Our Academics

Literacy

Literacy is an essential part of our everyday lives. Literacy is an "ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts”.

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Preparation for learning to read begins early in the life of children, even earlier than some might think. In fact, some would say that emergent reading skills begin at birth when children are first exposed to speech. These skills continue to develop through the preschool years as children acquire language and are exposed to printed materials in meaningful ways.

A well – rounded early education in literacy includes all four components of preschool literacy, also known as “the big four”, and they make up the foundation for future literacy development.

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The Big Four

1. Oral Language Development:

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Oral language is the acquisition of vocabulary that aids in meaningful speech and conversation. However, oral language development consists of much more than simply vocabulary. It also includes:

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• Phonology: the organisation of sounds within an alphabetic language.

• Grammar or syntax: the rules that govern the structure of speech and writing.

• Morphology: a subset of semantics which considers the smallest units of meaning within a word, as well as how the word is formed.

• Pragmatics: the understanding of how language is used in social situations.

• Discourse: the act of communicating, in oral or written.

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2. Print Awareness:

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Print awareness refers to a child’s understanding that written language has a direct relationship with oral language. Sometimes called “concepts of print”, it also includes skills such as

• Book awareness: knowing how to properly handle a book, including how to turn pages.

• Reading pictures: developing storytelling skills by using picture to “read” a book, rather than relying on the words to be read aloud.

• Picture and word differentiation: that they are two separate things.

• Line sweeping: the act of “sweeping” reading from the end of one line to the beginning of the next.

• Punctuation: developing awareness that symbols in writing tell readers what to do.

• Purposeful print: that print has a purpose to communicate and give information to the reader.

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3. Phonological Awareness:

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Phonological awareness refers to the ability to recognise the variety of sound units that make up words. It encompasses a wide variety of sound-related skills that are necessary for reading.

• One – to – one correspondence in reading: that each written word corresponds with a spoken word.

• Rhyming

• Syllable awareness: counting syllables, as well as blending and segmenting syllables.

• Onset and rime manipulation: if the /k/ sound in cat is replaced by the /p/ sound, what new word is created?

• Phoneme awareness: that words are made up of small and individual sounds.

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4. Alphabetic Principle:

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Most simply put, refers to phonics instructions, which means that sounds in words are represented by symbols (letters). It is understanding that the speech sounds of language have systematic and predictable relationships with letters of the alphabet and letter combinations, thus forming words. Skills include:

• Letter – sound associations: that every sound has a matching symbol or set of symbols.

• Sound blending: for example, what word is mooooommmmm?

• Segmenting: isolating individual sounds in a word.

• Reading pseudowords: applying sound/spelling patterns to unfamiliar words.

• Word identification: identifying single words.

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Numeracy

Children think mathematically long before they start school, and there is substantial growth in numeracy skills during preschool. Such informal knowledge about numbers is often referred to as ‘number sense’. Children show their number sense in many everyday problem-solving situations involving numbers and measurement. They may reason about who has more or less, devise strategies for creating equal shares of countable objects or amounts, or use counting in a range of situations to reason about a single group of objects or to compare two groups. Children informally build these skills in their everyday interactions with adults and with other children, and they can be encouraged to develop their understanding in play situations.

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General Knowledge

In today’s world, general knowledge is critical for your child’s growth and success and varied choices are available for today’s generation. The key is to learn and gain more knowledge about different areas beyond the classroom. A child’s success depends on how much he or she is learning from the surroundings. It will also help improve their social skills, emotional skills, reasoning skills and thinking skills to name a few. The child will form an identity during this stage, which will help your child in forming their own opinion about the world. Some of the key concepts that will form a child’s foundation in general knowledge are:

• Learning about their country and the world

• Festivals and religions

• Ecology and us

• Sports

• Life skills

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Health and Well Being

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At Pencildz, health and well-being are about learning how to lead healthy and active lives, whilst becoming confident, happy and forming friendships and relationships with others that are based on respect. It is also about managing feelings and having the skills to meet challenges, make good choices and manage change.

