Talent Prep

Mandarin Immersion, Cultural Exchange Trips, Gifted and Talented Programs for children, and more! www.talentprep.org

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See what our Mandarin students are up to:

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A Letter to Parents

The anticipation leading up to the Gifted and Talented exam—the weeks of preparation, the extra practice sessions, the countdown to the test date—can make for heightened stress levels and high hopes that you did enough to prepare your child. Now, what do you do if that score report comes in the mail and you’re left feeling disappointed?

          You will most likely begin to question if all of it was worth it. You may wonder if you prepped for long enough or if you could have done more. If you find yourself in this situation, we ask you to remember one thing: children are children, and they surprise us every day.

          Yes, all of the preparation was worth it—no matter the outcome. Your child was exposed to a classroom setting and learned how to respect teachers and classmates. Your child learned how to focus on a task and complete it without redirection. Your child gained the emotional maturity required to enter a challenging setting and succeed.

          Know that there are so many factors that could have influenced your child’s score. Maybe she was hungry or tired. Maybe he had a song stuck in his head or he was thinking about a game he wanted to play in the afternoon. Maybe they were wondering when it would snow again or what was for dinner.

          In the event of a low score, we can’t know what went wrong. In the end it was probably something trivial and not at all reflective of the hours of hard work and practice the child put into his/her test preparation. Your child just had a bad day. That is not to say that your child did a bad job.

         Your child is still smart. Your child is still young. Your child is still loving and kind and inquisitive and capable of taking on whatever challenges he/she will face in the next school year. You did enough to prepare your child—you did everything you could. All the work that was put into G&T preparation mustn’t be judged based upon one day’s score, but rather on your child’s growth and readiness for the next of life’s many challenges.

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Our 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade after school students were hard at work during the month of September to produce essays about what they want to be when they grow up! Students were required to complete all stages of the writing process: brainstorming/pre-writing, first drafts, second drafts, and final drafts with extensive revision. They completed peer reviews and helped their classmates improve their writing and spelling! We have a future firefighter, veterinarian, store owner, and 2 presidents in our classroom!

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We are looking forward to another wonderful year at Talent Prep, where our students are always learning and having fun in the process. Check out our video, where you will see our teachers, our parents, and, most importantly, our incredible students doing what they do best--learning!

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Our Pre-K students are in for another wonderful week!

Last week was so much fun! The students had the special opportunity to attend a field trip to the New York City Transit Museum, and those who attended absolutely loved it. You can even find new artwork around Talent Prep that was made during the trip! In honor of the museum trip, we spent last week learning all about transportation and the different ways we can travel around our neighborhood, our country, and the whole world. This week, we will jump into learning about weather and seasons, since back-to-school time and the end of summer are right around the corner! It’s hard to believe! This week’s goals include:

 -Identifying a specific season each day, with increased vocabularies about the weather, the time frame, and the events that occur during each season

 -Helping the students connect the seasons to their lives: which season is their favorite/least favorite, what activities do they do during each one, etc.

 -Working on phonics with beginning, middle, and ending sounds, as well as trying out a few simple blends

 -Practicing reading and spelling sight words; students need to work on spelling the familiar sight words correctly. Students frequently know the right letters to use, but they order them incorrectly

 -Increasing our focus in all our classes, especially writing class, so that students can become independent learners

 -Becoming comfortable with adding and subtracting numbers up to 10 and increasing our speed in math class

 This next week will be just as much fun as all the others! It is a joy to see the students improving in their skill levels, their confidence, and their excitement toward learning!

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Let’s see what our First Graders will work on this week!

Last week was so much fun! The students had the special opportunity to attend a field trip to the New York City Transit Museum, and those who attended absolutely loved it. You can even find new artwork around Talent Prep that was made during the trip! In honor of the museum trip, we spent last week learning all about transportation and the different ways we can travel around our neighborhood, our country, and the whole world. This week, we will jump into learning about weather and seasons, since back-to-school time and the end of summer are right around the corner! It’s hard to believe! This week’s goals include:

 -Identifying a specific season each day, with increased vocabularies about the weather, the time frame, and the events that occur during each season

 -Helping the students connect the seasons to their lives: which season is their favorite/least favorite, what activities do they do during each one, etc.

