Nursery

The Nursery Department enrolls pupils from 18 months to five years:  Starters, Nursery one, Nursery two, KG1 and KG2.

Academic Program and Curriculum

The curriculum of the Nursery or Pre-school Department is based on the philosophy of Dr. Maria Montessori, a twentieth century medical doctor and educationist.

 Maria Montessori recognized that:

• Everybody has a potential and that the potential in the child can either be enhanced or inhibited by caregivers.
• The child is an individual.
• Every child is unique.
• Children’s minds are absorbent between the ages of 0 and 6. This is a sensitive period during which they learn quickly.
• Children need a prepared environment to work in. The environment here is the classroom and everything in it, including the teacher.

Maria Montessori identified 5 subject areas and designed learning activities and equipment for each:

1. Sensorial – these activities help to sharpen and refine the child’s five senses thereby making them very much aware of the world around them.

• To sharpen and refine the sense of sight, activities used include colour recognition using colour tablets, shape recognition using cut out shape templates and many more exciting activities.
• To sharpen and refine the sense of touch, activities used include the touch boards and touch fabrics.
• To help sharpen and refine the sense of taste, taste jars are employed.
• To help sharpen and refine pupils’ sense of smell, smell jars are used.
• The sound boxes are used to sharpen and refine the sense of hearing.

1. Language – this has to do with building words. Children are taught to recognize and master phonic sounds which they put together to form words, resulting in early reading.
2. Number work – making quantity and representing quantity with numerals. Pupils are taught with specialized equipment which makes Mathematics tangible and very easy to understand. With the specialised equipment, pupils make numbers which are real and not abstract concepts. As a result, pupils easily appreciate the basic mathematical operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
3. Practical Life – these are everyday activities like pouring, tonging, sorting, transferring etc. used to prepare children for reading and writing. Practical life activities are also designed to make children independent and assertive.
4. Cultural Subjects – these include Science, Geography, History, RME etc.

As a result of this approach, our pupils become very confident, assertive and independent. By the end of Pre-school, the average child in Dayspring has a large store of vocabulary, is able to communicate intelligently, read and understand the basic concepts in Mathematics.