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The relationship between nutrition, health and learning is undeniably strong: nutrition is one of the three major factors that has an impact on child development. Early childhood is when we need to develop the healthy habits necessary to live healthy lives as adults.

Preschoolers quickly grow and change physically, mentally and socially. Parents and school know the importance of nutrition and they can be good role models. Meal and snack times teach sharing and socializing skills. Small children need to be given child-sized servings for meals and snacks that respect local traditions and customs. Also, preschoolers can learn basic kitchen and gardening skills very easily and quickly provided they are facilitated with such an environment. We at Pencildz ensure that the child stays healthy and safe all through the year and develop healthy eating habits.

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Moral Education

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Moral education means an ethical education most required in life of people. It comprises some basic principles such as truthfulness, honesty, charity, hospitality, tolerance, love, kindness and sympathy. Around age 2, children start to feel moral emotions and understand to an extent the difference between what’s right and what’s wrong. Toddlers and preschoolers are motivated by the threat of consequences. Therefore, early on in their moral development, you might see that they are more concerned about being punished rather than the feelings of another person. So, showing empathy often doesn’t develop until closer to age 4 or 5. Although they aren’t making life-altering decisions, they do make small moral choices every day. Here are a few moral decisions a preschooler may be faced with:

• Do I share my toy with a friend even though I don’t want to?

• Do I hit the person who won’t play with me?

• Should I take my sister’s toy from her because I want to play with it?

• Do I cut in line because I don’t want to wait my turn?

• Do I sneak a cookie when someone is not looking?

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While a child will violate these moral codes quite often, each time he steps out of line is an opportunity to help him learn. The discipline strategies employed, combined with the proactive strategies used to teach right from wrong, will guide the preschooler’s moral development. At Pencildz, we ensure that the six pillars of character will help the preschooler to be a better individual in all walks of life.

• Respect

• Trustworthiness

• Responsibility

• Fairness

• Caring

• Citizenship

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Technology

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During the preschool years, young children are developing a sense of initiative and creativity. They are much curious about the world around them and about learning. They are exploring their ability to create and communicate using a variety of media and through creative movement, singing, dancing and using their bodies to represent ideas and experiences. Digital technologies provide one more outlet for them to demonstrate their creativity and learning.

Kids are crazy for technology and it’s really important to provide early learners with time to simply play, create and use their imaginations. At Pencildz, we ensure that our teachers help our children learn to use current technology in this constantly evolving world. Some simple ways to inculcate technology:

• Provide opportunities for children to begin to explore and feel comfortable using “traditional” mouse and keyboard computers.

• Capture photos of block buildings or artwork that children have created; record dramatic play to show it later for children.

• Celebrate the accomplishments of children with digital media displayed on a digital projector.

• Record the stories about themselves; make digital audio or video files to document their progress.

• Explore digital storytelling with children. Co-create digital books with photos of the children’s play or work; attach digital audio files with the child as the narrator.

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Outdoor Learning

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Studies show that outdoor learning delivers many benefits – boosting concentration, improving moods, reducing stress and increasing a child’s engagement in classroom learning. At Pencildz, the children will be encouraged to get moving indoors and outdoors in all weathers. Learning to enjoy the outdoors in our tropical climate and managing risks and challenges in our unique natural outdoor learning environment will help the children grow and develop in to healthy and confident adults. A huge range of activities, resources and games will be provided in our large outdoor learning environment. Some of them are:

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Art Outside

Preschoolers often love to explore art in the messiest ways. Children love painting beautiful masterpieces in the warm sunshine. Sitting under the tree and exploring nature enhances their imagination and brings out more creativity.

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Math Fun

Learning math outdoors is much fun as its stress free. Many activities help them learn counting numbers when children write it on the floor and then hop, jump or skip over it. They also learn numbers as they count to their math room every day. At the same time, they also learn smaller and larger numbers, ascending and descending order all through play.

