How We Teach
Your child meets every key idea again from 3 to 18, each time deeper.
REMAT is the spiral curriculum behind every OpenKids art programme, developed in Singapore by TAFA Group, the education group behind OpenKids, on Jerome Bruner's theory.
REMAT
Choose A Module · Arrow keys move
As children grow, classes and teachers rotate, and each teacher brings a different artistic speciality. Every regroup opens a new field of art for the child, and new friendships for the whole family.
From outdoor sketching to museums and overseas study trips, children go wherever art lives.
See it outside the studio
One idea can take many forms. Working across mediums and disciplines, children choose the language that most fully expresses their own thinking.
Each child observes, questions and solves in their own way. Confidence grows from there.
Every lesson begins with a theme, not a textbook. Led by questions, children explore art, culture and the wider world, then create from what they have come to understand.
The Spiral In Practice
Colour is never taught once. It runs from a first mixing at three to a personal palette in the portfolio years.
Choose An Age · Arrow keys move
Ages 3–4
Learn the proper names of colours and mix two of them.
Ages 4–5
Put complementary colours to work.
Ages 5–6
Distinguish analogous, complementary, warm and cool colours.
Ages 6–8
Study colour as a system: value, saturation and hue.
Ages 8–10
Relate an object's local colour to the sketch.
Ages 10+
Oil and Chinese painting anchor the stage, and students choose their medium with intent.
Ages 16+
Many mediums held with real proficiency, the breadth a university portfolio asks for.
From Sketchbook To PortfolioSkills For Life
Knowledge gives a child a fish. The IB Approaches to Learning (ATL) teach a child to fish.
ATL is a skills framework from the International Baccalaureate that many schools use.
We teach its five skills inside every art lesson; this is not an IB course, and we claim no IB authorisation.
Choose A Skill · Arrow keys move
Critical and creative thinking: asking better questions, not only finding answers.
Original ideas before correct answers.
Expressing ideas clearly: in words, in images, in artworks.
Work that can explain itself, and a child who can too.
Listening, collaborating and creating together.
Team canvases, critique circles, shared walls.
Finding, weighing and using information, led by curiosity.
Looking hard at the world before drawing it.
Organising time, materials and emotions: learning how to learn.
Finishing pieces, keeping folios, dating every sketchbook page, owning progress.
Let Them Paint The Apple Blue
A blue apple is a child deciding, and deciding is what we are teaching.
Why Art
Through art we grow independent thinkers, lifelong learners and active global citizens.
To achieve happiness through the cultivation of arts creativity
Seven Points Blue
To stimulate thinking through art lessons and activities
Chocolate Factory
To elevate imagination through innovative habits
Starry Sky
To develop interdisciplinary thinking through art inspiration
The Letter G
To learn decisiveness through repeated trial and error
Rainy Reflections
To appreciate beauty through arts training
Lotus And Dragonfly
When AI Can Paint Too
AI can already paint.It cannot want to.
What AI Does Well: Solving a set problem
The first thing we train is asking a better question than the machine is given.
Where It Lives: The Theme module
What AI Does Well: Generating a thousand images
Deciding which image is any good is a trained human skill, and training it is what aesthetic education means.
Where It Lives: Art history and appreciation, at every stage
What AI Does Well: Imitating a style
The drawing skill built on paper carries straight over to the screen.
Where It Lives: The Design direction and the Digital Art discipline
What AI Does Well: Autocompleting a shape
From a shapeless lump to a finished sculpture, a child builds three-dimensional thinking and the nerve to start over.
Where It Lives: Sculpture and ceramics, from age 3
What AI Does Well: Rendering an object on screen
Ideas leave the screen as objects: model building, 3D printing and recycled-material projects.
Where It Lives: The AI and 3D printing course3D Design in the Tech Programmes
What They Learn
Younger children move freely between all nine, one theme at a time.
Pencil, charcoal, pen and marker: still life, observation and drawing from memory.
It trains observation, which every later stage draws on.
Watercolour, gouache, acrylic, oil pastel, soft pastel and oil, and Chinese painting.
It trains colour decisions, and in ink a brushstroke cannot be undone.
Clay modelling and relief, paper sculpture and wheel-thrown pottery.
It trains thinking in three dimensions.
Monoprints, scratch art and prints pulled from a plate the student made.
It trains commitment: the plate is decided before the print is seen.
Collage, kraft paper, buttons, seed pods, washi and light.
Graphic, letter and stamp design, design sketching, fashion and animation design.
Every brief trains ideas shaped for a purpose.
Digital painting and illustration.
It trains iteration, with drawing skills carried over from paper.
Artists met at every stage, and the words to talk about them.
It trains looking across cultures: Chinese ink painting, Japanese ukiyo-e, African carving.
