The time for nursery admissions is here again and parents of toddlers are busy with the process of fetching that perfect school of their choice. Most of the parents see school as one of the essential pre-requisite for a bright future of their child. No wonder some of us spend sleepless nights pondering over which schools to consider, how to know which one is better, how to make sure that they get a nursery seat in the chosen school, what if they don’t get a seat in the chosen school... huff-puff-pant ...
In an effort to serve parents to give best to their children in early years, Parentune, organised this workshop on fast tracking development and choosing the right school for your child. It was conducted by Parentune’s Child Development & Education expert – Mr Nitin Pandey and Clinical & Child Psychology expert Dr. Ann Simi John. They addressed key issues like important ingredients to early learning years, play, music, exploration and curiosity and offered handy tips on choosing the right preschool and school.
Experts took off by citing the common areas of concerns shared by parents on the Parentune’s website. Some of them being:
• What kind of activities are appropriate for toddlers in terms of holistic development?
• What to look for in a school, what are the parameters to judge a school ?
• How to check on those parameters?
In the interactive session that followed experts gave several tips to parents to expand on the areas related to wholesome development of children and choosing the right school for them.
Key tips to foster child develoment in early years, primarily from Zero to Six:
1. Brain development facts: It is helpful for parents to be aware of certain fact related to cognitive development
• Brain development happens in the womb and continues extensively till the age of 3. Play is crucial for development till age 6
• Brain continues to develop in spurts till adolescence and cognitive abilities associated with memory, reasoning, problem solving and thinking continue to emerge throughout childhood.
• Children who feel safe, secure and loved by their parents/caregivers show a better brain health and development.
• Experts suggested that parents may consider that their child is able to speak or express his/her needs and emotions at the time of joining a pre-school. For speech related query, Experts suggested that parents may encourage sentence making and understanding instead of promoting gestures and single word communication with the child.
Encourage Exploration: Children learn through experiences their neural pathways are made through connections made by undergoing different experiences in day to day life.
• Parents may provide safe multi-sensory exposure to children to maximise their cognitive development. Parents may plan for a mix of indoor and outdoor activities.
• Assort a mix of activities for the learner, so that she has somethings to do that are challenging, as well she likes and can do easily. Encourage self exploration and enquiry.
• A mix of ‘group play’ and focussed ‘alone – play time’ can go a long way in overall growth of the child.
• Expensive toys and teaching aids are not necessarily needed to promote brain health. Quality of interactions with parents coupled with variety of experiences and activities ranging from challenging to easy makes all the difference
Nurture & encourage them – be their cheerleaders:
• Encouraging their trials and errors, little victories may tremendously help.
• Parents may help by letting them explore and supporting them by being patient, understanding and available to answer their queries
• Foster creativity – attempt to create wonder.
• Parents may role-model as creative thinkers who love to explore, experiment, strive to find solutions for children to inculcate those skills.
• Parents and educators need to be consistent in their behaviour and response to the child’s needs and interests and at the same time stay flexible as the learners need change over time
• Understand your child’s talent and related developmental needs.
• Set appropriate expectations from the child.
Key factors to look while choosing a pre-school and how to check each one:
How to evaluate
1. Distance to the school – It is recommended that the pre-school should not be more than 5 – 10 kms from the house. Can be checked. However if the parents intend to opt for school transport for their child, it may be a better idea to check the bus route for a school.
2.School’s Profile :
·What is the philosophy of the school
·How do the school live its philosophy ( What curriculum does the school follow and what are the commonly followed teaching methodologies.)
·Does the school has a stable leadership (Helps in school’s progress)
·Past performance in academics and extra-curricular activities (It should be good)
·Teacher student ratio (1:20/25 is recommended)
The school profile can be checked through
·The school’s website.
·Talking to principal and teachers
·Talking to students
·Talking to school’s parents
·Talking to support staff
·Searching the Internet on parents forums
The authenticity of the check depends upon the parents’ way of asking questions and noticing general pattern and deviations.