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Sensory Play

Sensory play is any activity that stimulates the senses: touch, smell, taste, sight and hearing. Stimulating the senses helps children develop thinking, language, socio-emotional and physical skills. Through sensory play, children explore and naturally use scientific processes while they play, investigate, create and discover new sensations.

At our sensory path, children build connections in brain that are responsible for sight, touch, sound etc., which enables kids to complete complex, multi stage tasks. They develop balance, hand-eye coordination and spatial awareness. Sensory paths are the perfect mid-morning break for rejuvenating themselves.

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Sand Play

Sand play promotes physical development. Large muscle skills develop as children dig, pour, sift, scoop and clean up spills with brush and dustpan. Eye-hand coordination and small muscle control will improve as children learn to manipulate sand accessories. It also promotes social skills as they learn sharing the limited space and toys and also building a castle together. By burying themselves in sand, and feeling their body position within the sand, children engage their proprioceptive sense, or the sense of their body relative to space. Also writing words in the sand offers a chance to develop their language skills as well.

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Explore Science

Science at preschool level is lot of fun. Kids are truly mesmerized by chemical reactions, exploring nature and jumping to build things. Science helps children develop vital life-skills such as problem solving, communication and research. It is one of the most important subjects a child can learn because of its relevance to our lives and its capacity to apply these vital life-skills to everyday activities. More science learning happens outdoors in nature. It helps children develop inquiry skills. There are seven basic science process concepts that preschoolers learn during the early years (Observing, Comparing, Classifying, Measuring, Communicating, Inferring, Predicting). Some may master and some may not but we ensure that they try to grasp as much as possible at our school.

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Some of the outdoor activities which will enhance their science knowledge are:

• Nature walk

• Growing plants

• Bird feeding

• Explore what melts in sun

• Collecting leaves and pebbles

• Making anemometer

• Float or sink in nature

• Sand volcano

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Literacy and Language Learning

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Children develop literacy from birth and excel as they develop both a rich vocabulary and a deep understanding of may concepts and language structures through the different stages of growth. Developing reasoning, creative, critical thinking, and inquiry skills is crucial. There is no reason learning the ABC’s needs to be limited to an indoor space. In fact, there are lots of ways to encourage a love of reading and writing by spending time outside. Natural materials offer the children a variety of new ways to explore and express themselves including drawing with sticks and rocks, weaving, threading, pattern making with leaves etc. Likewise, natural materials can be used as the inspiration or props for a wide range of imaginative play and storytelling. Some of the opportunities for language development afforded in nature are:

• Negotiating, problem solving and sharing of ideas during play.

• Story telling, singing, chants and rhymes are enjoyed all through the day.

• Development of vocabulary through inquiry and exploration.

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Village School

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Designed based on an actual village, our village school has hut house, storybook tree house, fairy lights, lanterns and learning trees. The architecture and design of village school was painstakingly created not only to be beautiful place to teach them and learn, but also to support some of the village’s most important early childhood development ideologies. Our village school:

• Inspires imagination: By building a uniquely beautiful and whimsical learning environment for our kids, the village school sets an immediate tone of encouraging imagination. The combination of both knowledge and imagination allow children to be more creative and develop new ideas.

• Represents and encourages community: By giving our children a place in a village of their own-a village in which they are encouraged to express and stretch their passion, talents and abilities-we are preparing them to one day see themselves as contributing members of their own communities. This ethos of exploration, special talents and gifts, and community is celebrated in the design of the village.

• Signifies growth and possibilities: There are many learning trees in the village school which represents life, knowledge and growth. It reminds to encourage the potential that each child has for success.

• Help inspire a passion for learning: We wish and want every child who walks through the front door of Pencildz to see its magic, beauty and wonder. Our whimsical, storybook environment will help them to be excited about going to school every day. It also helps them see school as a magical, inspiring place to learn. This environment also helps them to think outside the box. It teaches that with creativity, hard work and diligence, anything is possible.