FAQs for Pre School Khoj
Below are some of the frequently asked questions regarding KHOJ. Click on each question to see the answer. If your question is not answered here - pl email to us.
Khoj Funwork FAQ (10)
You can definitely co-create. Just ensure that you do not end up doing what the child could be wanting to do or doing it your way rather than the way child could be wanting to do. However many a times - to get the initial enthu - its a great idea to co-create.
So we recommend - Start with co-creation - end with each making with own ideas and efforts.
If you enjoyed doing an activity or played a game or did anything together, you could share your ideas with us, we could probably include it with a relevant activity. We love ideas that come from parents and which worked for you - remember you both should have enjoyed the activity - that is the only criterion!
Every week has the option of 5 fun works (connected to 5 activities) to be done during the week. You could choose any funwork (one or more) from that. You could also include something that child did at home even if it is not related to the weeks activity. There are no fixed rules - the idea is to do lot of fun activities at home and make our time with children value added.
Fun work can be shared with friends and faculty every Monday. There is no submition or scrutinization of Funwork. We neither assess it, not give any comments it - we ACCEPT it the way it has been brought.
Rather than the work tiself, We talk about the experience the child had in doing it - that to us is more important.
Sometimes the faculty writes the responses of the children, any comments or appreciation given by other children on the Funwork. Sometimes we even record what the child told about the work. All of this is a mere record and should be seen or sought as feedback.
Please realise these comments are not of faculty's - we refrain from giving our own comments.
Give child options - if not this activity, some other funwork. Or you could get back to child whenever he/she id ready. Or - just leave it - funwork is supposed to be fun - not a "punishment", please wait for the child to be physically and mentally ready for it.
I think you do not need to guide her - she will realize/ learn/ discover on her. What you can do is stop and restart (another time) when she is ready.
Last year one child was NOT interested in coloring and he would just close the fun book. Without me doing any efforts for coloring, this year he is showing a lot of interest in coloring. Last year when he would close the fun book without colouring - the parent would not force him to learn coloring and would accept his closing of the book. Sometimes the paretn too will close the book, sometimes the paretn will just colour whatever she wants.
Realise this frustration is core process of child's learning - so lets let them learn on their own:)
Part of frustration arises due to children not having the requisite skill and hence not able to "match" up with your results. An interesting way to do work with children is to do at similar level of skills - i.e with some constraint.
For example you draw with your left hand or with your thumb and palm (no fingers). That way skills wise you are at par with the child.
In some ways, you learn too, this way - and its more 'fun'.
The Fun work lists out small activities which are connected to the daily activity. Theses are listed out for you to have fun together at home while extending the learning from the activities on a daily basis. The name of the activity is mentioned in the fun work for your reference.
Fun work is having fun together - so child does what he or she can do and you do what you want to or need to do! So no formula - only one objective - enjoy it together!
Funwork is having fun together - so child does what he or she can do and you do what you want to or need to do! So no formula, no teacheing, no explicit demonstration - a kind of this-is-how-you-do-it.
Only one objective - enjoy it together! So you do for your own nejoyment and child does - whatever - for his or her enjoyment - check out the name its FUNwork.
Some of the Fun work activities may not require a book, like the one mentioned. In such cases you could simply write your experiences about the particular activity and how you enjoyed it together.
We do not feed them or check their snack boxes - however we encourage them to eat by themselves by meaningful interactions.
A THOUGHT:
if a child is hungry - the child will eat (same for us).
Given this belief - i would ask why a child is not eating in the snack times?
can be many reasons - like
He is not hungry (has eaten enough breakfast - in which case there is no issue)
He is scared of something (is he too pressured about eating - that itself may stop children from eating)
Some stomach disorder (get it checked for worms etc)
He dosen;t like whats in the tiffen (involve him in filling stuff in his box)
and more
once we know the possible reason - we can act accordingly
if we do not know the reason, atleast we can try out different options by hit and trial.
You can know more about our preschool and the teaching methodology at - http://www.geniekids.com/preschool
Teacher student ratio is 1:12
For us ALL kids are different and we understand them at their level.
The best way to understand a school is to experience it. We invite you to observe a session in progress, as that would give you a first hand idea of how we work with children. read more http://www.geniekids.com/aboutkhoj
Most importantly the team that executes the program is the one who designs it. They bring deep understanding of the activity and flexibility in executing the same.
We also do monthly in-house training programs. Apart from that reading and research is the ethos of geniekids way of working. Unless we are continuously learning, how can we facilitate learning in others!
