Dear Parents,
Greetings and thank you for considering Healthy-Mind International School for your child’s education. As you peruse these pages to learn more about our Pre-school program and our school, I invite you to consider the impact a strong educational foundation has on your child’s future.
We facilitate our students in learning and building important lifelong skills while being immersed in multiple languages with diverse classmates and teachers. HIS provides our students with an environment that truly represents the world around us. When you visit us, you will explore around and see how children are encouraged to grow by warm, highly educated faculty who are committed and loyal to our school values and learners.
Healthy-Mind’s Preschool is not another day-care facility. It’s a globally accredited school providing a challenging, fun, play-based learning environment to launch your child’s academic journey. Thank you for inquiring more about our school. I look forward to meeting you on campus!
Wemsley B. W Okuku
Head of Preschool and PYP Coordinator
Our students are immersed in more than just a English language environment every day. They experience a positive, nurturing and loving atmosphere, an essential ingredient of any child’s learning and development. The pre-school students of HIS are building skills and learning about the world through a play-based model. We awaken a child’s natural curiosity and confidence at the ages of 3 and 4 and teach them research at a fundamental level. At 3, our students share their research about their favourite animals with their classmates; at 4, they learn about the human body and its various systems and functions in ways they can relate with. Learn More about what makes HIS Preschool unique:
We are blessed with Educators and Special teachers who are special and critical thinkers different than what you ’ll find in a traditional day-care because they:
- Are highly educated. Each teacher has a minimum of a Bachelor’s degree in Education, and a number hold a Master’s degree or special certification. Our Head and some of our educators are IB Trained and workshop leaders.
- Have varied experience and committed to our school. The average years of teaching experience for our classroom teachers (lead teachers and teacher assistants) is over 10 years! Additionally, they remain committed to our school and students for years to come.
- Represent a diverse Cultural background. Home countries of our teachers include America, India, Kenya, Nigeria, and Canada. Every teacher loves to share his or her traditions with our students which is a special part of our identity as a prospective International Baccalaureate World School.
- Bring fun and a love of teaching and a love of kids to the classroom every day. They celebrate our each child’s daily accomplishment with a high five or hug and comfort them in times of sadness, nurture their curiosity and inspire their budding passions.
Healthy-Mind is a prospective International Baccalaureate (IB) World School and that will be guided by its curriculum and learning environment of all students, from Pre-Nursery through 6th grade. We’re creating an environment of learning through stimulating activities that children at those ages can engage with and enjoy. Our aim at the Early Years of IB is to shape the kind of peer interactions and instruction that prepares our young learners for kindergarten and higher classes.
At HIS, our preschool students have opportunities to build their imagination, build vocabulary, and enhance their social skills. Dramatic play areas and activities in their classrooms stimulate children’s creative thinking and hands on approach in problem solving.
The most vital and effective way to promote language skills and build vocabulary in a fun and meaningful way is through play. In a market scenario, children discover new words to use from one another (facilitated if need be) such as price, quantity, packed, rebate, kilogram, expiry date, manufacturer and consumption. A learner with a more advanced vocabulary and more real-world experiences teaches new words to other peers or classmates in a natural and fun way through play. In that way a learner whose mother is a teacher becomes the expert in the school scenario. Another learner whose parent works in a factory gets his turn to shine when the scenario involves a manufacturing place. Our classroom environment gets our students to engage in parallel play, where they play around each other instead of with each other. While cultivating independence, this also lays the foundations of strong communication skills, learning to state their point, listen to others, negotiate, and defend their view. And with shared play, they implement their learnings working together towards a common goal.
It is a known fact that children grasp languages very easily upto the age of 5. Our preschoolers receive classroom instruction in French and English, along with activities focussed on listening, speaking, seeing, and sharing, that by the time they start kindergarten, they are comfortable with both the languages. Visit us, to learn more about Language Learning.
Math at pre-school is best learned through play. Concepts get introduced through materials such as puzzles, blocks, Geo-boards, beads, etc. Young children who play with puzzles have better spatial skills. They’re able to think about objects in three dimensions and draw conclusions about them with limited information. Our preschool learners begin learning at a conceptual level, through some of the most universal and rewarding play experiences – blocks and LEGO. Blocks and LEGOs build the cognitive skills in children as they begin to associate shapes with the world around them. The concepts of shape, size, area, measurement, among others, are reinforced through play. Children learn to interpret information visually through the charts and diagrams they see, touch, and create. This enables them to develop crucial abilities in understanding concepts of math, science, and technology.
Playacting real world scenarios children often experience in their life outside school strengthens their grasp of mathematics. They recognise currency, values, understand prices, along with the nature and importance of different work roles. While pretending to cook, they talk about the concepts of fractions (I need half a stick of butter), measurement (Pour in 2 cups of milk), counting (Beat in four eggs), and sequencing (First, stir the batter).
Children develop social skills through observation and listening, and repetition over time. Skills such as listening, sharing, taking turns make a well-rounded personality that they carry into their adult lives as well. Interacting with others in their age group through play, while supervised by their teachers, children encounter situations of empathy as well as conflict with their friends. These situations allow the child to learn to articulate what bothered them, listen to the other perspective, and with the help of their teachers, develop the necessary social and emotional skills to handle the dispute.
We often associate skills like reasoning, critical thinking, and creativity with the adult world. Our work usually requires us to think out-of-the-box. The fundamental ability to do all this, lies in the habits and training we imbibe as children, specially between the ages of 2 and 5. And these skills are the hallmark of the International Baccalaureate program.
At HIS, we have adapted the curriculum and learning methods across all disciplines that allow our students hands-on experience through projects and initiatives requiring collaboration, cooperation, and communication as much as independent thought.