FAQ (About Us)

About Kinderart

Who is Kinderart?

Kinderart is a company registered in Singapore with the mission to bring joy to all children through art.

Kinderart is founded by Norma Sit, a business leader and social entrepreneur.  Norma oil-paints as a hobby and collects Asian paintings.  She is passionate about visual arts, and the arts in general.

Where is Kinderart located?

Kinderart’s office is located at UBI Techpark.  Kinderart teaches at more than 20 kindergartens, childcare centres and international schools in Singapore. 

Who are the Kinderart Teachers?

Our teachers are selected from strict rounds of interviews.  They are art-trained and/or pre-school trained to teach children.   On joining Kinderart, the teachers are trained in the Kinderart curriculum.  We conduct regular trainings for our teachers before they are allowed to teach.  That is, every single lesson your child receives is rehearsed with the teacher in our teacher training sessions.  The teachers have gone through the steps thoroughly as a group and have made mock-ups as illustrations in class.

What is the Kinderart Curriculum?

The Kinderart Curriculum is conceptualised by Norma.  Her passion in the arts and her love for children fuelled her vision for all children to learn art as the window to understanding self and the world we live in.

The Kinderart Curriculum runs a total of three years for children aged 4 to 9 years old.  A child can join the programme anytime during this period and if the child continues for three years, the child would have learnt art techniques and skills that were the tool kit of the Great Art Masters.  The child would have also been exposed to great paintings and art movements.  Embedded into the curriculum are the works and techniques of 100 Masters, both East and West.  Because Art Movements are important to know for any one desiring an education in art, Kinderart teaches our students the key art movements across eras.

What are Kinderart’s Teaching Objectives?

Starting at Crayons and Paints, a child can progress to undertake Little Apprentice or Masters and Apprentices.   At the end of the programme, our objective is for your child to have developed the following:

a.   Artistic Skill Sets
b.   Art Knowledge and Art History
c.   A Sense of What Comprises Art
d.   Creative Expression, Curiosity and Creativity
e.   Confidence, Visual and Verbal Expression

What are Kinderart’s Deliverables?

We are driven towards deliverables and value your investment in our art programmes for your child by way of money and time.  We also value having you entrusting your child’s art education with us.   Therefore, our deliverables are aligned to our objectives.

Repeated here are our objectives:

a.   Artistic Skill Sets
b.   Art Knowledge and Art History
c.   A Sense of What Comprises Art
d.   Creative Expression, Curiosity and Creativity
e.   Confidence and Visual & Verbal Expression

Competitions, Competing and Winning

The paradox of creativity is that competition can stifle this for the child.   After discussions and consultations with educators, Norma decided that while Kinderart may participate when invited, and while we may even organise such competitions, our culture will not be one where we pushed our students to compete. These are the reasons:

• Based on discussions with educators, we believe that we should encourage the natural creativity of the child at their age.

• Children have a tendency to follow what they think are ‘winning’ pieces and this stifles their innate creativity at an important phase of their lives.  They need to be encouraged and not be critically judged at this phase of their lives.

• Kinderart creates a safe environment for your child to experiment and to find new ways of self-expression without being told what is right or wrong, only what may work better and what may not work as well.

Norma recalls the day her 20-month old son drew Batman for her.  He drew Batman on a white sheet of paper.  Then he coloured Batman black.  Then he drew in the yellow stars.  He coloured the yellow stars.  Then he proceeded to colour the sky black.  Soon there was no more Batman to be seen.  Norma asked her son, Brian, ‘What happened to Batman?’   Brian told her, ‘Mummy, it is night time and we cannot see Batman at night.’

Therefore, we encourage pink skies and purple clouds, red seas and silver butterflies.  We encourage upside down houses and spaceships that look like flying tea-cups.  To us, the process of thought is important and we value your child’s rationale.

Norma recalls another incident where a child who does not speak very much at all, according to her mother, painted a large painting full of stories.  The child’s mother was astonished.  How did this child whom they thought was a slow developer has so much to say in a painting when in daily interactions the child is silent?

These are reasons why Kinderart is there to help your child develop, and not help your child compete.  There are other avenues where your child can be trained to compete like sports.  Norma is an avid sports supporter.

Process Versus Product

In general, Asians are pragmatic people.  We are driven to see outcomes and are less concerned about process.  Educators and wise mothers are always more concerned about process and sustainability.  With the right process, a child learns to love learning for a lifetime and becomes self-driven, motivated and curious.   Kinderart is a process-driven system.  We teach art step-by-step, one technique at a time. Layering the techniques, building the art vocabulary, the child learns to then create his/her own style.   There are few short-cuts.  Process lays a strong foundation.

When your child returns home with a painting, please praise your child.  Please find out what is in his/her mind or heart as he/she did the work.  That will reinforce and encourage.  Please treat your child’s work with respect and honour his/her love for you, and what your praise means to him/her.

Terms and Conditons

Please read the section under Terms and Conditions.

Our Guarantee

Please read our guarantee and the corresponding Terms and Conditions.

“If a child shows no improvement in art over two consecutive terms of art lessons with us, we refund up to 8O% of your paid instruction fees.”

Affiliation with Canada-based Kinderart

We are not affiliated with the Canada-based Kinderart of kinderart.com.   We admire and respect their work very much as we admire and respect the work of other art-passionate people around the world.