Curriculum
The schools follow the curriculum prescribed by the Central Board of Secondary Education.
As per CBSE guidelines, assessments are based on CCE (continuous and comprehensive Evaluation) using both formal & non-formal methods.
Our focus at Prerna Little Flower is to provide holistic developmental opportunities to our children which includes personal, social, creative and emotional development as well as language, math and literary development.
We realize that each child is unique with individual learning styles and abilities; it is important to nurture all forms of intelligences to lay the foundation for fulfilling a child’s potential. Our integrated curriculum uses the Multiple Intelligence approach to nurture and develop your child’s intelligence.
LANGUAGE, LITERACY AND COMMUNICATION DEVELOPMENT
The ability to communicate using language aspects as phonology, semantics, syntax, grammar and social communication both verbally and non-verbally comes under this domain. Language can be either receptive or expressive.
Receptive language is the ability to understand what others say.
Expressive language is the ability to express one’s own thoughts and feelings through speech.
Pragmatic Skills
This refers to the social language skills a child uses in daily interactions with others. This includes what and the child how it. The body language and whether it is suitable at that situation or not.
Pragmatic skills are vital for communicating personal thoughts, ideas and feelings. When the teacher chooses a lesson (stories, rhymes or themes) to teach the child, it should have a chance of developing both Receptive and Expressive and Pragmatic Skills. The teacher must frame the curriculum accordingly to meet the needs of the child.
Phonological Awareness
This stimulates reading and alphabetic writing. Between the ages of 4 and 5, the child develops phonological awareness when printed materials or worksheet are handed to the child, they only spell and read whatever they need.
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
This domain deals with intellectual development and creativity skills in children. They develop the ability to process thoughts, pay attention, develop memories, understand their surroundings, make and implement plans and accomplish them. Creativity is also expressed. Jean Piaget outlined five stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor stage from birth to age 2, the preoperational stage from age 2 to 6, the concrete operational stage from age 7 to 11 and formal operational stage from age 12 to adulthood.
An ideal tool for development of math concepts are dominos. These are cards that represent counting of numbers through dots to learn seriation of numbers, addition and subtraction in the pre-primary level. Shapes, colours, etc., can also be taught. With the help of dominos, the child will learn to categorise, reason the numbers and solve problems.
Science development
The teacher can decide and create experiments for children according to the curriculum (HSJ) she teaches the children. She can frame enough opportunities for the child to explore and understand the concept. Hands-on training must be imparted for problem solving.
CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT
Art and craft
To encourage the child’s artistic talents, painting, drawing, scrapbooks, creative crafts with ecofriendly materials are introduced to pre-primary children. Hand-eye coordination, fine motor skill, patience, sharing and caring with peers, group activities and following group instructions, listening and speaking skills are stimulated.
Origami
It is an art of paper folding which is often associated with Japanese culture. ‘Ori’ means ‘to fold’ and ‘Kami’ means ‘paper’.
Origami means to fold the paper. A square sheet of paper is folded in different patterns and turned into a model. The best known Japanese origami model is ‘crane’. For the pre-primary children, this art of paper folding stimulates listening skills, eye-hand co-ordination, following group instructions, fine muscle skills and creativity. Froebel’s kindergarten system is embedded in this paper-folding technique. Papers are folded in squares, rectangles, triangles, diamonds and so on to create models. Hence origami plays a vital role in kindergarten system of teaching.
Socio–Emotional Development
This domain includes the development of a child’s ability to understand and control their emotions. The child is also able to identify what others are feeling.
Self-identity
Pre-primary children see themselves as separate and unique individuals from the age of four onwards. The overall image of themselves is limited to their names, age, sex, physical attributes, possessions and abilities. Generally, children by this age experience a sense of isolation, feeling of shame, lacking feelings of attachment. All these, can be rectified by supporting them to build a confident self-identity.
Self-assessment
Children at this stage are aware of the differences in capabilities among peers. Helping the child to understand and accept one’s abilities will go a long way in creating confidence. The child should be encouraged to set goals for oneself and review them on completing of a task/learning module.
Social role-play
Role-playing puts the pre-primary child in common social situations so that he/she gets practice in handling them. The following topics can be practised in social role-play among children.
1. Personal safety such as bursting fire crackers, walking and crossing a road, dealing with unknown adults, good and bad touch, how to handle situation when fire breaks out and so on.
2. Social and moral stories can be acted out in class. Assign each child a character and have them role-play the main actions in the story. This ensures that all children will get more information.
Pro-social behaviour
The developmental and socialisation foundations of positive behaviour are rooted in early childhood. At this pre-primary stage, teachers can focus on creating an emotionally supportive classroom environment, establishing positive relationships with all students and by promoting positive interactions among peers. A caring classroom should include practising discipline and orderliness, effective communication with teachers and peers and ensuring student safety.
Pro-social behaviour in young children contributes to school readiness, perspective talking, empathy, self-regulation, attention to instructions and socialising with parents, teachers and peers.
PHYSICAL AND HEALTH DEVELOPMENT
Gross motor skills
The whole body (large muscles) actions are vital for playing and working with peers. Each child learns at a different rate. The following are the gross motor development activities that can be taken up in class.
standing on one foot
walking up and down the stairs
jumping over a line
skipping
kicking, throwing and bouncing a ball
pedalling a tricycle
running, crawling, hopping
climbing
Fine motor skills
Fine motor movements involve the co-ordination of small muscles in the hands and fingers. Commonly the activities such as using scissors, kneading play dough, building blocks, playing with dressing frames (buttoning, zipping, buckling) strengthens the hand and dexterity skills of fingers.
Fine motor skills include:
Academic skills : scribbling • drawing • colouring • tracing • folding paper • scissors skills
Play : building blocks • playing with pegboards
Self Care : Dressing frames—shoe lacing, tying a bow, buttoning, zipping, hooking, buckling, fixing a Velcro • Eating—using spoon and fork, opening and closing jars and bottles • Hygiene—brushing teeth, bathing, brushing hair, toilet training
Self-help skills
The way to build the child’s ability to perform all activities independently is to encourage them to engage in activities from simple to complex. Children have a drive to be independent and do things on their own. They learn so much from doing things on their own. They exercise their gross and fine motor skills, gain confidence in their ability to try new things and build their self esteem and pride in their independence. The self-help skills are as follows:
independent dressing and grooming hygiene and toileting self-feeding, self-care daily chores such as table setting, picking up toys, sorting out their school work
