Our Activities

Music

Music plays a very important role in the Childs development.

Research undertaken by a team of researchers in 1990s showed that the exposure to music from early childhood onwards helps children to speak more clearly, develop a larger vocabulary, and strengthen social and emotional skills. Music intelligence is as important as logical and emotional intelligence. This is because music has the ability to strengthen the connection between the body and brain to work together as a team. Dancing and moving to music, children develop better motor skills. In general, the exposure to music supports children in their development process to learn the sound of tones and words.

Music ignites all areas of child development and skills for school readiness, including intellectual, social-emotional, motor, language, and overall literacy. It helps the body and the mind work together. Dancing to music helps children build motor skills while allowing them to practice self-expression.

As children explore music through play, they make discoveries about themselves and the world around them, develop a larger vocabulary and important pre-reading and math skills, and strengthen their social and emotional skills, as well as their actual musical development and appreciation.

Music enhances hand -eye coordination, it helps in fine and gross motor skills and much more. Music is very important in early childhood development.

Develops Fine & Large Motor Control

If music encourages tapping, clapping, bouncing, jumping and shaking this can help enhance fine and large motor skills. Movements which includes back and forth, sit and stand can help build brain and body coordination. All of these activities help build important connections across many regions of the developing childhood brain during this essential time of development.

Expands Communication & Imagination

Even before babies are able to talk, their babbling and sound play helps them to develop neural pathways necessary for listening and speaking. Children can easily mimic music and sounds they hear as an additional way to understand and make the sense of the world around them. It impacts their overall happiness.

Music is a way of knowing. According to Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner, music intelligence is equal in importance to logical, Mathematical intelligence, spatial intelligence, bodily kinesthetic intelligence, interpersonal intelligence.

Music is a basic life skill. It has numerous positive impacts on early childhood development. Just like language music is a shared, expressive way to be together. It is a way for children to discover the possibilities of laughing and joking, and to experience positive emotions like delight, joy and affection.

Yoga

Yoga benefits children in many ways. Parents are worried about their children’s social behavior, aggressiveness, distraction and many more. Yoga brings difference in their behavior in positive ways. It also reduces anxiety and stress in them.

Yoga helps strengthen children’s growing bodies and helps them to improve their flexibility, which can reduce their chance of injury.

Our children live in a hurry-up world of busy parents, school pressures, video games, and competitive sports. We usually don’t think of these influences as stressful for our kids, but often they are. Yoga can help counter these pressures. When children learn techniques for self-health, relaxation, and inner fulfilment, they can navigate life’s challenges with a little more ease.

Yoga at an early age encourages self esteem and body awareness with a physical activity. Children derive enormous benefits from yoga. Physically it enhances their flexibility, strength, coordination and body awareness. In addition, their concentration and sense of calmness and relaxation improves. During yoga, children exercise, play, connect more deeply with their inner self. Children need to discover the world on their own. Telling them to think harder, do it better is not a right way, instead providing them a loving, responsive and creative environment to understand the world around them. As they perform, various animal and nature asanas creates a sense of awareness in them.

Yoga teaches discipline and reduces impulsivity. It also teaches children about discipline as they work on clearing their minds and perfecting they're poses.

Practicing yoga is important for kids for many reasons, it helps relax, sleep better, improve emotional regulation and improve mood.

Yoga helps to improve memory and cognitive function. Practicing yoga requires concentration of both the mind and the body. They have to pay attention the movement of our bodies and how our breathing coordinates with those movements.

When kids practice yoga, they are essentially practicing their ability to focus. Better focus improves cognitive functioning at school, leading to improved academic achievement.

Yoga for kids typically includes songs, games, and other fun activities that get kids moving together and learning from one another. This creates a positive, engaging environment in which kids can have fun, talk to one another and learn to trust one another.

Yoga helps to increase self-confidence and empathy within kids. It develops self-confidence, practicing yoga is a great way to introduce independence in kids.

Arts and Craft

Experts say that children age 2-8 is the most important period and in this period involving children in arts and crafts is the most important way to help them grow and develop. That’s why we in Ilm Pathway do so much of it.

Kids love to do arts and craft and its important for them to practice it both at school and at home. These activities help instil a sense of achievement in children, boosting their self-confidence. Arts and crafts carry importance in early education. Be it a making miniature statues from clay or colouring with crayons, folding papers, cutting and lots more. These activities spike a child’s interest and tap their artistic potential. By introducing children to art and craft, we will be sowing the seeds for their physical, social and cognitive development. The child will learn to make correct and effective decisions by facing and solving artistic challenges.

    There are many important areas of child development.
  • Motor Skills
  • Kids use their fingers to do art work, here they are developing fine motor skills, as they use their small muscles tin their hands. They use both their hands and get involved in the craft, here their bilateral coordination skills improves as they learn to use both hands at the same time.

