If you think Virtual School is hard try virtual preschool.
A whole new generation of kids are spending their earliest education years learning basics in front of a screen instead of in a classroom.
And parents who don't want too much screentime for their kids are left asking now what.
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My guest today are chriselle Lim and Joan when the co founders of bumo brain, it's a virtual preschool for kids ages one to six.
I am really excited to have this interview today because Because I have a four year old daughter and like many parents, I am going through the struggle of how to teach your preschooler without them going to an in-person preschool.
So I wanted to hear from both of you, what are the biggest challenges that you were trying to.
Solve with bumo brain.
Well, I'll go ahead and start I mean, we create a bumo brain because of this pain that we personally experienced with the preschools that our kids were in, in the beginning of the pandemic, you know, we were all kind of put in this situation where Kids had to learn virtually and a lot of these traditional schools that had no idea that this was gonna happen, no one knew that this was gonna happen.
So it's really no one's fault.
But they were trying to retrofit kind of their traditional education curriculum into a digital model and john and i we were extremely frustrated with our.
Very high quality education preschool that we send our kids that they were not getting what they needed.
And so that's when John and I were like, why don't we do it ourselves?
John is an educator and she has been in education for so long and we just saw the need for it.
From what I understand it.
This was a business that you wanted to start as an in person learning experience that you switched.
When the pandemic happened to become a virtual school, right?
Yeah, so we were building something called bumo, bumo work which is still opening early up 2021 which is essentially allowing parents to be co located with their children to be able to advance their career.
And grow the career while still being able to be president parent.
And so we were building that for the past few years and building curriculum around that.
So, we've had all this curriculum that we're building for the past two years that were just that was just sitting there.
So John and I, we looked at each other.
We're like We should just launch this curriculum digitally first, it was not part of the plan.
But, you know, everyone kind of had to pivot during these times.
And I guess that was a silver lining up at all for us.
And that's how people brain was born for us.>> And so April 20, we launched our website
Kind of like holding our breaths right with the waitlist because we didn't know what the appetite was for parents especially in early childhood education wanting to do online school and so we launched the website with the waitlist didn't market it really at all but kind of announced in our social channels.
within three weeks we had 2000 students on the waitlist from over 50 countries.
And that's when Krystal and I sort of like took a deep breath and we're just like, My gosh, we're onto something really, really special.
This isn't a pandemic problem that human brain is solving.
This is an early childhood education problem that we're solving and that's when you know the the engine started to.
Even like faster and harder, and we really just started to really think about how can we change the future of early childhood education, how it's delivered virtually beyond just COVID-19?
Give me a quick synopsis of how.
Your structure of education is different from what parents are probably seen in their lives right now.
Okay, so Google brain is a virtual learning program.
We have a sort of daily learning program for parents who need to, Four to six activities a day or supplemental help.
So some kids are out of school earlier or not in school and parents need activities to do each day to promote learning.
And on the other side, we also have live classes, which is our synchronous part of boomer brain kids can go into classes are five weeks long.
Meet once a week and learn everything from chemistry, reaction action to coding with, five other students in their class.
On the parents side.
It really takes that pressure off of them Okay, what are my kids gonna do today?
Do they have enough stimulating activities?
are they up keeping with their letters or sight words and all that it?
John always calls it kind of compares it to a fitness app which I love because it makes little sense.
Do I know how to work out?
Absolutely.
I know how to work out.
Well, I do it on my own.
Now I won't do it on my own.
If I do like it, it's probably not offensive.
So we like to view it as that it is pretty much like an agenda that tells you literally everything that you need to do in order to have effective learning for your kids.
And you don't have to think about what that curriculum look Curriculum ever looks like you just literally open up your laptop, open up your iPad, whatever you use.
And you just kind of plug them in and it brings, I guess more of a schedule for the parents as well.
routine that you could kind of create and I think that's the hardest part as working parents.
Now that we're all at home.
A lot of us are at home with the kids.
The question is, what does my schedule look like now?
What does the kid's schedule look like now?
Everything is kinda blurred, right?
So a lot of the feedback that we're getting from parents is that, it's just brought kind of more of a routine schedule back into our lives.
I'm curious how you tackle the challenge of social interactions, because.
Preschool that's so important.
For this like the first time kids really get to talk to others that aren't just their mom and dad and siblings.
So how do you tackle that?
Is it through live video and, what are the challenges you've learned?
In teaching kids that way.
I think there's many elements of that.
So it starts with also the videos that we have in teaching kids about how to interact with other people.
So some of our morning videos touch upon collaboration or feelings, right?
We really care about social-emotional development, but beyond that, Our live classes that we offer so every five weeks we have a session for live classes ranging from chemistry reaction action to butterfly ballet, and those cat classes are capped at six kids.
What have some of your education team learned?
And what works and what doesn't always with trying to talk to kids over a video chat.
In the beginning of our live classes, it was just like a big presentation.
That was super animated, super animated teachers, which is great.
But then we realized that you know, the kids really learn by having tactile activities.
So we have classes now called mushy math, or sticky stem where the kids are using materials in order to manipulate the materials to learn the concepts at hand.
Whether it's.
Math, whether it's science, or even for kids in our reading and phonics class, the kids in the classes they also have a printable where they actually work on their like autobiography.
And they are actually able to draw in color with the teacher at the same time or for instance, One of the my son's in his classes, the Bs class.
He's two and a half.
And they're we're teaching not just counting, but we're teaching about brushing teeth, right?
And so, there's a whole presentation with like a tooth and like germs everywhere, and then, they had to get their toothbrush and that's like brush the germs away, and so and the count at the same time, so really thinking about Sort of how to engage offline while you're online has been something that we are always striving to do better and better.
