Experiential Schools: The Education That Your Child Needs

1. Experiential Schools: The Education That Your Child Needs Every parent wants the best education for their children. We live under the impression that good education means a lot of mugging and then scoring good grades in exams. But does this system truly ensure a bright future for your child? Does this system make your kid a better person as he or she grows up? Will this system help your child become a better decision maker in life? Good memory may be a part of intelligence but it is not sufficient, your children should also be able to think creatively, they should develop an aptitude for problem-solving, they should be able to converse better with different peer groups, they should be able to seek, absorb and acquire knowledge and skills wherever they see an opportunity, they should be able to create opportunities for themselves if none are presented to them. Experiential schools in Nasik are taking all these questions very seriously. They intend to stimulate a child’s brain in as many ways as possible with a variety of activities that are in sync with regular education. These activities are designed for brain stimulation and the main purpose behind this is that every child is unique and teaching them in a standard education model will not bring best results. Some children are good at art while others at sports and some show more interest in science and mathematics whereas some show inclination towards social sciences like History and Geography. The spoon-fed system of teaching is affecting their minds. Let’s take an example of a long transparent tube filled with clear water and make a hole on it and drop few drops of some color in it. The colour will affect all the water there is in the tube not just the area below the hole. A human mind is affected in the same manner. If your children get used to the spoon feeding system that only promotes mugging and repeating information to get good marks in the final exams, they will take this habit with them throughout their life. When your child will face real-life situations they will not be able to find solutions for them on their own and instead, they will fall prey to the stress and pressure developed by constant failures. If a Child’s brain is stimulated to explore wherever they show interest, he/she is bound to show dedication and devotion towards learning in that field. And with this mindset, they will surely succeed in life. American psychologist and behaviourist B. F. Skinnerquoted “Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten” “Example isn’t another way to teach it is the only way to teach”.Albert Einstein The above two quotes can be used as a standard model to make your child educationally enlightened. Espalier school, an Experiential School in Nasik follows the Gandhi Montessori philosophy in the similar way where a child is made to explore and feel the real world for acquiring education and develop a self-

2. reliant and confident personality while enjoying the process itself. They have designed a project-based curriculum. A project-based curriculum involves many different activities and procedures and when you kids experience these activities while on the project journey they understand the usefulness of the knowledge acquired through those activities. They follow the CBSE board pattern and fuse the learning experience with experimental methods to make the children better understand the concepts. They use synthetic phonics to teach reading through sounds. This is a fast-paced manner of learning will imbibe the feeling of achievement in them as they will be able to read simpler books in few months. Their mode of teaching is completely child centred where only the development of the children into colorful personalities is important. Children are taken into the real world to carry out the project activities like sowing seeds, planting saplings, caring for the little birds and cleaning the environment, they are given real-life examples to show how their actions will benefit them and in addition also affect the society as a whole to develop a sense of social responsibility and high moral standards. Children are very impressionable and inculcating these values at a tender age will benefit them to become a better person and a responsible global citizen. Other activities that the school carries out are targeted towards improving finer and gross motor skills of the children. Gross motor skills ensure good health as they involve movement and coordination of the arms, legs, and other large body parts and movements. Finer motor skills involve much smaller functions of the body like blinking and picking up objects between fingers, which in turn improve reactions and impulsive actions. If children under the age of 6 are put through such training they will grow up to be very healthy and confidently functioning human beings. They are provided with opportunities to enhance their sensory skills like listening, viewing, touching, smelling and tasting as well. These skills help them perceive the world in a completely different manner where they have an eye for detail and finer things in life. They will develop senses that most people do not even get a chance to know about. Many professions around the world demand sensory skills that no standard education can enhance in a child. They always have a latent talent hidden deep within them and these activities will help bring these qualities out. To know about what is special about which child, the school carries out a series of diagnosis and analysis so they can design a custom learning experience that will benefit the child and bring out the best they have to offer to the world. Enrolling your children in such a school seems out of the box and experimental as the name goes but ensuring your child’s bright future is also every parent’s responsibility. If your children can educate their mind as a whole and develop skills that other children can’t in a standard system then this gives your child a competitive edge.