 -Articulating their opinions about the seasons and their knowledge of them in writing (opinion/persuasive writing and expository writing)

 -Working on a few tricky 3-letter blends; the SQU blend is especially challenging to master

 -Practicing reading and spelling sight words; students need to work on spelling the familiar sight words correctly. Students frequently know the right letters to use, but they order them incorrectly

 -Increasing our focus in all our classes, especially writing class, so that students can become independent learners

 -Becoming comfortable with adding and subtracting numbers up to 30 and increasing our speed in math class

 -Practicing counting by 5s, 10s, and 25s as students continue learning how to add with money

 This next week will be just as much fun as all the others! It is a joy to see the students improving in their skill levels, their confidence, and their excitement toward learning!

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Find out what the Kindergarten students are up to this week!

Last week was so much fun! The students had the special opportunity to attend a field trip to the New York City Transit Museum, and those who attended absolutely loved it. You can even find new artwork around Talent Prep that was made during the trip! In honor of the museum trip, we spent last week learning all about transportation and the different ways we can travel around our neighborhood, our country, and the whole world. This week, we will jump into learning about weather and seasons, since back-to-school time and the end of summer are right around the corner! It’s hard to believe! This week’s goals include:

 -Identifying a specific season each day, with increased vocabularies about the weather, the time frame, and the events that occur during each season

 -Helping the students connect the seasons to their lives: which season is their favorite/least favorite, what activities do they do during each one, etc.

 -Articulating their opinions about the seasons and their knowledge of them in writing (opinion/persuasive writing and expository writing)

 -Working on a few tricky 3-letter blends; the SQU blend is especially challenging to master

 -Practicing reading and spelling sight words; students need to work on spelling the familiar sight words correctly. Students frequently know the right letters to use, but they order them incorrectly

 -Increasing our focus in all our classes, especially writing class, so that students can become independent learners

 -Becoming comfortable with adding and subtracting numbers up to 20 and increasing our speed in math class

 This next week will be just as much fun as all the others! It is a joy to see the students improving in their skill levels, their confidence, and their excitement toward learning!

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Seward Park offers wonderful Wednesday shows during the summer as part of the City Parks Foundation’s Summer Stage for Kids. Last week, the students loved watching a real marionette puppet show! The Puppet Mobile put on a show of three Brer Rabbit Tales where the students watched the funny antics of Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and the wise Turtle. How fun--and a great way to get the kids outdoors for something new!

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Our Pre-K students will have another great week at Talent Prep!

This week, already our sixth week of the Summer Session, is our second week learning about animals and their habitats! Our Pre-Kindergarten students have learned about a different habitat each day after the unit’s introduction last Monday: the jungle, the forest, the ocean/bodies of water, farmland, and our own homes. Today, students ventured into the forest and added new words to their vocabularies as they learned about the animals that live there. Our goals for this week include:

 -To understand the various habitats of animals and to add new words to students’ vocabularies as they increase their understanding

 -To use phonics clues to sound out simple words

 -To master “did” and “came,” two sight words the students are still reviewing, as well as to add “do,” “eat,” and “four”

 -To master the writing and recognition of numbers over 20 when reading numbers and to continue working on simple addition

 -To use discussion to better understand our new topics and to further improve our reading comprehension

 This week at Talent Prep will be a great one! Our students have shown so much improvement in their writing, reading, and math skills. We are still working on developing their classroom focus and their abilities to work consistently. Here’s to another week of hard work, learning, and fun!

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Find out what our First Graders are up to this week!