What is common amongst all our faculty is that all of them have gone though a four month long extensive training program called Train the trainer During the training they are exposed to various ways of working with children with emphasis on
* Understanding the child
* Understanding and exploring various ways of learning
* Understanding effective facilitation
At Geniekids, we all are here by choice, by passion to work with kids. We all come from various profession like computer engineer to pharmacist. It is our conscious decision to work with kids and we bring in lot of commitment, enthusiasm, learning and professionalism in whatever we do. Read about us at www.geniekids.com/aboutus
For Khoj Pre Primary School we request parents to visit the center with the child. Spend some time in the center. Talk to us and understand our approach. Also, if you want - come for an observation session - where you sit in a ongoing class and observe our process (observation can be offered to one of the parent without your child and needs to be for a minimum of two hours. Pl call us atleast 2-3 days in advance to book for observation)
And then do registration
A: Three Options for Registration
1. Visit our center - fill the form - pay via cash or cheque (no credit cards please)
2. We email you the form and you attach a cheque to the form and courier or hand deliver to us. Cheque in favour of GENIEKIDS
3. We email you the form and you email form back and simultaneously make bank to bank transfer (email us for bank details)
We do not expect the child to be completely toilet trained. The child can be at any level of toilet training - we accept the child at that level. We , ourselves do not toilet train. However, the best news is that children's toilet training gets accelerated because they see other children asking for toilet trip. Kids learn most things from other kids - and thats the big benefit of being in pre-school. In a group we have mixed children - some trained - some in the process of training - And they all learn from each other.
Whether you want to send your child in diapers or not is purely your decision. We would however insist that you send at least one change of clothes to take care of toilet misadventures. Do read our Care giver training document for more information. http://geniekids.com/content/care-taker-training-gk
We do not punish. There is no need and we all know it is ineffective :-)
Our whole philosophy is based on respecting the child. Hence most of our strategies are based on empowering the child. Empowerment can be done through preparation, options, understanding feelings and making child responsible for managing their feelings, thoughts and actions, etc. The whole idea is to move with the child. Please read our discipline document.
We do not beleive in assessment. What we have is an observation based system of tracking the child.
This is done ins two parts.
First we have daily observation of the child which is entered byt he faculty (on a daily basis) and can be seen (only) by the parent from our website.
Secondly we have a monthly tracking system. Tracking is a visual representation of our observations of a child.
We work with 51 parameters based on the eight multiple intelligences. We note our observation on all of these parameters and assign a number to mark off our observations. This is done once a month (the first week of every month). Read more
http://www.geniekids.com/content/tracking-progress-your-child
No - we do not teach anything! But Yes we have loads of rhymes. Again rhymes are not done for the sake of rhymes. Rhymes are done because they have a specific role to play:
Mostly rhymes are either related
~ to the activity (eg: seed song when doing planting activity)
~ to classroom procedures (eg: before we eat, we wash our hands, wash our hands, wash our hands)
~ to morning energizers and mind-body coordination games (eg: put your right hand in....)
See rhymes at http://www.geniekids.com/viewrhyme
Everything we do, we believe in doing it together. So all "events" are together events - children, parents and faculty all together. Hence we do not have the traditional annual day (where normally children present and parents watch) or sports day (where competition is the focus). What we have are Parent-child days (when both do activities together), Melas (which are extensive celebratory events with themes - focus being on exposure and enjoyment together) and various special days like independence day special, diwali special, game special week etc. Read more at http://www.geniekids.com/content/events-khoj
YES - we do. However we do not take children for field trips for the sake of field trips. The field trip is done when it is required by an activity (hence it does not have a prefixed periodicity. The field trip plays a specific role in the whole learning design and hence the kind and content of the field trip is purely driven by the activity. We also ask parents to accompany us for field trips.
We accept the child as it is - we do not try to force our expectations onto them. However, the positive environment does encourage children in Geniekids to open up and discover the genie within them. And in our view the first and most important step in this positive environment is acceptance of child's current behavior and NOT trying to make him or her *more social*. The more we let them "be", the more the push themselves.
NO - No traditional home work is NOT given
YES - We call it Fun work - because the idea is to have fun while doing small activities (parent & child) together. These are for you to have fun at home while extending the learning from activities done at Geniekids on daily basis. Each fun work is connected to the main activity of the day. The activity name is mentioned for your reference in the fun work list. Neither it is compulsory for you to do fun work everyday, nor there is any submission nor we are trying to assess the child through the fun work. Obviously the more you do the more the child learns. Read more about fun work at http://www.geniekids.com/khoj/funwork
Surely - Geniekids believes that greatest fun is when children are interested in what they are doing. So while we do not entertain your child, the activities and the process of learning followed by Geniekids is based on child enjoying the whole experience.
We motivate the child. Our activities take care of the involvement. An activity gives the child "a goal" so that they are excited in "doing" the activity and this involvement leads to their learning - including writing. SO the pushing is not required - the kids wants to DO everything - because they like doing it!
