Open Your Eyes … Kids (The ongoing project at The Yenepoya School)

Breaking the walls of the conventional or more prevalent education system which is syllabi-based and teacher centric, we at Centre for Integrated Learning have been experimenting and evolving new approaches and methodologies to provide children attributes they do not often gain in schools.

While The Yenepoya School, a new generation, unorthodox schooling experience has given Mangalore a new learning and teaching experience, CIL wishes to complement TYS’s efforts in doing things differently. With inputs from the school’s functioning pattern, CIL has proposed this new concept: Open Your Eyes … Kids (Oye…Kids).

Objectives:

Oye…Kids aims to provide additional inputs to children with the aim of improving their overall skills and also developing values that would be carried forward. The programme is not limited to a year or two, but is in fact an ongoing learning process.

Oye…Kids is only a launch pad for developing a personality in a child which the society looks towards.

The programme thus is planned integrating varied aspects of day to day activities from personal health and hygiene to value systems, soft skills, group affinity, harmonizing with nature among such others.

The most significant and pivotal objectives of Oye…Kids include:

Infuse the joy of learning, provide life experiences, inculcate habits and values that gives the child an edge over the rest, understand ground realities, respect for fellow humans, National Integration, Think differently

Interventions:

In providing additional inputs to the children, CIL has worked out certain strategic interventions to be incorporated in the Oye…Kids programme.

The activity based approach primarily focuses on:

Hands-on experience, Exposure through field visits, Group Dynamics, Facilitation for developing personality (soft skills), Individual attention and regular appraisals to assess progress
Proposed activities:

Since the target group is between Class 1-4, it is important that we focus on building their confidence levels through activities that interest them and also those which are significant in developing three skills:

Language Skills, Personal Skills and Social Skills

It is not very effective to teach a child the spelling of an Apple by merely writing A-P-P-L-E on the board. However, if the child is made to understand why it is spelt that way or if it is shown a real apple during the teaching process, the exercise can be more rewarding. Open Your Eyes – Kids (Oye…Kids) will involve the kids in an array of activities which include:

Origami, Clay Modelling, Dramatics, Interactions with personalities, Field visits, Public Speaking, Dancing, Singing, Gardening, Creative Writing …