Category: Blog

School events are a big deal in the life of a child. Some of our fondest memories as adults are of school picnics, sports days and annual functions. While being fun and providing a much-needed break from academics and the business of learning, school events offer many more advantages that may not be immediately evident. TigerCubs preischool recently wrapped up its annual concert and while the event was a roaring success in itself, this post will talk about other benefits of such events. It is a well-known and universally accepted fact that children are impressionable and essentially like intellectual sponges. But even among children, the age group of children that TigerCubs caters to is even more receptive and open. It is therefore the school’s duty to nurture children’s natural curiosity, develop it, and prepare them for the journey called life. Tiger Cubs takes this responsibility very seriously and therefore every day and every class is an opportunity. A school event is just one more great opportunity for children to learn skills that will help them build an enriching life.

• Emotional Intelligence: Experts on education contend that social gatherings and events help build social skills and empathy. Tiger Cubs events are testimony to this claim as children at a very young age have to coordinate their movements, dialogues, and actions with other children. While teachers do help with this process, the final product depends on how well the children are able to work with each other. The children of Tiger Cubs have time and again performed beyond their years, demonstrating exemplary maturity on stage. This is through repeated group activities that Tiger Cubs encourages throughout the academic year which culminates in an annual concert. The bottom line is that such events are not just an end in themselves, but prepare children for future social interactions and group activities.

• Developing Public Speaking and Creative Skills: One major aspect in which the children of Tiger Cubs stand out, is their ability to effortlessly navigate stage performances. Be it dancing, acting, or speaking to the audience, it appears that the Tiger Cubs students can ace it all! This is a big achievement for children of such a young age, but it also implies that at the very least children derive confidence and self-esteem from this ability, which will go on to shape their future lives. If developed further this ability can be developed over time for children to consider and pursue careers in art, music, theatre and so on. To have such encouragement and investment in such pursuits from the school is a huge bonus indeed.
• Break from Academics: This is the most obvious importance of social events at school. However, what isn’t as obvious is the fact that breaks are an integral part of increasing children’s productivity and creative instincts. How do you ask? Far from implying complete disengagement from school work, breaks help children recharge their batteries and give them space to think of other ways to learn and interact with their peers. Tiger Cubs has noticed this about

Children and Faculty in Some Lighter Moments

• Developing Cultural and Social Sensibilities: Annual events are a great way of learning about local and global cultures in real time and not simply through books. For instance, this year’s theme for the annual concert was “75 years of Independence.” The different items, therefore, depicted major national milestones in the seven and half decades since India won independence. The children learned aspects of their history at a very young age not through books but through actual enactment and role-playing. Children are much more likely to retain the knowledge of their history and culture when taught and received in these ways. It is also a precious way of honoring one’s legacy and national heritage. As part of this overarching theme, students enacted events such as the development of science, liberal reforms, victories in the Kargil battlefield and on the cricket pitch, recognition of Indian music at an international level with the song “Jai Ho” receiving the academy award and Indian women being crowned Miss Universe and Miss World multiple times.

 

Vignettes from the Concert – Onstage and backstage

It becomes clear that not just a means of entertainment or breaks from education, school events are an efficient and more importantly fun way of building children’s repertoire of skills and knowledge so that they become successful and effective leaders in the future.

Our Learning abilities largely depend on our learning styles. All of us have an innate learning style and if we receive information in that style we are able to absorb it much more easily .

For example if my learning style is auditory that is listening then I will absorb information very fast through audio recordings or narrations .

As most of our learning is through sensory organs there are three basic learning styles that anyone can have Auditory (Listeners), Visual (Lookers) and Kinesthetic (Movers). We start showing these preferences right from very young age . We can find some babies who are very keen observers , some who are keen listeners and some who are movers . Though a child may have a preferred innate learning style it is possible to help them develop other ways of learning too so that their all round development is possible. And this can be best done in the formative years that is the 0 -6 years window. As an adult it is very difficult for us to change our learning styles and as a result we find we are good at certain skills but poor at others . Generally these skills which we are not good at would require a learning ability which does not suit our learning style and as we did not develop it in our early years it remain untapped. For example if I am a looker or a visual learner I may not be able to pick up different languages fast as my listener skill were not developed.

So as early childhood educators or parents of young children , it is very essential that we observe a child when he enters the preschool and find out their innate learning style . It is possible to do this by giving them various activities related to these three learning styles. You may typically observe that a listener child will be very interested to listen to rhymes and stories and if the child can speak he will participate in conversation by speaking words or sentences. A looker child will enjoy playing with blocks , picture cards , observe colourful surroundings , colouring . They will have very good hand eye coordination. And of course mover child is very easy to identify . He will be constantly on the go , jumping around , lying down , watching outside the window, etc.

So if in the first few months we are able to identify the child’s learning style , we can then teach the child by providing activities suiting that style . For example teach a looker child by showing picture flashcards , etc, teach a listener child by narrating stories and oral instructions , teach a mover child by involving them in physical activities with oral instructions . Looker and listener children are easily able to adapt to our learning environments and traditional school system . They usually do not have much trouble sailing through the academics . However their learning abilities can be much more enhanced if their innate learning style is enhanced and their weaker areas are brought at par. Mover children are the ones who find it most challenging to cope up with the regular school system and specially academics . So if at an early age mover children are identified and if we can focus on improving their listener and looker skills they can become very good all rounders too.

