Early Childhood

The first six years of life are crucial in the development of a human being. The young child’s power of absorption and pace of development is strong and rapid. This innate capacity for absorption inspires the curriculum of the Early Childhood years at Pramiti.

These years are when the framework of personality, learning and being start developing. At this point, children experience an undeterred creative potential. Our facilitation process is guided by the need to equip the children with the capability to access this potential and integrate it with a closeness to their environment. Our meticulously prepared environment fosters independence, psycho-motor development and socio-emotional integration.

Our curriculum focuses on building the skills for qualitative and quantitative comprehension in tandem with the application of these skills towards a scientific discovery of the world around us.

The adults establish a close and nurturing relationship with the child to build trust and confidence. The programme aims at following the keen sense of order that the young children intrinsically have.

Language

In the early years, children have a natural tendency to learn almost everything through absorption. Hence the most important factor that any curriculum needs to consider is exposure. At Pramiti, we ensure that children have exposure to languages not only through reading and writing exercises but through stories, poems, songs and daily conversations.

The curriculum has been built keeping in mind the components of the study of a language namely understanding of sounds and alphabets, vocabulary enrichment, reading, writing, speaking and listening. We believe that the more the children listen to a language, the better they relate to it. Hence, a lot of focus is laid in ensuring that we consciously incorporate listening into our exercises.

Our curriculum also takes into serious consideration that every component of language learning has to be structured into stages that help the child to learn more efficiently. Every component requires preparatory skills and these in our curriculum are called preparatory activities. Before the child actually reads and writes, we take them through a series of exercises which prepare the child to readily move into reading and writing. These activities include a lot of practical life activities like beading, pouring, spooning or a simple activity of using cloth pegs to dry clothes. These exercises are embedded into the language curriculum to help children progress into reading and writing more naturally and gradually.

The goal of the Language curriculum is to help children focus on one language, in this case, English, and provide exposure to other languages in different ways.

Quantitative Reasoning

Quantitative Reasoning is the ability to understand mathematical facts and apply them to general life scenarios. Our curriculum therefore is not just presentation of facts but also focuses on the application of them in problems or scenarios in our daily lives. The child in the early years unconsciously absorbs concepts of dimensions through sensorial exercises and perception. Absorption of concepts of dimensions leads to generalisation which in turn leads to introduction to numbers and relating numbers to quantity.

The children are engaging with the five primary disciplines in this frame namely number concepts, data analysing, algebra, geometry and measurements. Patterns, sorting and comparing are the preparatory skills for Algebra that they will formally learn much later. Simple estimation and predictions form the base for data analysis which will again be formally introduced when they are older. Essentially, the quantitative reasoning curriculum at Pramiti Early Years lays the foundation for more complex concepts that the children will deal with later while strengthening their number sense and its application in daily life activities.

Motor Skills

Development of gross and fine motor skills is crucial in the early years. This can be achieved by providing opportunities of climbing, running, jumping and also walking. Nature walks, playing in the outdoor area, movement and sports activities like exercises and drills also help children develop gross motor skills. Practical life activities like lifting things in the environment to do certain kinds of work also enables gross motor skill development. Children in the early years enjoy contributing to the environment and they always feel “I can” and this is not limited to reading or writing but also in lifting things that we might think are heavy for them or moving things around using the actions of push and pull. Walking on the line with objects help promote balance and coordination.

Fine motor skills develop gradually and this is supported by providing manipulatives such as puzzles, threading, cutting, art and clay work, sorting, pouring, spooning and the like. The activities support the development of co-ordination of hand and eyes. The activities are specifically designed to help develop fine motor skills that in turn serve as pre-writing skill development.

Scientific Exploration and Discovery

The Early Years is that time of a child’s life when they wonder about everything around them; they have many questions ranging from simple ones to complex ones, notice details that we adults miss out. Science is the best way to develop the very important skills of observation, reasoning, analysing, synthesising and validating. The curriculum for our Early Years is focused on developing these skills by introducing the children to experiments that are simple yet foster the scientific thinking and develops science process skills. The environment is a lab for the children and the children with all their curiosity engage in cooking, gardening and experiments enthusiastically. Nature walks help children to be in touch with nature and observe and experience its dynamic nature. They also predict what might happen and then validate their predictions through observation and active engagement in all the activities that are designed.

Care of Environment and Self

The curriculum supports development of independence and also initiates a sense of responsibility towards one’s surroundings. This is done through exercises that develop care for self by experiencing how to wear their clothes, routine activities like eating, drinking, using the toilet and keeping oneself clean and tidy. The child develops a sense of ownership towards his environment and learns to take care of it in small ways like watering plants, mopping, serving food for others, cleaning an area that is dirty. The toddler takes pride in setting the table for a meal time and also helping in preparing snacks by slicing, pounding, mashing and the like for the community.

Art Immersion

​At Pramiti, our discourse is premised on creativity. While the spirit of creative thought is woven into the fabric of everything we do, we realise that dedicated time for creative expression is required at as early an age as possible. The art immersion programme fulfils this need by presenting the children with a variety of media and allowing them to use their innate powers of free association to dream, imagine and create. Children enjoy working with paints, clay, cutting, sticking and are always looking for opportunities to explore more. During the course of our Art Immersion Programme, children experience different forms of art every week in a thematic presentation. They are not only engaging in drawing and painting but also in theatre, music and movement They also get to handle few folk instruments in the environment and understand how to use them as accompaniments and also to explore sounds, rhythm and beats.

Culture Studies

Culture Studies at Pramiti is not about wearing traditional clothes once a week or on a particular day, celebrating festivals by painting diyas or making a thoranam but a much deeper pursuit. Culture Studies gives children experiences of engaging with different cultures and traditions. Stories, experiences of engaging in activities that introduce them to aspects of culture, field trips and also interactions with people coming from different backgrounds form the base of our curriculum in Culture Studies. Children also get to eat traditional and healthy food through our concept of the “food plan” where parents send home cooked food for the entire community by taking turns. The food is basic, traditional and most importantly simple, thus denoting simplicity coupled with diversity and varied flavours.