3. Infrastructure :
Is the school equipped with
·Labs or centres of exploration and learning for subjects like maths, robotics, arts, languages and science to name a few.
·Classrooms
·Cafeteria
·Medical facility room
·Auditoriums, open play ground, sports facilities and cafeteria to list a few
·Furniture in classrooms, staff-rooms and other areas
·Transport infrastucture
·Security and surveillance
The parents may choose to visit the school to check and compare the infrastructure and other facilities as enlisted on the website and with infrastructure of the other schools.
A school which houses dedicated centres of learning have been found better in promoting learning. However, that is not a universal rule.
Parents may enquire and check the transport services provided by the school.
Parents may check about the status of the seriousness of the schools security policy by checking what kind of procedures and checks do they follow to ensure the safety of children while in school, at the time of dispersal and in the school transport
4. Play equipment - Checking the quality of play equipments and toys is very important. Parents may see that the play equipments should be decently new, child friendly, age appropriate and in ample numbers.
5. Cleanliness - Parents may choose to check the level of hygiene maintained in school’s toilets and other areas
6. Parent involvement - It is advisable that a school should take parents feedbacks seriously. Parents may check about the same from various sources. Moreover, parents involvement in various school’s activities is a good indicator of schools openness and transparency around the quality of schools undertakings.
7. Happiness and satisfaction level of parents and teachers
Parents may try to find out by generally interacting with teachers about the schools atmosphere, policies, and workload to gauge the working environment for teachers.
Does the school provide enrichment programmes for the teachers? How well the school treats its teachers most of the times corresponds to better performance of teachers.
Also, interactions with school’s parents can indicate well about the overall workings of the school. You may interact with fellow parents on parentune from the school.
8. Engagement of school in environmental and social community programmes
Schools that promote sensitivity around the issues concerning environment, good social practices and community causes are better at instilling ethics and values in children.
Each child is different and so are the parental expectations from the school. Experts concluded that parents can find a school that best suits their child’s developmental needs keeping in mind their child’s temperament, needs and own expectations around what are most important aspects to them related to the educational and co-curricular services offered by the school
In an effort to serve parents to give best to their children in early years, Parentune, organised this workshop on fast tracking development and choosing the right school for your child. It was conducted by Parentune’s Child Development & Education expert – Mr Nitin Pandey and Clinical & Child Psychology expert Dr. Ann Simi John. They addressed key issues like important ingredients to early learning years, play, music, exploration and curiosity and offered handy tips on choosing the right preschool and school.
Experts took off by citing the common areas of concerns shared by parents on the Parentune’s website. Some of them being:
• What kind of activities are appropriate for toddlers in terms of holistic development?
• What to look for in a school, what are the parameters to judge a school ?
• How to check on those parameters?
In the interactive session that followed experts gave several tips to parents to expand on the areas related to wholesome development of children and choosing the right school for them.
Key tips to foster child develoment in early years, primarily from Zero to Six:
1. Brain development facts: It is helpful for parents to be aware of certain fact related to cognitive development
• Brain development happens in the womb and continues extensively till the age of 3. Play is crucial for development till age 6
• Brain continues to develop in spurts till adolescence and cognitive abilities associated with memory, reasoning, problem solving and thinking continue to emerge throughout childhood.
• Children who feel safe, secure and loved by their parents/caregivers show a better brain health and development.
• Experts suggested that parents may consider that their child is able to speak or express his/her needs and emotions at the time of joining a pre-school. For speech related query, Experts suggested that parents may encourage sentence making and understanding instead of promoting gestures and single word communication with the child.
Encourage Exploration: Children learn through experiences their neural pathways are made through connections made by undergoing different experiences in day to day life.
• Parents may provide safe multi-sensory exposure to children to maximise their cognitive development. Parents may plan for a mix of indoor and outdoor activities.
