Aiming for holistic development
Children of Yuvabharathi Nursery School in Coimbatore busy painting.The Art Centre has easels that barely reach up to one’s knees. Neatly propped up on them are canvases that are white on one side and slate on the other. Children can use chalk on the slate and crayons and paint on the easel.This modern day art centre is a perfect place for a budding artist to experiment with his or her creative ideas.The Yuvabharathi Nursery School at Saibaba Colony, which has this art centre, takes utmost care in nurturing artistic interests in children.They are allowed to use all kinds of paints and colours during their art classes with a teacher to guide them. Every child gets to use the paints colours and the canvases and the better pictures are put up on the notice board, to motivate the others. Painting as a pre-writing skill is given a lot of importance. Unlike earlier days, primary education now aims at making the children ready to face the stiff challenges of the outside world not only academically but also as individuals.Hence, more and more schools are experimenting with novel ideas such as this.Yuvabharathi also has a discovery centre, where the basics of science and arithmetic are taught. In addition to that, the students are also trained in basic life skills. Colourful beads to learn more about numbers, combinations and to improve eye-hand co-ordination and other objects to teach children how to tie shoe laces and put buttons are here. Little models of animals are placed on the tables to encourage children to ask questions and discover the joys of learning science.
“It is like laying a foundation for their higher classes by improving their understanding of the world around them,” says C. Anand, Secretary of the School. The teaching method has been formulated by taking the best of the various pre-primary teaching practices.Each classroom has a computer, which is handled by the teacher and all the lessons are supported by a multimedia version.The English language is taught not by introducing the alphabet to the children, but by teaching them a word.This novel method, unlike the conventional practice, familiarises children with words – covering every aspect including the phonetic pronunciation.The teachers feel that this way, the child is able to associate the alphabet with the sound it produces.The children are also given a peek in to the world of meaningful rhymes.Exclusive rhyme competitions are held to strengthen their language skills.