This week, already our sixth week of the Summer Session, is our second week learning about animals and their habitats! Our First Grade students have learned about a different habitat each day after the unit’s introduction last Monday: the jungle, the forest, the ocean/bodies of water, farmland, and our own homes. Today, students ventured into the forest and added new words to their vocabularies as they learned about the animals that live there. Our goals for this week include:

 -To understand the various habitats of animals and to add new words to students’ vocabularies as they increase their understanding

 -To articulate new knowledge in writing, using phonics clues to help sound out and spell new words

 -To master the difference between the sight words “round” (Grade 1) and “around” (Grade 2), which caused some confusion last week, and to implement our sight words into connected sentences.

 -To complete addition and subtraction problems with double-digit numbers (which they started in their math workbooks last week) in the vertical set-up

 -To learn how to count and add with money (coin) values

 -To use discussion to better understand our new topics and to further improve our reading comprehension

 This week at Talent Prep will be a great one! Our students have shown so much improvement in their writing, reading, and math skills. We are working hard to develop independent learners, so that our students do not always rely on a teacher’s answers to move forward, but they work to understand and answer their own questions (particularly in spelling!). Here’s to another week of hard work, learning, and fun!

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Find out what our Kindergarten class is up to this week!

This week, already our sixth week of the Summer Session, is our second week learning about animals and their habitats! Our Kindergarten students have learned about a different habitat each day after the unit’s introduction last Monday: the jungle, the forest, the ocean/bodies of water, farmland, and our own homes. Today, students ventured into the forest and added new words to their vocabularies as they learned about the animals that live there. Our goals for this week include:

 -To understand the various habitats of animals and to add new words to students’ vocabularies as they increase their understanding

 -To articulate new knowledge in writing, using phonics clues to help sound out and spell new words

 -To master the difference between the sight words “went” and “want” (which caused some confusion in the past week) and to review and master the spelling of the other w words: well, what, white, who, will, with

 -To move into double-digit numbers for our fill-in-the-blank math questions and to improve our focus and speed in math class

 -To use discussion to better understand our new topics and to further improve our reading comprehension

 This week at Talent Prep will be a great one! Our students have shown so much improvement in their writing, reading, and math skills. We are working hard to develop independent learners, so that our students do not always rely on a teacher’s answers to move forward, but they work to understand and answer their own questions (particularly in spelling!). Here’s to another week of hard work, learning, and fun!

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Our kindergarten students worked hard last week at Talent Prep during our community unit. The students wrote a book as a class about the different helpers in the community. They brainstormed and decided on the list of community helpers all by themselves! Their abilities to write in multiple, connected sentences have improved incredibly over the summer. The students worked to review and use their sight words as they wrote and they sounded out words on their own for spelling practice!

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Our kindergarten students worked hard last week at Talent Prep during our community unit. The students wrote a book as a class about the different helpers in the community. They brainstormed and decided on the list of community helpers all by themselves! Their abilities to write in multiple, connected sentences have improved incredibly over the summer. The students worked to review and use their sight words as they wrote and they sounded out words on their own for spelling practice!

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Are you ready for the cherry blossoms in NYC? Look at our amazing art work by using popcorn to make cherry blossom from the students of Mandarin class at Talent Prep!

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Summer time -- the perfect time to introduce your child to learn and play simultaneously. Using fun and engaging activities, children are immersed in the Chinese language without ever knowing that they are learning a new language.

Student Ratio 1:7 

Level: Beginner-Advanced

Please let us know which sessions you will be interested in attending, and welcome to our center to register when you make your decision. There is a 10% Early Registration discount before April 15th. 10% sibling discount available as well.    

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Spring （春天）will come soon in NYC. Our Mandarin class began to learn vocabularies related to the things in spring. Let’s welcome a warm time in NYC!

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Happy Lantern Festival! Our students drew a picture of yuan xiao （rice balls with filling stuff元宵）to represent family reunion（团圆）. We used cotton balls to stick on the paper and make yuan xiao look like a 3D painting.