I am sure you have noticed how curious and inquisitive young children are. They are constantly asking questions about everything they see, hear or feel. How, what, why and where seem to make for a very important part of their vocabulary. Research has proved that the brain forms as many as 700 neural connections per second before the age of 5. These formative years for a child largely goes on to determine his/her academic and emotional disposition for the next step in life. This involves a shift to a bigger school which for them is a giant step that requires a lot of adjustment and change. This is by no means a trivial matter. The best way to help children through this transition is to equip them with the right skills which goes a long way towards a secure and happy education.
It is paramount that education of little children be not limited to teaching them the alphabet and numbers. Encouraging and practicing rote learning to score grades is definitely not the way forward. It limits their power of observation, analysis and rational deduction, skills that we need all through our lives irrespective of education and profession. We want to cultivate curious young minds, not parrots, do we? We want a preschool that will nurture this curiosity, therefore we give three cheers to Sesame Street Preschool which echoes the aspirations we have for our children.The curriculum and teaching methodology here follows a unique six-step procedure towards teaching a concept to a child through introduction, recall, demonstration, reinforcement, reflection and application.
Sesame Street Preschool believes in presenting new information around literacy and math using everyday objects and examples.To make the learning of letters and numbers more relatable to children, we connect it to their everyday experiences. The learning outcomes are seamlessly integratedinto their everyday play, in and after school. We recognize that children’s learning should be extended beyond the preschool environment. To ensure this, our key preschool concepts/topics are available on multiple-platformsto reinforce learning. These include our TV show, “GalliGalliSimSim”, an educational television show for preschool children in India. The Sesame Street Preschool Websitehas links to fun activities, including games and audio-visual clips to promote parent-child viewing and interaction at home. We also provide term-wise newsletters and booklets for parents which contains a snapshot of the preschool topics for the term, along with fun activities that they can do with children at home to extend their learning experiences.A 360 degrees learning experience at school and after!
It is time we look beyond the conventional style of teaching to young kids, who given the right stimuli and direction will emerge as better learners and executers. A 360 degrees approach is required today, not the mere teaching of ABCs and 123s in the classroom with a huge pile of homework to follow. Let’s do our children a favour and change the way we perceive and practice education to be limited to a system of rote learning. This is not only dull but also detrimental to our child’s holistic development.