The essential elements
Some of the essential features of educational activities at Shishukunj are:
- Mixed age classrooms, with classrooms for children ages 2 to 5.5 years.
- Student choice of activity from within a prescribed range of options.
- Uninterrupted blocks of work time, ideally four hours.
- A constructivist or “discovery” model, where students learn concepts from working with materials, rather than by direct instruction
- Specialized educational materials developed by Shishukunj International and its collaborators.
- Freedom of movement within the classroom.
- A trained teacher, assistant teacher and an assistant in the classroom.
In addition, we design our programs with reference to model of human development, and use pedagogy, lessons, and materials introduced in teacher training derived from extensive research. There are universal, innate characteristics in human psychology which can be identified as “Human Tendencies” Some of them are clearly identified as: Activity, Communication, Exactness, Exploration, Manipulation of the environment, Order, Orientation, Repetition, Self perfection, Purposeful activity.
In our educational approach, these human tendencies are seen as driving behavior in every stage of development, and education should respond to and facilitate their expression