Outdoor Learning

Studies show that outdoor learning delivers many benefits – boosting concentration, improving moods, reducing stress and increasing a child’s engagement in classroom learning. At Pencildz, the children will be encouraged to get moving indoors and outdoors in all weathers. Learning to enjoy the outdoors in our tropical climate and managing risks and challenges in our unique natural outdoor learning environment will help the children grow and develop in to healthy and confident adults. A huge range of activities, resources and games will be provided in our large outdoor learning environment. Some of them are:

Art Outside

Preschoolers often love to explore art in the messiest ways. Children love painting beautiful masterpieces in the warm sunshine. Sitting under the tree and exploring nature enhances their imagination and brings out more creativity.

Math Fun

Learning math outdoors is much fun as its stress free. Many activities help them learn counting numbers when children write it on the floor and then hop, jump or skip over it. They also learn numbers as they count to their math room every day. At the same time, they also learn smaller and larger numbers, ascending and descending order all through play.

Sensory Play

Sensory play is any activity that stimulates the senses: touch, smell, taste, sight and hearing. Stimulating the senses helps children develop thinking, language, socio-emotional and physical skills. Through sensory play, children explore and naturally use scientific processes while they play, investigate, create and discover new sensations.

At our sensory path, children build connections in brain that are responsible for sight, touch, sound etc., which enables kids to complete complex, multi stage tasks. They develop balance, hand-eye coordination and spatial awareness. Sensory paths are the perfect mid-morning break for rejuvenating themselves.

Sand Play

Sand play promotes physical development. Large muscle skills develop as children dig, pour, sift, scoop and clean up spills with brush and dustpan. Eye-hand coordination and small muscle control will improve as children learn to manipulate sand accessories. It also promotes social skills as they learn sharing the limited space and toys and also building a castle together. By burying themselves in sand, and feeling their body position within the sand, children engage their proprioceptive sense, or the sense of their body relative to space. Also writing words in the sand offers a chance to develop their language skills as well.

Explore Science

Science at preschool level is lot of fun. Kids are truly mesmerized by chemical reactions, exploring nature and jumping to build things. Science helps children develop vital life-skills such as problem solving, communication and research. It is one of the most important subjects a child can learn because of its relevance to our lives and its capacity to apply these vital life-skills to everyday activities. More science learning happens outdoors in nature. It helps children develop inquiry skills. There are seven basic science process concepts that preschoolers learn during the early years (Observing, Comparing, Classifying, Measuring, Communicating, Inferring, Predicting). Some may master and some may not but we ensure that they try to grasp as much as possible at our school.

Some of the outdoor activities which will enhance their science knowledge are:

Nature walk
Growing plants
Bird feeding
Explore what melts in sun
Collecting leaves and pebbles
Making anemometer
Float or sink in nature
Sand volcano

Literacy and Language Learning

Children develop literacy from birth and excel as they develop both a rich vocabulary and a deep understanding of may concepts and language structures through the different stages of growth. Developing reasoning, creative, critical thinking, and inquiry skills is crucial. There is no reason learning the ABC’s needs to be limited to an indoor space. In fact, there are lots of ways to encourage a love of reading and writing by spending time outside. Natural materials offer the children a variety of new ways to explore and express themselves including drawing with sticks and rocks, weaving, threading, pattern making with leaves etc. Likewise, natural materials can be used as the inspiration or props for a wide range of imaginative play and storytelling. Some of the opportunities for language development afforded in nature are:

Negotiating, problem solving and sharing of ideas during play.
Story telling, singing, chants and rhymes are enjoyed all through the day.
Development of vocabulary through inquiry and exploration.

Village School

Designed based on an actual village, our village school has hut house, storybook tree house, fairy lights, lanterns and learning trees. The architecture and design of village school was painstakingly created not only to be beautiful place to teach them and learn, but also to support some of the village’s most important early childhood development ideologies. Our village school:

Inspires imagination: By building a uniquely beautiful and whimsical learning environment for our kids, the village school sets an immediate tone of encouraging imagination. The combination of both knowledge and imagination allow children to be more creative and develop new ideas.
Represents and encourages community: By giving our children a place in a village of their own-a village in which they are encouraged to express and stretch their passion, talents and abilities-we are preparing them to one day see themselves as contributing members of their own communities. This ethos of exploration, special talents and gifts, and community is celebrated in the design of the village.
Signifies growth and possibilities: There are many learning trees in the village school which represents life, knowledge and growth. It reminds to encourage the potential that each child has for success.
Help inspire a passion for learning: We wish and want every child who walks through the front door of Pencildz to see its magic, beauty and wonder. Our whimsical, storybook environment will help them to be excited about going to school every day. It also helps them see school as a magical, inspiring place to learn. This environment also helps them to think outside the box. It teaches that with creativity, hard work and diligence, anything is possible.

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