Since the establishment of the first Gymboree Early Education Center in San Francisco in 1976, Gymboree has opened more than 700 early education centers in more than 40 countries and regions around the world. In 2003, Gymboree was introduced to China by Xia Hongyu, the "father of China's early education", and has opened more than 350 early education centers so far, covering more than 150 cities.
When peers mention the Gymboree early education brand, they will mostly use the words "the clothing industry has made a fortune", "the brand has gone bankrupt", "the curriculum is slow to update", and "the price is going downhill". In fact, in 2016, the Gymboree early education brand was spun off from Gymboree (TGC), which is controlled by a private holding company headquartered in Singapore, while Gymboree's children's clothing and related retail businesses were declared bankrupt in 2017, which did not have much impact on each other.
Gymboree is a combination of the words "Jamboree" and "Gym" by the founder. Among them, "Jamboree" is the name of a kind of carnival in the American South, which represents endless joy; "Gym" means sports, and it is also an abbreviation of "Growing Young Minds", hoping to help children grow up physically and mentally healthy. It can also be seen from the founding vision that in addition to the characteristics of the American early education system, Gymboree pays more attention to whether children can release their potential through play and learn through games and experiences.
Gymboree mainly accepts children aged 0-5 years old, children over 5 years old, advocates special learning of musical instruments and other skills, in this regard Gymboree does not provide relevant courses. Gymboree's teaching system includes early education courses such as education, music and art, with a lesson of 45 minutes. For children aged 0-3, Gymboree mainly promotes parent-child courses for parents to participate in, and accompanies children to play games under the guidance of teachers. The recreation classroom with non-slip soft floor mats can accommodate up to 12 children (excluding parents) at a time, but the number of teachers is limited, and with about 20 parents, the environment is particularly noisy, and the real instruction time is very limited.
Gymboree provides bilingual teaching, employing teachers mainly in kindergarten teacher majors, music majors, and art majors, with high English proficiency requirements, and other professional requirements for teachers of music and art courses. The internal training system is relatively strict, and nearly 6,000 instructors from 350 Gymboree centers in China have to participate in the GYMBOREE INS CUP national unified examination every year.
Gymboree has a lighter interior than Yue Bao Yuan, and you also need to take off your shoes and socks at the entrance and use the clean non-slip socks provided in the store. There are floor mats on the floor, so you don't have to worry about safety even if you fall during play. The corners of the large sports teaching aids are curved, and the places where nails and rivets are used will also be specially treated, and the surface is very smooth, so that climbing and grasping will not hurt children.
At present, more than 10 stores can be queried in Hangzhou, and the scale is large. However, the area and volume of each branch vary, so it is recommended to compare and listen to each one before signing up. Due to the problems of franchised stores that have closed down, students need to transfer to other stores, and it is difficult to get refunds, it is recommended that consumers choose the directly operated stores directly managed by the brand and available on the official website as the first choice. Stores that are too popular often have problems such as difficulty in making class reservations.
As an American-style early education institution, Gymboree's course selection is more free, the course arrangement is divided according to the age of the month, generally half a year as a stage, basically every day there are courses, and the specific time period can also be adjusted according to the actual needs of parents in the later stage, which is very humane. The unit price of the course is similar to that of Yuebaoyuan, the more you buy the lesson package, the lower the unit price, and the lowest price is slightly lower than that of Yuebaoyuan, about 120 yuan/class, and the pricing of each store is also different.
