Success Saturday for 3-13 year olds

All of us want our children to be successful. While each of one of us will define success differently, what we will all agree to is the importance of set of characteristics to achieve it. Hence, this program caters to development of these, characteristics like self esteem, self confidence, decision making, problem solving; perseverance; Independence in doing & accomplishing, motivation & eagerness to learn; Analytical & creative thinking skills; Social and emotional skills, etc.

How does the program work?
According to us, the only way one can develop such a juicy list of characteristics is by giving the children opportunities to EXPERIENCE them. SO the whole program works at two levels: At one level the child comes because the child gets to get involved in loads of exciting activities. (see below for details on activities).
However, we do not focus on the activities per se, rather use the child's involvement in activities to focus on the success characteristics. We do this by using a combination of real situations inside the classroom, process questions directed at the child and designed reflection tools. Click here to read an example.

What kind of activities / Projects?
Activities are based on objectives, which are typically two per month. The activities include challenging games, activity (doing) sets, mini tasks or full blown projects. The five principles we follow when designing an activity are:
1. EXPERIENTIAL - lead to children "experiencing" the objective - eg: children play a modified version of 'musical chairs' to experience disappointment and how they handle it.
2. OPEN - Each child can work at his or her level - since children are at different levels of skills, pace and interests openness ensures - No 'one right' answer - hence it takes children beyond their current ability and perceptions. Eg: given an ending, each child thinking/ writing his own version of how this story happened.
3. GROUP based - Each activity uses group dynamics so that each child learns 'more' because of the group. Eg: Together organizing a mela, with each child sharing different responsibility.
4. RELATED - In some way the activity should be related to life and interests of the child. The more it is seeped in reality of the child daily experiences, the more sensitive its effect would be. For eg: an EQ activity uses situations from child's daily life - like teasing.
5. SELF EVALUATED - Not only the child does evaluation himself, but also does it with reference to himself. Hence the effort becomes "Progress oriented" instead of Performance (result) driven. For eg: Child uses a tool called "confidence meter" to calibrate her confidence levels, before, during and after the activity.
Click here some of the activities and projects we have done in last few years.

How does the program benefit my child?
Primarily the program gives focused exposure of various success characteristics to the child. This makes the child
1) aware and sensitized to these characteristics.
2) Also become aware and start recognizing own strengths and qualities.
3) Understand the value of these characteristics in daily life and its success
4) Evolve strategies to use and apply these characteristics.
Development is a on going process, this program intends to value add to that process. (click here to see the menu of characteristics laid out for this year's program).

How will be parents be involved?
Parents will be involved at three levels:
1. Parents will have access to (online) documentation of each session - the activities, their objectives, and how & what actually happened in the session, how children responded to it, etc.
2. Parents will be given a follow-up activity every week - which you will explore during the rest of the week. This will be simple tools, for you to experiment with your child. This will also sensitize you and get you to explore the concept.
3. Parents get to see faculty's observations and then interact with the faculty.