And something that we feel is super important in online learning is there is no way a child can just sit there and be sedentary and not have their hands manipulating something at the same time.
We've had a few parents that have mentioned that our our online live online classes are sometimes better than actual live classes because they're so interactive and dynamic, and that sometimes people forget that it's a virtual setting, because we really make it a point that they have something tactile and obviously something more hands on versus just like watching a screen the whole time.
Hasn't been a challenge when you have little ones who all wanna talk to each other at the same time and still get in a good lesson in 30 minutes.
Of course.
I mean and that's why we have certain things like in the beginning We really has tried to establish class like rules.
I mean, I know it's hard for like a three or four year old to listen to the class rules.
So we really try to have fun things so that the kids know when they can speak when it's their turn and allowing others to speak.
Too, and I think it comes from not just the kids understanding the rules, but also the teachers knowing how to interact with the students, right?
It comes down to our training.
So in our training, this huge focus on, what happens if the child runs away?
From a screen which will happen, I mean that happens because we work with toddlers.
And then it's like how do we get them to come back?
And it's like well asking Little Timmy, like Timmy.
I know your favorite color is blue.
There's a blue a right here.
Can you help me find the blue a, I can't.
See it.
and so just really and that's what happens when you have a class of six kids.
When you have a class of six kids, you will start to understand what they like what they don't like, right their interest and then get to know them.
And then sort of using the things that they like to depend on real them back in.
I wanted to get some of your advice for parents who are watching We're pulling their hair out right now.
Everyone is having their own struggles in their own ways.
But what are some tips and advice you would share for people who feel like they're having a really hard time?
I think it's more of managing the expectations for parents.
I think
And then the day what you want is your child just to have fun, to have something to really look forward to, and to have something to talk about after the class.
And if that has happened, then I think you've achieved something.
I think a lot of times for parents right now because they become the teacher at home and sort of trying to navigate this, or the quad as a teacher.
I think what happens As they kind of like over emphasize on, okay.
My gosh, let me look up, the all the things kindergarteners, learn all the things preschooler, learn.
My child needs to learn x i know.
[LAUGH] > Talking about me I like started making curriculums and then it started feeling like a failure because I couldn't do it all because.
Her attention was only so much.>> Right, and so but the craziest thing is all the research points to the fact that kids play based learning is so important.
If they're playing, they're engaging with things.
They're asking questions, you're talking to them.
That will help so much and I think having that pressure off, and when I put that pressure off of myself
So, and then when my daughter had just like enjoyed her session and can recall like a few things that she learned and just look forward to the next one, that's when I felt like, well, then I'm being a good parent.
Right.
But before this, in the beginning of the pandemic, I think every parent went through this where you're like, you had your crabs, you had your daily agenda of what you're going to do.
And, And then you put the pressure on yourself like they have to learn certain things but really trust the educators and trust the process and the process is not that they have to know rocket science by the end of kindergarten, but really that they're engaging with other kids are exploring.
They're doing things they're tactile, they're asking questions and they're playing.
I think that's probably one of the most important things Yeah, and especially at this age, early childhood education, you want to have a positive association for them with learning.
You don't want them to hate doing worksheets all the time because that's what everyone says that you have to do.
So you want to make sure at this age that as John mentioned, They're just having fun that they want to learn.
And so for me, I was just like you like in the beginning I was like, What is everyone doing?
Like I need to make sure that she she doesn't forget her sight words she needs to learn how to read by this time and I was just stressing myself out so much.
But but once she just got into the program.
I that pressure came off of me and then eventually she just learned.
I don't know how it happened but it just happened.
So I think if we just focus too much on the actual learning and the education part, that's when we don't have fun as a parent.
That's when the kids don't have fun and they don't want to learn any more.
Children could be virtually learning for longer than anticipate.
Mhh.
I wonder what we as parents should be kind of keeping an eye on and keep it in the back of our head.
I know I have a lot of worries in the back of my head about how much screentime I'm giving my children when before You asked me would I give a four year old an iPad?
I say forget it, but now it's kind of become my reality.
And there's there's always worries about that in different ways for whether it's social interactions or too much screentime what are the things we we as parents Should be kind of keeping in the back of our head to be aware as if Virtual Learning keeps going for longer than we anticipate.
Yeah, I mean, I think for me, just to kind of echo a little bit of what I said earlier, you know, I'm a big.
Believer in the power of play.
I think that that's something that's really important is like if virtual learning continues is always promoting play and exploration as parents.
And that's the best thing that you could do.
And then also thinking about,
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Yep, in terms of programming and the education part of it, really having consistency with something.
So I think for us, we realize that when parents are trying to many different things and you're just bouncing around.
Doing different programs, it can get complicated.
And then it also, you know, takes that consistency out of early learning for kids.
And so having that consistency really also helps you but later Bearing it in with play.
And I feel like when parents are responsible for their kids education, you forget about play because you've kinda discounted and something that's truly important to learning and it's so important to learning.
A lot of times parents, and also kids view screentime as entertainment right?
So they associate I get the iPhone I get to watch you to kids or I get to watch you know, this, Show or this channel.
So there, they just view it as entertainment.
But if we change and shift how kids actually view screentime right and more as a tool and use it as a tool where they can actually solve problems and figure out how to manipulate things and create things, all of a sudden they are viewing.
Technology as a tool versus something that is passive and something that can just entertain them.
So I think it's a great opportunity during these times with virtual learning for kids to realize that these tools are very powerful and they could actually use them to solve lots of problems and create really amazing thing.
Well, thank you, Christelle.
Thank you Joan, for joining me, I guess we're all learning together as we go through this.
If you wanna learn more about boomer brand, you could check it out on their website and you can also visit cnet.com.
Thanks.
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