Geniekids Pre School startr package

Geniekids Pre-School Package
Start, run, enhance your own preschool for 2-6 yr olds

Welcome

The Geniekids Pre School Package offers a comprehensive knowledge base to enable setting up, running, and growing a premium pre school – the premium being on the learning process.

The package consists of:
1. Rigorous in-depth Training for teachers and administrators;
2. Complete and detailed Curriculum Guide with details of activities, instructional method and teacher guidance;
3. Comprehensive Resources to assist the teacher at every step.

The whole focus is to, while offering great detail and rigor to the curriculum design, still give flexibility to the teacher by offering choices and invoking and capitalizing on her creativity in delivery.

This document is divided into two parts:

Part 1: Details of what The package contains and how will it help you.
Part 2: Overview of Pre-School: the philosophy, curriculum framework and methodology.

For costs of the package, how and where you start and any other details contact
Ratnesh at 91-98450-45833 or email at ratnesh@geniekids.com

Part 1 – The Package

1 The Training:

The Train the Trainer program will comprise of four components:
1. Classroom learning - twice a week classes - for Online version you attend the same through internet (you attend live through your computer - we provide you with the software). See www.geniekids.com for more details – next batch, cost of program etc)
2. Workshop assignments - work you will do before and after each session
3. Peer to peer - collaborative work for shared learning
4. Actual practical working with children (to be done with children at a school or any other group of children)

The training will give you
* A deep understanding of children which leads you to creating an environment conducive to wholesome growth and all round development.
* A deep understanding of learning which leads you to design and offer opportunities that result in child centered and accelerated and learning.
* A deep understanding of facilitation skills which helps you to offer a relationship of empowerment.

All put together the training will prepare you to understand, appreciate and exploit the Pre-School Package to the maximum. This is because the package is not designed to be prescriptive or directive, and hence this training program will empower and prepare you to get the most out of the training package.

1 The Pre-School Curriculum Plan:

The Pre-School package is designed to offer you a multitude of choices, giving you ample freedom and command over the planning, the curriculum, and day to day scheduling and the delivery of your pre-school activities.

The Curriculum plan contains:
1. Month wise activity schedule for all the age groups between 2 to 6 years. The key word here is flexibility. Imagine our offering like a salad bar – offering you a variety of veggies and fruits, dressings, salad oils, and other additives. Now you go ahead and make your won salad.
Much in the same way, we will offer you – under any theme – a variety of activities, using a variety of mediums, materials and intelligences. You can either follow the sample plan we offer or add or modify the same and even completely create your own monthly plan based on the variety of activities we offer.

You can - as an alternate - choose to pick a set of objectives – and then for working on those objectives – choose a set of activites.

As we said, the whole idea is to offer you flexibility – you will never run out of activities, you may run out of rime!

2. Detailed Activity plan – Every activity (or as we call it ‘activity set’) – will contain the following:

Activity Theme and Objectives, recommended duration etc.
Description of the activity (with detailed activity notes) – How to do, what to do.
Stimulation – How to prepare children for the activity.
Activity Enhancements – Possible ways of making it more effective when doing with children.
Interactions – The kind of interactions the teacher can have with children while doing the activity.
Reflection – How to end the activity – helping children conserve the learnings
Extensions – How to extend the activity in different directions – specially for children who may need “more stuff to do”
Parent Notes – Notes to be sent to parents for them to understand and follow up the activities at home.
Material – The kind of material required (if required photographs of samples)
Resources – The kid of resources like books, computers or any other equipment required for the activity
Environment – How to prepare the class environment for the activity.
Children Response – Typical children responses (will try to include videos here as much as possible)
Faculty Comments – Further notes made by faculty who has already done this activities with children.
HomeWork – Which can be given for parents and child to do together at home.

Part 2 – Overview of Pre-School

Pre School’s Mission Statement: To offer children and parents a holistic, experiential and integrated learning environment.

~ To become a successful lifetime learner
~ To develop high self belief in the child
~ To prepare the child to successfully enter the mainstream school
~ To steep the learning in our cultural values, traditions and heritage.

Throughout the 3-4 years preschool curriculum, child will acquire a full breadth of developmental skills necessary to successfully enter schooling eager and ready to learn. Towards the final year of pre-schooling we will introduce much of the scheduling and activities that will help in smoother transition to traditional schooling.

Pre School’s Philosophy
To us each child is unique, comes with own set of strengths, learns at own pace, and grows into an independent personality.

So its important that we RESPECT each child as an individual. Respect their efforts, struggles, feelings, and intelligence. And most importantly respect their natural and voracious capacity to learn.

