy may be proud if she could). I can't see what they possibly gain from this that she doesn't from playing with a ball in the playground. What happened with just letting kids be kids? They'll be at nursery and school soon enough as it is (2 years in HK).

In amongst the strange and bizarre (I thought Kindermusik was something to do with chocolate eggs that sing before I had Eve), I recevied a flyer in the mail today about Lego Education. Yes, it would appear that someone has decided to make the colourful fun blocks of plastic into a pseudo-academic course. Intrigued, I went online to find out more. Sadly the sole HK class only has details in Chinese, but I found the global site instead. It appears that the classes consist of, well, building stuff with lego and talking about it with an adult.

Maybe I am missing something, but isn't that what I do with Eve and a $20 box of Duplo anyway?