Parks, museums and the city, often in the school holidays.
It trains light and shadow, and the courage to see the world differently.
Student Work
Real work by students in our Singapore studios, hung youngest first.
Each piece carries its age and medium; we do not publish students' names.
How a piece like Eight Planets comes to be, given as long as the idea needs.
The teacher opens with a question the children can answer in paint, clay or light.
An appreciation class comes first: how an artist met at this stage answered the same question.
Several directions are tried quickly on paper.
Here, clay planets, cut-paper astronauts and a light.
Every child shows the work and talks about it: show and tell when young, weekly critique in the teens, and praise that names the decision, not the talent.
The piece goes home, or into the folio that grows term by term.
Beyond The Studio
Your child will draw in parks and museums, between terms and with the family, and one day see their work in front of strangers.
Everything here runs at every campus, and yours shares what is coming up on WhatsApp.
Before one sketching morning in a historic chapel courtyard in Singapore, the whole teaching team walked the site a week ahead. On the day the session opened with the history of the building and its Gothic architecture, and only then did anyone draw.
Every site is scouted like this, from a park or a museum hall to a street of shophouses; on site the children explore with all five senses first, then learn composition and light in front of the real thing. Leonardo walked the streets of Florence, Monet stood before his haystacks and Xu Beihong told his students to learn from nature: for generations of art students, sketching outdoors has been a rite of passage, and it is one for ours.
Same Courtyard Same Theme A Different Depth For Every Age
- What does this building remind you of?
- Does the light have a colour?
Rodin said life does not lack beauty, only eyes that find it: three questions train those eyes in front of any painting, and parents can ask them too.
Ages5–6
Ages9–10
What do you see?
The first step of looking. Your child describes the picture in their own words, and every answer gets a nod: there is no wrong one.
What do you like about it?
Feeling before judgement. A bright colour, a small story in a corner or simply that it looks calm: every honest answer is the right one.
If it were you, how would you paint it?
The question children love. It makes them a participant, not a spectator, and it is where every study after a master begins.
Long Neck Brachiosaurus · Ages 4–5
Short courses in the school holidays, some built around one theme or one project. A material your child has only touched in a lesson gets room to go deeper.
Craft-making · Canvas painting · Clay modelling · Printmaking · Photography
Love My Home · Ages 6–7
Family art workshops put parents and children at one table, waking a child's curiosity and stretching everyone's imagination. Family art days do the same at a larger scale, with new friendships for the whole family.
Seaside Town · Ages 5–6
A museum, a kiln town, a cave temple, a lakeside under a mountain: a study journey takes art to where it was made, and combines travel with painting tuition on location.
We choose by type, never for a famous name: each type asks something different of the work and puts it in front of different eyes.
Future ParkAges 10–11Watercolour and ink
International Painting And Illustration
Europe, Asia and the US
Panels of artists judge theme, colour, composition, technique and creativity.
Touring Exhibitions
Galleries abroad
Work hung in a real exhibition hall, beside young artists from other countries.
Comics And Illustration
Singapore and the region
Original sequential work: a story told in pictures.
Heritage · Environment · Community
Singapore and each campus's own city
Briefs about the place a child lives in, and charity briefs where the work raises something beyond itself.
Art And Technology
Singapore and the region
An idea has to leave the paper: reuse, recycling, model building and 3D printing, judged as art and as making.
A child enters to learn to decide what they believe and to say it in a single image.
Entering also takes them out of the comfort zone, sharpens technique on a professional panel's feedback and sets the work beside peers worldwide; some exhibitions end on stage, microphone in hand, explaining an installation to strangers. We publish no results and no students' names.
Where Art Can Lead
Directions, never promises: the work decides.
From 8, a student chooses a direction by interest, future plans and goals.
It is chosen with the teacher once the foundations are in place, and it can change as interests change.
The classical foundation a personal style is built on.
Sketching, charcoal, oil painting and sculpture, with colour through soft pastel, colour pencil and marker
Opens OntoImages And Objects
Trumpet And ScarfAges 10–11
Ideas shaped for a purpose, on paper and on screen.
Design sketching, graphic design, fashion design, animation design and digital painting
Opens OntoDesign For How We Live
Blue Ruffle Dress
Art history and outdoor drawing, taking the studio out into the world. It runs alongside either direction, much of it in the holidays.
Beyond The StudioChoose A Field Arrow keys move
Ideas made visible, on the artist's own terms.
Painting, sculpture, installation and everything between. Fine art is the field where the question comes from the student, not a client, and courses train a sustained enquiry across months of studio work.
A voice developing and an honest process: studies, failures, iterations.