Pre School’s Methodology

1 Let the Child Learn
We do not teach - we let the child learn are exposures and experiences. Experiences which are real, meaningful, interesting, involving (child does something in it) and relevant. For eg: Instead to "teaching" vegetable through charts or models - we would rather bring the vegetables the class and let the child eat them (even raw to decide if they want it in their salad) thus making it a completely experiential learning or we would grow the vegetables together in our garden. Similarly unlike other places where ABCD is taught, here children would explore language through more relevant and meaningful words.]

2 Interaction is the Key accelerator
A child learns best from another child. So, we make the interactions between children intensive to make their learning extensive. The facilitator further builds on children’s doing, fueling more interactions. For example, unlike children learning colour through some chart or material, in geniekids child learn colour because they form part of regular conversation, like, “Use this yellow duster to wipe your blue chair”

3 Simple material, many extensions, open learning
We believe a handful of bottle caps can be used to learn language, maths, social skills, body skills, and so on. The facilitator observes each child’s doing and leads the child into many different directions. This open ended learning often crosses multiple subject areas, with child connecting and learning different concepts simultaneously. This makes learning continuous, fun and meaningful, while each child still learns at his or her own pace.

4 Parent Involvement
Since children are learning 24/7, it is imperative that parents are completely involved in the child’s development. Hence, we make available in advance the calendar and schedule of activities for a month, the schedule being updated on daily basis. Apart from a monthly parent-child day, parents are encouraged to observe and be part of their child’s session as frequently as they can.

Pre School’s Curriculum
We realise that everything that’s part of a child’s life is the curriculum. Everything that the child encounters and experiences is something to learn about and learn from. Which means only a curriculum based on all aspects of child’s life can be holistic. Hence, we use the framework of Multiple Intelligences (MI) to give this experience. MI ensures that all intelligences are given equal importance to deliver comprehensive learning exposure to the child.

Geniekids has been a forerunner in recognizing and developing Multiple Intelligences based approach towards a child's development. Geniekids brings its in-depth understanding and vast experience of using Multiple Intelligence as a curriculum framework:

Intelligences	Example Curriculum Areas
1 Linguistic & Verbal Intelligence	Listening and Comprehension Reading pictures, actions, words, and stories Speaking as expression of needs, instructions, requests, questions, options and emotions Writing with purpose – information, labeling, communication and thinking Fine motor skills related to writing
2 Visual and Spatial Intelligence	Lnes, colours, shapes, size, properties Parts, whole, arrangement, patterns Imagination, visualization, creative expression Visual meaning – comparison and contrast, relationship Visual Mediums like drawing, painting, clay, craft, sand, photography, puppets and movies
3 Musical Intelligence	Rhythm Songs Melody and notes through instruments, singing and listening Music and movement Music and nature, festivals, Culture etc
4 Interpersonal Intelligence	Understanding relationships – functional, strangers, family friends, etc Sharing material, thoughts, feelings and time Seeking and offering help and support Social Communication
5 Mathematical & Logical Intelligence	Understanding quantity, less more, position and order and concept of equality Counting, symbols, parts and whole How many in sets of objects Patterns : sequence of sounds , shapes , simple objects : Recognize, describe, predict, extend Sorting by different properties Objects and their properties
6 Bodily and Kinesthetic Intelligence	Balancing my body Gross Motor skills like movement, hopping and skipping Fine motor skills Eye hand coordination Tactile Touch Body Reaction (Reflexes)
7 Intrapersonal Intelligence	Knowing myself (likes and dislikes) Knowing what I can do(personal strength) How independent I am Knowing about my body
8 Naturalistic Intelligence	Growing, caring and understanding Plants Caring, knowing and exploring relationship with animals Exploring five elements – earth, fire, space, air and water Exploring man made environment – transport, places, culture etc
*Note:* Above are just example curriculum areas – not the comprehensive list. Ask us for a mind map of each intelligence which will give you a comprehensive list of areas covered under each Intelligence.