    These all happens when they paint, glue, colour, cut, and fold etc. the faster the fine motor skills develop the quicker they learn to do things on their own.

  • Creativity
  • Art allows kids to develop creativity, when children are creative, they put their thoughts, this allows them to think differently and they will be expressive, they will learn to cope up with their feelings. Engaging kids in creativity gives a child the opportunity to express their feelings in a meaningful and positive way. They also derives satisfaction from making something on their own, this encourages innovation. And the ability to think and solve problems. Creativity develops mental growth

  • Literacy & Math Concepts
  • Involving in arts and craft, children will develop their ability of following instructions and listening skills, it also allows a child to make decisions and choices. When children make arts and craft they get to talk about the work they have done, this improves speaking skills and children learn new vocabulary.

    Engaging children from a very young age in arts and crafts improves hand and eye coordination. This leads to tremendous improvement in the Childs language development, as they form letters and make words. Simple actions like holding a paint brush, colouring with crayons help strengthen the muscles and improve their pincer grip.

    Kids get to recognize shapes, count and sort out their art supplies and even measure out lengths and sizes of art materials. Kids also learn and become aware of patterns and figures.

  • Socializing
  • Being together with other children in an arts class, kids learn to socialize with others, share things and ideas. Learn from others, and also learn to control their emotions. This develops their confidence and confidence boost their speaking abilities, and leadership qualities, sharpens decision making skills. Facing and solving artistic challenges will help a child to make effective decisions which help them in other endeavors of their life.

    Various benefits of arts and crafts also extend cultural awareness.

Sensorial Play

Sensorial learning is a teaching technique that stimulates the child’s five senses; touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing. It includes activities that help them study objects, colours, textures and tastes.

We need to provide an environment for children which develops their love for learning. We must introduce them to a teaching technique which is both fun and beneficial. Sensory play is the best method.

Engaging children in sensory play helps prepare them for life ahead. Sensory play is a kind of activity which stimulates children’s senses.

Sensory play is important for children in their brain development, it can strengthen sensory related synapses and functions.

From birth to early childhood, children use their senses to explore and try to make sense of world around them. They do this by touching, tasting, seeing, smelling and hearing. Children learn best and retain very well when they engage their senses.

Providing opportunities for children to actively use their senses as they explore their world through sensory play. Research shows that sensory play builds nerve connections in the brains pathways.

This supports cognitive growth, language development, social interaction, motor skills and problem solving skills.

Sensory play includes any activity that stimulates child’s senses; touch, smell, taste, balance, sight and hearing.

Sensory activities facilitate exploration. It also supports language development, cognitive development, fine and gross motor skills, problem solving skills and social interaction.

This type of play helps in enhancing memory, calming an anxious or frustrated child. Children also learn about hot, cold, sticky and dry concepts.

When children are allowed to use multiple senses to accomplish a task, they learn more from the experience and retain more information. Children become more creative simply by playing. They also build their linguistic, social, cognitive and emotional skills. Certain types of sensory play can be calming and assist a child in self-regulation. The type of movement involved in sensory play such as squeezing, sorting, pinching, placing, and scooping are designed to improve fine motor skills and increase co-ordination. Adding sensory elements into teaching restores a Childs focus and can spark an interest in learning. Children who learn through play get more enjoyment of it and thus want to do more of it, developing a child’s interest in learning.

Language

Language is the foundation for all the social interactions. The development of language supports the child’s brain development and cognitive development.

Language development is a critical part of a child’s development. It supports the child’s ability to communicate, and express and understand feelings. The secret to helping children communicate is very simple, talk together lots and listen lots.

Language supports thinking and problem solving, and developing and maintaining relationships. Talking to children encourages them to speak and show interest in listening as well. It increases the number of words the child hears.

Language development lays the foundation for the reading and writing skills in children. Language is needed for all aspects of their education to connect with their peers and teachers, and throughout their lives as they grow. So developing language skills is absolute significance for every chid’s progress in both social and educational life.

    Some of the strategies to support language and literacy development.
  • Building strong vocabulary.
  • Increasing phonological Awareness.
  • Encouraging story comprehension.
    Some of the risks of delayed language and literacy development.
  • Shyness and social difficulties
  • Learning disabilities
  • Academic disabilities

The best way to encourage and boost the child’s language skills is to talk to the child and allow the child to answer back and make the interaction with the child interesting, and keep responding to them so they are encouraged with the communication. Give chances and opportunities for the child to build a story using materials or just describing a story. Teachers need to facilitate the child with an interesting environment and listening ears. While speaking to the child a teacher can add many new words to the conversation and in different context. This can really help the child’s overall language development and literacy.

Developing language skills in the early age is very important for the children’s success later in life both social and while pursuing education.

Providing a learning friendly environment where children read books, and find ways to play and have fun while teaching will help accelerate the child’s language development. It will also boost overall progress on other developmental milestones and help provide many more growth opportunities later in life.

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