Art Meets Code is where the two OpenKids programmes meet: a hybrid portfolio of art and code, built with the Tech Programmes.See the Tech Programmes
Your Child's Stage
Four stages and a portfolio track, taught as one curriculum, each stage building on the one before.
Choose A Stage Arrow keys move
A child meets colour, shape and material through play that is carefully planned, and encouragement always comes before correction.
Octopus Is Coming
Ages 3–4
Koinobori
Ages 4–5
Seaside Town
Ages 5–6
Stages are entered by readiness within the age band, not by birthday alone, and the teacher who leads the class tells you when the next stage is right.
Portfolio
A Portfolio Is An Argument
The portfolio track opens from age 8, when a student has a goal. What it builds depends on that goal and on the timing.
Not a folder of best drawings, but evidence that your child can
Tutors read the rough studies as closely as the final piece.
Starting early is not pressure at twelve; it is protecting making time before the exam years swallow it.
Foundations, not a portfolio: drawing habits, colour, making things weekly and a kept folder.
Skills sharpen. A sketchbook habit becomes the quiet advantage.
Portfolio building in earnest: themes, developed works, weekly critique.
Refine, sequence, write the statement, photograph, submit.
Workable, with honesty about scope: fewer, deeper pieces and a tighter theme. What does not work is compressing four years of habits into four months of panic.
Where will your child apply?
DSA is a Singapore scheme.
Direct School Admission (DSA) lets a Primary 6 child apply to a secondary school on interest, aptitude and potential, beyond the PSLE.
In Singapore
January to MayExplore schools and options
May to early JuneApply on the MOE DSA‑Sec Portal
June to SeptemberInterviews and drawing tests
By mid-SeptemberOutcomes
OctoberRank your choices
Late NovemberAllocation, with the PSLE results
A month-level guide only: dates change with each intake, so check moe.gov.sg.
Not every child who paints is suited to it, and that is fine. Tap each statement that is true for your child.
All four
The preparation has a direction. What is left to plan is the timing, and a free consultation can plan it with you.
Two or three
Some fit and some are still growing, which is common. Talk it through before committing: a free consultation looks at the work your child has already made.
One or none
Not yet, and that is fine. Let your child keep making art for the joy of it: the foundations serve any path, and DSA is only one door.
Public facts and our own steps, with no outcome promised.
Every Primary 6 student can apply, with no fee on the MOE portal and up to three choices. A place accepted through DSA is a commitment: no Secondary One posting, and no transfer after the PSLE results.
Evidence over enthusiasm: sketchbooks and growth over time rather than five polished pieces, with observational drawing at the core.
Shortlisted students typically face a Visual Arts interview with an on-the-spot drawing test, and some schools set a selection test first. Mock interviews and regular practice make the brief feel familiar rather than frightening.
Schools make a conditional offer before the PSLE results, and the student then needs the school's minimum PSLE criteria. Families rank their offers in the MOE portal; a submitted ranking cannot be changed.
The art path does not close after Primary 6. Three doors open inside secondary school; check each school and moe.gov.sg for the current terms.
For a child already past the DSA-Sec window at 12, the track continues as an art-school portfolio, paced around the exam years.
Each week every student puts up the work in progress and talks it through with the group.
A process page: three quick tonal studies, then one apple worked in full
For
Not For
A Studio Session
The Double Diamond is a design process widely used in design education and practice. Each diamond opens wide to explore, then narrows to a decision: first on what the project is about, then on how it is made.
Discover · Wide research on the brief, the field and the student's own interests.
ProducesA research file and possible directions
Define · What was found, clustered into themes and one clear brief.
ProducesOne clear brief
Develop · Many directions tried quickly, critiqued every week, the strongest carried forward.
ProducesThe strongest directions, developed with their process pages
Deliver · Sequencing, the artist statement, a mock review, an exhibition and photography.
ProducesA finished portfolio and an exhibition record
Reviewers read a set twice, once for the finished work and once for the development pages, and the second pass often decides it. They look for one voice, developing, and an honest process: studies, failures, iterations.
An Observational Core
Drawing from life: the pulse check almost every reviewer takes first.
A Personal Project With Its Development Shown
One enquiry followed across weeks, with the process pages that prove it.
An Experimental Work
A risk taken in an unfamiliar medium or idea, and what was learnt from it.
A Technical Or Digital Aside
Range shown without hiding weak drawing behind digital polish.
The one-line test: if every piece could have been made by a different person, it is not a portfolio yet.
Three plain questions in the student's own voice: what do you make, why do you make it, and what are you trying to figure out next. If you would not say a sentence aloud, rewrite it.
A mock review is a practice interview with the work on the wall. The child walks the panel through each piece; 'What would you improve?' is an invitation, not a trap.
