What is Early Intervention?
Early Intervention is a supportive program that helps children with developmental delays, unique learning and behavioural challenges. It is designed for pre-school-aged children who need further support to develop their language and communication skills, increase their sensory integration, enhance their fine and gross motor skills, build their foundation in academic skills, and improve their social skills. It is designed to assist children in developing the core life skills required to join their mainstream peers in Singapore’s formal education system.
Developmental milestones are core skills infants or toddlers should be achieving month by month gradually. These core skills can be broadly classified into the motor, sensory, language, cognitive, and social skills. When a child has difficulty achieving these milestones or achieves these milestones at a slower pace, it is known as Global Developmental Delay. Parents should start Early Intervention as early as possible as it is likely to be more effective in the early stages of a child’s life compared to receiving it in his later years.
Bridging the Gap Early Intervention Programme
Our Early Intervention Programme in Singapore encompasses multidisciplinary services such as Child Speech Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Educational Therapy, Social Skills Training, Multi-sensory and Preschool Readiness Activities to help young children with special needs develop their potential and overcome their developmental delays. We also aim to ensure that each child’s strengths and challenges can be addressed and to help them reach their goals in terms of their daily living skills, functional skills and social thinking skills.
Our Early Intervention programme is suitable for Preschool-aged children, who are unable to access mainstream preschool settings. Your child will learn effectively in a small teacher-student ratio with highly specialized instruction. At our private Early Intervention Centre in Singapore, we offer a 3 or 5 day intensive programme which aims to maximise the potential of every child.
We design multi-sensory activities for children with learning difficulties, enhancing their growth in each area of development. In addition, we use multi-sensorial materials and techniques that stimulates a child’s learning. We help children with developmental delays learn effectively by targeting multiple senses – touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste.
How Can Our Early Intervention Programme Help Your Child?
The key difference between Bridging the Gap’s Early Intervention Programme compared to other intervention programs lies in our teaching methodology. We understand that every child learns differently, and we need to develop customized teaching plans which cater to individual learning needs. Instead of using a one-size-fits-all teaching plan, we embrace a student-centered learning philosophy, ensuring that your child learns in the best way he can.
Through our intensive intervention curriculum, we help your child develop the core skills required to join mainstream schools in Singapore’s formal education system.
5 Key Focuses of Our Early Intervention Programme
Children with developmental delays often have difficulty regulating sensory inputs from the environment. Our therapists help children with sensory challenges alleviate sensory integration dysfunction by creating an individualised sensory diet. A sensory diet uses various sensory inputs such as proprioceptive, tactile, visual auditory, vestibular, gustatory and oral motor to improve a child’s learning.
Our Early Intervention curriculum consists of an intervention-based Literacy and Numeracy teaching methods which are tailored to each child’s learning preferences. We also incorporate multi-sensory teaching methods and hands-on manipulatives to improve a child’s cognitive abilities.
Children use social skills to maintain positive relationships with family and friends. We utilise a structured teaching approach to encourage desired behaviour and positive verbal & non-verbal engagements. This improves a child’s self-confidence and communication skills effectively.
We provide effective support for a child’s emotional development by acknowledging their emotional responses and helping them develop effective strategies to manage these emotions. A nurturing and accepting environment is crucial to help your child develop a healthy emotional well-being.
Every child is a gift and heritage from God. At Bridging the Gap, we are committed to building up every child through tailor-made programmes that strengthen them intellectually, relationally, emotionally and physically. Our intervention programmes are reinforced with Christian values for nurturing good character. Every child will be well-affirmed and make a difference to society as a valued person.
Signs of Developmental Delay
Although every child develops at his own pace, it is important to be aware of some red flags for potential developmental delays. Minor or temporary delays are no cause for alarm. However, an on-going delay or multiple developmental delays can implicate future challenges in life.
There are many developmental delays young children may experience. They include:
- Difficulty in speech and language
- Difficulty in problem-solving / logical reasoning
- Trouble with learning in school
- Difficulty in communicating / socialising with others
- Unable to walk, crawl, sit up or roll
- Limited motor skills
- Unable to get dressed on his own
- Poor vision / perception skills
If your child faces these developmental delays, it is critical to enrol your child in an Early Intervention Programme as early as possible as a child’s brain is primed for adapting and learning in the first 3 years of his life.
Parent Testimonials
When our son was diagnosed with Global Developmental Delay (GDD), we did not hesitate to look around for an intervention centre. Little did we know to find a suitable school can be a challenge for us. We chanced upon Bridging the Gap while scrolling down FB feeds one day. Without any delay, we set up an appointment with the Clinical Director.
Janice and Max have been accommodating and inspirational to us. Seeing their love and gentleness for the children, be it they are normal or specially-abled, and for having “walk the talk” are some of the things that have separated them from other centres. They are not judgemental and that is very assuring to parents with specially-abled childrens.
Not to forget the energetic, kind and loving teachers under the dynamic duos’ wings like Teacher Nina and Teacher Dani. Without a doubt, Anaqi looks forward each day to BTG with enthusiasm and eagerness, something that has been lacking when he goes to the mainstream kindergarten class(hehe). Even the rest of our children enjoy their visits to the centre!
After spending nearly 6 months with BTG, Anaqi has shown progress in areas he has been lacking in. But what matter most is the welcoming atmosphere and acceptance of the team that had warmed our hearts. Choosing Bridging the Gap was truly a wise choice for our specially-abled child.
Sharifah (Anaqi’s Mummy)
Claire has been with Bridging the Gap for half a year. During this period of time, she has made much gains under the programme, in terms of her focus and in areas of academic skills. She has also improved in her recognition of sight words and reading ability, much to our amazement.
What makes Bridging the Gap special has got to be the team of dedicated teachers. The teachers are patient and engaging, which makes a key difference to the learning journey of a young child. Claire truly enjoys going to Bridging the Gap and I think this speaks volume when a child looks forward to attend lessons.’
Claire has definitely benefited from the programme! I would recommend Bridging the Gap as it is a centre with a heart. Thank you, Bridging the Gap,!
Sandra (Claire’s Mummy)
Our daughter has been coming to this place for the past six months. We are so happy to see her looking forward to coming here every single day. We have seen small but steady progress in her motor skills as well…. Thanks to the passionate, supportive n ever smiling team here.
Deepa Venkatesh (Dhanyatha’s Mummy)
After a lot of visits and checks to Early Intervention Centres in SG, we could finally conclude to join our kid at BTG. It is just over a month of classes and i can see my kid opening up in confidence, started to improve on speech from words to short sentences and shown promising signs of social interaction. The staff is very warm, and my kid enjoys going to BTG and always looking forward to meeting Teacher Dani.
Mohammad Ali Shaik (Ayra’s Daddy)