Kindergarten is a German word which implies a children’s garden. Froebel opened the first kindergarten, an institution of children of age 4 to 6,at blackenberg in 1847. He conceived the school as a garden, the teacher as a gardener and the students as the tender plants.
OBJECTIVE OF KINDERGARTEN :
Kindergarten Is ‘strengthening their bodies, to exercises their sense, to engage their awakening mind and through their senses to make them acquainted with nature and their fellow creatures. It is specially to guide alright the heart and the affections.
MAIN FEATURES OF KINDERGARTEN:
Self activity: The following points should be noted regarding these activities:
(1) it should not be vague.
(2) it should not be sublimated or controlled activity.
Play: it gives joy, freedom, and contentment, inner and rest, peace with the world. It holds the source of all that is good.
Songs, Gestures and construction: These are the three co-ordinates forms of expression in the child.
Gifts and occupations: The three forms are – the sphere, the cube and the cylinder. These are children’s basic materials for play and called them gifts.
The place of teacher: The teacher is not to remain passive. The teacher has to suggest the idea of occupation when gifts are offered to children.
Discipline: A teacher has to incuclate sympathetically values like love, sympathy, humility, co-operation and obedience to elders.
Curriculum: The divisions of curriculum are (a) Manual work – it is necessary emphasizes manual work and instructions in the school curriculum or it’s spritual significance. (b) Religion and religious instructions – Religion and religious must form the basis component of KG curriculum.(c) Natural science and mathematics– It is hoped that the child should have moral improvement, religious uplift an spritual insight by coming with contact with nature.(d) Language – Language help enabling the child to express himself adequately.(e) Arts and objects of arts – It is believed that it was essential for promoting the full and all round development of human beings.
Merits of Kindergarten :
Pioneer of Pre-school Education – In the Pre- school, kindergarten is the – children’s garden.
Guiding,not molding – In the kindergarten all attempts are made for unfolding the innate potentialities of children.
Active,not passive – Children are quite active and can be made more receptive and responsive to the learning experiences.
Love and Attention to children -The motto of kindergarten is the epitaph “come, let us love for the children”.
Children native abilities to be recognised – children’s native capacities should be properly recognised so that adequate facilities can be prohibited for their optimum development.
Joyful and Interesting -In the kindergarten children are encouraged to play with gifts and occupation.
Psychological and Sociological sound – The KG education based on native abilities and interests of children are quite psychological sound.
Conclusion:
The inclusion of productive work in the school makes children productive workers. The inclusion of nature study in the curriculum helps to develop love for nature and world in the mind of the students.
Gagandeep Kaur
PRT
Kundan International School