• Assort a mix of activities for the learner, so that she has somethings to do that are challenging, as well she likes and can do easily. Encourage self exploration and enquiry.
• A mix of ‘group play’ and focussed ‘alone – play time’ can go a long way in overall growth of the child.
• Expensive toys and teaching aids are not necessarily needed to promote brain health. Quality of interactions with parents coupled with variety of experiences and activities ranging from challenging to easy makes all the difference
Nurture & encourage them – be their cheerleaders:
• Encouraging their trials and errors, little victories may tremendously help.
• Parents may help by letting them explore and supporting them by being patient, understanding and available to answer their queries
• Foster creativity – attempt to create wonder.
• Parents may role-model as creative thinkers who love to explore, experiment, strive to find solutions for children to inculcate those skills.
• Parents and educators need to be consistent in their behaviour and response to the child’s needs and interests and at the same time stay flexible as the learners need change over time
• Understand your child’s talent and related developmental needs.
• Set appropriate expectations from the child.
Key factors to look while choosing a pre-school and how to check each one:
How to evaluate
1. Distance to the school – It is recommended that the pre-school should not be more than 5 – 10 kms from the house. Can be checked. However if the parents intend to opt for school transport for their child, it may be a better idea to check the bus route for a school.
2.School’s Profile :
·What is the philosophy of the school
·How do the school live its philosophy ( What curriculum does the school follow and what are the commonly followed teaching methodologies.)
·Does the school has a stable leadership (Helps in school’s progress)
·Past performance in academics and extra-curricular activities (It should be good)
·Teacher student ratio (1:20/25 is recommended)
The school profile can be checked through
·The school’s website.
·Talking to principal and teachers
·Talking to students
·Talking to school’s parents
·Talking to support staff
·Searching the Internet on parents forums
The authenticity of the check depends upon the parents’ way of asking questions and noticing general pattern and deviations.
3. Infrastructure :
Is the school equipped with
·Labs or centres of exploration and learning for subjects like maths, robotics, arts, languages and science to name a few.
·Classrooms
·Cafeteria
·Medical facility room
·Auditoriums, open play ground, sports facilities and cafeteria to list a few
·Furniture in classrooms, staff-rooms and other areas
·Transport infrastucture
·Security and surveillance
The parents may choose to visit the school to check and compare the infrastructure and other facilities as enlisted on the website and with infrastructure of the other schools.
A school which houses dedicated centres of learning have been found better in promoting learning. However, that is not a universal rule.
Parents may enquire and check the transport services provided by the school.
Parents may check about the status of the seriousness of the schools security policy by checking what kind of procedures and checks do they follow to ensure the safety of children while in school, at the time of dispersal and in the school transport
4. Play equipment - Checking the quality of play equipments and toys is very important. Parents may see that the play equipments should be decently new, child friendly, age appropriate and in ample numbers.
5. Cleanliness - Parents may choose to check the level of hygiene maintained in school’s toilets and other areas
6. Parent involvement - It is advisable that a school should take parents feedbacks seriously. Parents may check about the same from various sources. Moreover, parents involvement in various school’s activities is a good indicator of schools openness and transparency around the quality of schools undertakings.
7. Happiness and satisfaction level of parents and teachers
Parents may try to find out by generally interacting with teachers about the schools atmosphere, policies, and workload to gauge the working environment for teachers.
Does the school provide enrichment programmes for the teachers? How well the school treats its teachers most of the times corresponds to better performance of teachers.
Also, interactions with school’s parents can indicate well about the overall workings of the school. You may interact with fellow parents on parentune from the school.
8. Engagement of school in environmental and social community programmes
Schools that promote sensitivity around the issues concerning environment, good social practices and community causes are better at instilling ethics and values in children.
Each child is different and so are the parental expectations from the school. Experts concluded that parents can find a school that best suits their child’s developmental needs keeping in mind their child’s temperament, needs and own expectations around what are most important aspects to them related to the educational and co-curricular services offered by the school
