One parent who had recently put her child in our school – was very angry, She bulldozed in with a complaint – “ My child is very happy to come to your school. He says -” In this school, we only play, there are no studies. I like this school very much.” If you continue like this, I am going to spread the word that in your school there is no teaching and then nobody will come to your school” and yet by the end of 3 yrs, our learning outcomes are the best out there! That, in a nutshell, sums our methods. {psst … the child is still in our school}

It’s not easy. Easy on us, that is. In order that it is play and stress-free for the child, we have gone through a lot of stress :). And no it’s not “Montessori has the most proven outcomes” so we adopt Montessori. We have created a clear map on progression in each topic, each concept and track every child objectively at every step. And open it up to multiple ways on how an idea/topic could be communicated. On how to engage. On how concepts should be developed, even for those small children. What matters really is our outcomes, and how your child is doing, not somebody else’s statistics. We feel the early years are the most important, and we need to start right.

The four aspects which our methodology rests on are –

Holistic – We genuinely mean it. Whether it is a daily dose of sports, dance and drama, music, clay, arts …or free play, we want children to be exposed to multiple aspects when young and grow multi-dimensionally. We want children to be active, healthy, confident, capable and naughty too.

Montessori ++ – While we like the underlying principles of Montessori, such as “follow the child”, self-paced learning and allow the child to explore and complete their work cycle, we do not restrict ourselves to the official Montessori materials or even sequences. For eg: we use a lot more active techniques for engaging in mathematics, an entirely different approach for phonetics and do not use Montessori for other subjects. We do however use Montessori materials for sensorial, practical life and a lot of the mathematics.

Engage rather than Teach : We value conceptual learning over information overload. Our way is to be friendly and interest the child, rather than look down and “teach”. Let the concept evolve/develop in the child rather than “explain” it to her. Needless to say, the focus is on developing understanding, rather than training parrots.

Mutilingual : As mentioned elsewhere, we feel our multilingual culture is one of the best advantages India has, which unfortunately this generation is loosing. Not only do we teach the local language from day one, but we reach out and explain to children in their own language, wherever required. This not only makes the children feel comfortable and welcome, but also exposes them to the diversity of languages and develops inclusiveness at a young age. All this may slightly slow down their development of spoken English, but the benefits far outweigh the perceived loss.

We understand that learning happens all the time. Home. School. Community. Playground. That we are only part partners in the journey. Children by the time they come to pre-school typically have a good command over the mother tongue, without the need for formal education. Learning happens during instruction, but also in the absence of instruction. We value free unstructured time to help develop the child to become more independent and more self-driven. Home is also a place where a lot of learning happens and we encourage the parents to be engaged with the child constructively. We share what happens at school so that it is a continuous process and not a segregated one"