Implementing curriculum objectives

Example of Multiple Intelligence based curriculum

Theme: “ME” - My Body, My Family, My likes, My daily life, My home, My language

Intelligence	Objective – curriculum areas	Example activity
Kinesthetic	What is balance? What are the different parts of the body where we can balance things? What helps us in balancing our body? What makes us stand upright? What happens when we lose balance? Is balance only about body? When are you able to balance a body? What age do you start balancing? What are the things that you can balance?	Balance own body on a thin beam. Balance on one leg. Balance in different ways.
Intrapersonal	What things do I like? What is the color I like? Whom all do I like? What food I like? What do I like to play with? Which animal do I like? Where do I like to go? Where do I like to stay? What do I like to touch/feel? What do I feel like?	Sorting game of likes and dislikes
Visual	What are the various rooms in my house? What are the different things I do in each room? What is my favourite place? What is the importance of this space? What is the placement of my various body parts on my body? What makes it so important to have what we have? What will happen if I had only one eye?	Placement of things in “my room” – child play with small models of furniture items and recreate their bedroom or ideal room
Interpersonal	Who are the people I am associated with? What is the importance of people around you? How do you relate to everyone around you? How different are you from the other people? What makes you so different? What other people you want to be associated with? What is society? What would life be like with no people around?	Story boards - story telling
Logical & Mathematical	What is the sequence of things you do when you get up? What is the sequence of the day? What is the sequence of the food you eat in the day? What is the sequence of the age of people in a house?	Sequencing of events of my day
Verbal & Linguistic	What are the different rhyming sounds they have heard? Can you associate those words with something?	Running game with rhyming sounds and words
Musical	What are the different sounds you hear around you? What are the sounds you hear in a house? What are the different rhyming words you hear? What are the different bird sounds you have heard? What are the different nature sounds you have heard? What are the different sounds a family members make?	Making my own gibberish song and recording it
Naturalistic	What is a tree? What does tree mean to you? What are the different sounds made by the tree? What does tree provide you with? How does a tree grow? What does the tree need? Can you compare the life of tree with a life?

Pre School’s Teaching Principles

Geniekids Philosophy is to help bring out the genie (the potential) in the every child. We believe that each child has the genie inside him or her and all they need is the right kind of opportunities to develop their potential.

The Ten Commandments that we follow are:

1. RESPECT each child as an individual. Respect their efforts, struggles, feelings, and intelligence. This is also the best way to earn their respect.

2. PROGRESS is more important then performance. How much I am better then myself compared to yesterday be more important then how much I am better then somebody else. Follow “What-I-Learnt-Today-Which-I-Didn’t-Know-Yesterday”

3. FUN and enjoyment is a precondition to learning.

4. AIM and objective - if they are clear of the goal of an activity or a learning then interest is aroused, followed by involvement and commitment.

5. DOING leads to involved and experiential learning. Remember, we learn by doing only if we reflect on what we have done.

6. INTERESTS of each child are his or her focal points, direction of their energy. Channelizing this energy leads to accelerated learning.

7. REWARD them handsomely for their efforts through sincere, specific and sensitive PRAISE. Give praise to encourage, guide and inspire.

8. FREEDOM with RESPONSIBILITY is the Mantra. When they are not being pushed to learn, they kind of push themselves to learn. TRUST them with their work – intrinsically they want to do it!

9. DIFFERENCES in children are what make our work so interesting. Acknowledging and tuning our efforts to these differences makes it even more rewarding.

10. PEER LEARNING is the most effective kind of learning. Let child learn on own or from each other. We are there NOT to provide, but to guide.

The Five Keys to Process Effectiveness

1 EXPERIENTIAL - Doing is learning
We do not teach - we let the child learn and all the child needs to learn are experiences REAL experiences to which he or she can connect.

2 INTEGRATED - Multi disciplinary concepts interrelated Learning is not compartmentalised into subjects rather experienced as a set of interconnected concepts - as a whole.

3 INTERESTING - Enjoyment a necessary precondition Child's interest are our starting point. Customising learning experiences as per child's strengths, leads to excited and accelerated learning.

4 OPEN-ENDED - No one right answer - multiple possibilities When there is no right answer to be reached, learning is exploratory there is no stress and child is able to experiment leading to deeper conceptual understanding.

5 SELF EVALUATION - Progress instead of performance. There is no comparison; there is also no judgment on the part of the teacher; learning is not initiated to get some reward, rather child's natural joy of learning and desire to achieve is kindled.

Pre School’s Outcome Tracking

The outcome tracking is based on two beliefs:
1. Each child learns at a different pace – hence assessment should be purely individual (not comparative) and should track the child continuously over a period of time – rather than single point assessment. The focus is hence on tracking the progress of the child.
2. Children often learn in spurts – hence any tracking and the consequent planning should not only look at what has happened but also at the potential that the child is showing.

The tracking of children also serves as a simple yet an effective way of assessing the effectiveness of the program design with an inbuilt mechanism to change or add to the design based on the continuous tracking.