I am listing here a few activities that can be done to enhance or develop each of these skills mainly in preschoolers . These activities will vary as the children grow up.

Looker Skill Enhancer Activities

– Help them solve a variety of puzzles

– Help them make Scrapbooks of Pictures , Photographs

– Help them with activities like Connecting Dots and other such workbooks

– Play Simple Card Games with them

– Different types of Colouring activities

– Do Picture Talks with them. Show them a picture with multiple pictures and activities and let them talk about what they see

Listener Skill Enhancer Activities

– Substitute specific names for generic names. Eg rose instead of flower

– Role play telephonic conversation

– Recite with them Tongue Twisters

– Narrate stories and poetries to them

– If people around speak different languages let them talk and listen to all of them

Mover Skill Enhancer Activities

– Hop, Jump, Twirl

– Texture Feeling and Matching

– Hand clapping Games

– Action rhymes

– Simon Says game

– Painting the floor with water

Our behaviour correction of children also should be according to their learning style .

For a Looker it can be just a warning glance

For a Listener it may have to be proper explanations

For a Mover you may have to divert their attention to some other activity

So as Early Childhood Educators if we are able to identify and help the child develop all three learning styles , the child will find learning a very enjoyable process and as parents we will be able to guide them later to a career which suits their innate learning style . A looker may turn out to be a great artist but also enjoy conversing with people and socialise , a listener may become linguistic genius but also appreciate art and a mover may become a star athlete but also a musician and an organised person.

Before March 2020 no one had imagined what a pandemic was. Even when the first lockdown was imposed many thought it was a temporary phase of a month or two and life will be restored to normal soon. But many experts had already predicted it for atleast 2 years. For the first few days we even enjoyed the quietness that spread in the environment and the sudden breaks that were applied in our fast pace life. But soon we also realised how we take so many things for granted as they are easily available. We realised the importance of freedom of movement which was highly restricted. Another realisation all of us with children at home got was the importance of school.

First thing that got affected for the entire household in absence of school was the daily rhythm. The entire family works in a set rhythm even if one child at home is going to school. Right from waking up on time, to morning routines, to meal times, to sleep habits everything is governed by the school routine of the children at home. With flexibility in office timings as it is life is in a bad rhythm and to add to that the school got online and in most cases got into a recorded mode rather than live mode. A child could chose to do the schooling anytime of the day . Children slept till 10 and 11 in the morning and then did not sleep till midnight. Rhythm is considered to be one of the 4 pillars of healthy early childhood life and also of adult life in general. Most of the adults too were stressed out due to irregular and extended office calls stretching into late night and sometimes even in the wee hours of morning. Lack of rhythm causes unpredictability and anything that is unpredictable cause anxiety and stress.

Another fallout of the social distancing and isolation is lack of social and emotional skills in young children. So many children who were born during the pandemic have not seen people other than their family. If they were lucky to stay in a joint family they saw atleast a few people other than their parents. But there are a large number of toddlers who have grown up in their formative years with only their parents around. This definitely affects the social and emotional intelligence of a child which is rapidly developing in the first 6 years of a child’s life. In quite a few social functions I notice young children acting very hostile towards people and parents using terms like lock down babies or lock down syndromes very casually. Many parents who are aware and see that this needs correction make attempts to get them to interact with people consistently. These learnings which the children got naturally through the environment earlier, now parents will have to make deliberate attempts to imbibe them in these little ones.

As we have opened doors of school we see the effects of stunted social and emotional intelligence in our preschoolers. Preschool time which was earlier just considered as entertainment and casual playtime by many was one of the many things that was taken for granted. But this pandemic has brought out its importance in the formative years of a child’s life more than ever before.

Little toddlers who have not seen many people are more anxious than ever to see new faces in school. They do not want to interact with other children and are happy to play alone. They are not interested to share the toys and for that matter not even share their teacher’s attention. They lack patience to wait for their turn and are insensitive to their peer’s needs. Children have been used to attending online classes with the system being muted. They were all alone in front of the system and could talk and yell without being heard by the teacher. They got undivided attention of their parent during the online classes. They do the same in the offline classes and the teacher spends time to train them to take turns and be quiet while others are talking.

So, as we start our offline classes we are focusing more on activities that will develop their emotional quotient (EQ) than their intelligence quotient (IQ) . School and parents will have to be aware about this and not focus only on academics but also do a lot of activities to fill up this gap in emotional intelligence created due to long period of isolation. Including a lot of exercise to strengthen their eye sight , including a lot of sports activities will also help to combat the effects of too much screen time which was unavoidable during the pandemic. Children may have got used to a lot of screen time but parents and school will have to put in extra efforts towards getting them out of this habit .

Finally I would say to parents of children who have lost precious learnings in the formative years to not stress them all of a sudden as schools have opened up. Building a strong foundation is necessary for all further learnings of life. If the foundation is weak and you hurry the child to move on to higher classes it maybe detrimental for the child’s future learning process. An extra year spent in building the foundation now may prove a very wise decision as compared to a life time of difficulty in learning in future.