Children in class room are constantly reading and writing. Both reading and writing starts as soon as the child joins the geniekids (no matter what age). However please do not confuse their reading and writing as same as how we as adults experience it. A child scribbling his name is writing, through it may not legible to us.
What we believe is that both reading and writing (and for that matter everything they learn) need to me relevant to them. So they start with reading and writing stuff which is relevant to them. Hence rather than writing ABCD which is mere symbols and have no meaning in themselves per se, we would rather have the child write actual words which the child wants to write. So while the child's calligraphy of ABCD is not yet clear - the child is actually writing meaningful words and is falling in love with writing. The calligraphy will, because of daily writing meaningful words, over time automatically become clear. For more details on this - pl come and meet us
What parents say - I thought I must write to say thanks to you for the remarkable changes that I am seeing in Anoushka this year. Suddenly, she is busy writing (in fact wrote her name in less than half a minute!!), trying to read by herself and is generally exploring and experimenting a lot. - Mina Mother of Anoushka
Surely, the difference is not about "WHAT". Finally all children learn the same set of skills - say language, numerical, musical, fine and gross motor, social etc. Its about "HOW".
How your child will learn will be different from other schools. We work with 51 parameters (or objectives) of learning. Child may may not be able to exhibit each learning immediately, but as he progresses he will build, know and understand ALL concepts require for pre-school age. In fact we believe in our approach of child creating learning on his own rather than us teacher him or her.
This way the conceptual learning is far stronger, Child retains more and most importantly the child learns how to learn.
Over all the child is broadly at par with other children of his or her age.
What parents say -
Have not heard of any pre-school putting in so much effort and taking pre-schooling so seriously. Most of my friends who have shifted to other schools feel GK is either better or on-par with schools. Feel thats a great compliment for the team, considering the difference in availability of resources. Overall very satisfying and learning experience for both the parent and the child - Madhu mother of Rishikesh
Khoj does things differently from what other preschool programs do. And therein lies the difference. Kudos to all of you for taking pre-schooling to a different level! Some of the changes I have noticed since he started are - he is more social, he believes more in himself - he tries his hand at various things now, he expresses himself much better.- Santrupta - mother of Pranay
Our whole approach is based on two presumptions:
1. Each child is capable of learning on his or her own.
2. Each child is different, learns differently
Hence it does not make sense for us to have "one" system of learning. Why not have an open approach towards learning and let the child drive the whole learning process. At geniekids we do not follow any one system - we create rich exposures and experiences through activities. These activities are themselves based on multiple intelligences. We integrate various concepts and ensure all learning is CREATED by the child through child's own experience, interactions and thinking. See more details on of the curriculum on http://www.geniekids.com/khojcurriculum.
Yes, geniekids and you - parents - together prepare the child for the interview. Realize that preparing for the interview is less about the questions asked (the content) but more about the child's readiness to "answer" and "respond" in an interview environment.
KHOJ per school is till 6yrs - basically after this the child is ready to go to 1st standard. We cover all aspect in our curriculum to prepare the child to go to 1st standard.
However, if you wish you can withdraw the child any age before 6 years and can take admission in any other school. It would be great if you can inform us in advance. Also, let us know if the child is supposed to attend an interview in any school - about 2months in advance. We can then together (geniekids and you parents) use this time to prepare the child for the admission test or interview (wherever applicable).
We do not have any tie up with any school. We believe that THE PARENT should decide on the school based on your criteria. Read our article on selecting school http://geniekids.com/pa/bestschool
However, let us know if the child is supposed to attend an interview in any school - about 2months in advance. We can then together (geniekids and you parents) use this time to prepare the child for the admission test or interview (wherever applicable).
We value every single feedback given to us. If we are not able to give time to you due to our involvement in the program – please send us a mail – we will surely respond. Or call us during working hours.
Or give us directly on our website http://geniekids.com/webforms/feedback-children-program
is NOT IMPORTANT. As an ideology of our organization we do not focus on carry homes. Your child is even free to not take what he has done or made in the class to home. Please do not judge the child or the program by what the child takes home. Whatever the child does in the session – the child does on his or her own. The whole idea of the program is to encourage child’s independent doing, efforts and judgment. Our programs are not designed to make children carry good looking stuff home. Our programs are designed to instill an attitude of can do, did it myself, my opinion matters, I am special, etc, in the child.
Geniekids does not provide any transport. Van service is provided by a third party arrangement. Hence you need to call Mr Devraj (on 94488-78294) and directly discuss your transport needs with him. Usually he should be able to provide you with a reasonably priced solution.
Kindly note that is a purely third part arrangement and geniekids is neither involved nor responsible for the transport service provided. However, we in past have found services of Mr Devraj fairy reliable and have not received any complains from any of the parents using his service. We recommend that you check out his van and driving and also, if you desire, speak to the parents using his services.
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