More affordable alternative with a good bilingual program

We chose Beanstalk for our second-grader this year after having him in first grade in a local school last year. His first grade experience was not positive. It wasn't language or general culture issues -- he has been raised in China since he was nine months old, and is completely fluent in Chinese -- but rather a poor fit between his personality/learning style and the fairly rigid, test-oriented traditional Chinese system. The homework load for a first grader was totally overwhelming, made up mostly of repetitive busy work, and he began having stress-related health problems. He also was not getting any meaningful instruction in English, so we decided to make a change.

We are not on cushy packages, and also wanted a more balanced bilingual curriculum for him, so that ruled out many of the mainstream international schools, which were both too expensive and also only offered Chinese as a second language. In the end we visited four schools -- Kinstar, Daystar Academy, 3e and Beanstalk. We liked them all, but in the end chose Beanstalk. We have not regretted the choice. Our son loves his school and his homeroom teacher, has learned to read and write fluently in English in a very short time, and is also maintaining his Chinese quite well. Beanstalk has recently started experimenting with the "International Primary Curriculum" as a way of teaching non-core subjects, and our son is really enjoying it.

I would encourage parents looking for a more affordable, balanced bilingual curriculum to visit Beanstalk and see what you think. . It is a great alternative.