Being knowledgeable and informative is defintely a boon, but it also makes the person difficult to please. It holds true in my case. From the moment I conceived till date, I have always chosen to be an informed parent in every aspect. So when my son turned 2.5, I wanted to enrol him in a Pre-school. I was looking for a place where he would be nourished physically, mentally and socially. I had couple of issues to handle like an initial wrong choice of a preschool which turned my otherwise school loving son into a child, who did not want to go to school. My son was just out of a bad year of recurrent cold and viral infections. So basically I was very wary of pre school advertisements which claimed to be the best. And the fact that Viman Nagar (Pune) was booming with pre schools at every nook and corner, did not help much.
Frankly speaking Kider Brook was an original choice for our son, but for some reasons we had settled for another pre school, which turned out to be a disaster. So, going by my instinct, we went to Kider Brook (Viman Nagar branch) to check out the school. We were pleasantly welcomed by a teacher, who helped us through the school and its activities. My son who usually takes time to leave our side, left us the minute he saw the colourful walls and the welcoming “maushis”. After taking down the basic information about the school, we set back home. The positive vibe came when our son said, “Mama, I want to go to this school, I like it!” I personally feel that a child is more intuitive than us, and we took the call of getting his admission there.
From the day one, its been a pleasure for us and our son being with Kider Brook. He never cried a single day at school. Infact he used to cry when there were holidays or the school was over! (yeah, seriously!) The school is run by Mrs Vanita Dogra, who has 18 years of experience with kids and professionally she is a qualified teacher as well as a child psychologist. She has made a very good effort to choose the right teachers and maids who take excellent care of the kids. I have not seen a single staff, including the watchman and the van driver, who does not know how to bond with kids. The school lives upto their motto of “Each child is special and should be happy”. There are a total of 23 teachers with 2 branches, one in Kalyani Nagar (started in 2005) and other in Viman Nagar (started in 2007). Each teacher is trained by Mrs Vanita Dogra, so each teacher is absorbed with the basic values of teaching toddlers. Another fact which I was very comfortable with was that this was not a franchisee run pre school, because from what I have seen, franchisees tend to get very money minded over a period of time, and every franchisee is run differently.
The school also has a day care, and is handled very well with an appropriate number of maids and under the supervision of a teacher who are clean, neat, loving to the core. Apart from the full day care, there is hourly day care too. I am relaxed, because next time my husband and I have a movie to catch up on; we have the right place for our son!
The methodology of teaching is unconventional. Every child is given his/her own pace to catch up. Playgroup is totally fun based learning. Nursery’s first term (June – November) is based on the fact that the child needs to be familiar with the fact that he/she has to start writing. So concentration is on motor development, hand-eye co-ordination, recognising alphabets etc. It is only in the second term (November- May) that the child actually starts writing. By that time the child tends to be very comfortable with the pencil and writing. The school has number of activities within and as well as parents, regular evaluations and interactions with parents.
In all, every activity is done keeping in mind that it’s a foundation for the child to learn something new and good.
The school is reachable on web at: www.kiderbrook.org.in
Labels: Experiences, Kiderbrook, Mommy moments, pre-school, Pune pre-school, Viman Nagar