Bad photographs have sunk more portfolios than bad drawings. Indirect daylight, the camera square-on, one neutral background, and editing that corrects without cheating.
Whichever the work honestly needs; strong sets usually hold both. Fundamentals show through any medium, so digital must never hide weak drawing.
A tool, never a substitute, and always disclosed: how it was used and where. If the student cannot walk through the work without the tool, the work is not theirs yet.
Tutors flip to the sketchbook first, because it cannot lie: a small book always carried, every page dated, none torn out. Parents help most with a steady supply of books and no commentary.
Future Pathways
seen by people outside the classroom, gathered into a portfolio and theirs to present.
Each layer builds on everything below it.
Ages 3–18
The base layer, laid at every stage: a trained eye and finished work in many materials.
How the method worksWhen Ready
Then the work goes out, in front of people who have never met the artist.
Exhibitions and competitionsFrom Age 8
With a goal, the strongest pieces and their process become a portfolio: DSA in the primary years, art school in the teens.
How the portfolio is builtThe Final Years Of School
The whole body of work is shaped into applications, with the OpenKids Future Pathways team, starting with a free consultation.
How the admissions guidance worksWhat a student carries into the room is the work itself.
Questions
At any age from 3 to 18. Children of 3 to 6 begin in Explore; older children join the stage that fits their age and skills.
Book a free trial for ages 3–6No. Older beginners start with the same foundations of looking, drawing and colour, with subjects suited to their age, and move on as their skills grow.
Book a free trial for ages 10–18REMAT is the spiral curriculum behind every OpenKids art programme, developed in Singapore by TAFA Group, the education group behind OpenKids, on Jerome Bruner's theory. Key ideas return at every stage, each time deeper, from age 3 to 18. Its five modules are Regroup, Extend, Multi, Atman and Theme.
How the method worksWhen there is a goal: for Direct School Admission (DSA) in Visual Art, usually one to two years before the Primary 6 application (check moe.gov.sg for each year's dates), and for art school, across the teen years.
Plan it in a free consultationNo. No one can promise admission; we help a student build a strong, honest portfolio and prepare for the interview and the drawing test.
Talk it through in a free consultationIn international youth art and illustration competitions, touring exhibitions of children's work and themed community competitions, entered for what a child learns rather than for the prize.
Exhibitions and competitionsYes, with no obligation after it: your child joins a real lesson, and afterwards the teacher talks you through where they could start.
How the first class runsFees are not published online: they follow the learning plan made with you after the trial class and are set out in writing before you commit.
What happens after the first classThe way our teachers do: encouragement before correction, and praise that names the decision rather than the talent (the smooth line on the dolphin, the colour chosen for the leaves).
Looking at art togetherYes, if it starts before the application year: one studio session a week, lighter through exam blocks and deeper in the holidays.
When to startYes, as a disclosed tool and never a substitute; and since some competitions refuse AI work entirely, the drawing underneath still matters.
AI in the portfolioEither can carry a strong application, and the medium is chosen project by project; in both, schools look for the same observation, ideas and process.
Digital or traditionalYes, and rarely as the painter in a garret: creative skills now feed design, games, animation, film, advertising, product and technology. What manages the risk is evidence, starting with a portfolio habit in the teens.
Where art can leadKeep Reading
Parents looking for a toddler art class usually want to know one thing: what will a three-year-old actually do there? Here is what child-development milestones, Singapore's preschool framework and the REMAT curriculum say about ages 3 to 5.
Direct School Admission lets a Primary 6 child earn a secondary school place through a talent such as visual art. Here is how the 2026 exercise works, what schools look at and what an art portfolio usually holds.
A serious portfolio is built over years, not months. Here is the age-by-age timeline that keeps the final eighteen months calm instead of frantic.
Your First Visit
Message your nearest campus on WhatsApp: it replies within 48 hours with trial times, and HQ answers the same day if it does not.
The teacher who leads the class welcomes your child, and talks you through what comes next.
A full lesson with children near their age, not a demonstration.
The teacher sees where your child is, so they are placed by readiness, not by birthday alone.
Afterwards, a learning plan, with every fee in writing before you decide.
The teacher says hello, sets a few rules a child can follow and opens the day's theme with a question.
Crayons, paint, clay or brushes come out, with a short demonstration of each.
A first piece of the child's own, where exploring matters more than a perfect result.
Children hold their work up and say a few words about it to the group.
Before You Book
Book a Free TrialRegion
Campus
The message opens with your campus filled in; add your child's age.
Message your nearest campus on WhatsApp. The first trial class is free.
Art and Tech Programmes proven in Singapore and one operating system behind them, now open to Global Partners worldwide. The first conversation is confidential and carries no obligation.
