The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 aims to address India’s education imperatives, and sets a strong foundation for Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) for future generations to thrive. The holistic development envisioned by NEP 2020 must be supported by a strong need to update conventional means of learning and adopting innovative forms, for better results. The objective of transforming existing learning culture depends on changing a mindset stemming from decades of following a traditional approach to education. However, teaching methodologies that worked in the past might not be completely applicable in the future. We need early learning providers—educators, parents, and even leaders—to change their mindset, so that children are enabled to answer the question of “how to think”, rather than “what to think”.

To help navigate these uncharted waters, implement new teaching-learning methodologies into each classroom, and see greater holistic development, we will need to update traditional methods and merge the old with the new.

Square Panda India Recommends:

• Explain The Neuroscience Behind Early Learning: A young learner is not just experiencing their first brush with schooling and education; they are also developing around 85% of their brain in the early childhood period, until the age of eight. This learning is cemented by experiences from their homes and their surroundings. ECCE educators and parents need to comprehend the neuroscience behind the early learning process and the effort it takes to develop each young learner’s brain holistically, for them to develop an appropriate sense of gravitas towards this responsibility.
• Bring Learning Into The Home: The role of parents in early childhood education is vital to improving student outcomes and the overall learning experience. Parental awareness and engagement in early schooling impacts every step of the ECCE process, and complements the measures taken by ECCE stakeholders, including educators and policymakers. Parental involvement in the minutiae of their child’s life, which includes their early education, serves to improve their learning outcomes to a greater degree. To enhance this provision and to increase the success of early childhood programs, webinars and workshops can be conducted with expert speakers enhancing awareness of new age methods of teaching, developmental milestones, appropriate learning outcomes, and more.
• Conduct Training And Empowerment Programs: The knowledge about the impact of early education must be followed by information on new-age teaching methodologies that best impact early years’ instruction. Explaining various styles of teaching is vastly different from experiencing it firsthand. A practical application of 21^st century methodologies, including experiential and play-based methods, can have a drastic effect on the minds of educators and parents alike, allowing them to relate to these techniques and put it into practice in the classroom and at home. Additionally, this training sees a stronger impact if people at all levels of the ECCE sector—leaders and policymakers, educators, and parents—are involved in these training sessions. While teachers and parents play a crucial role in ECCE, coaching leaders help turn early learning into a more fruitful experience. The system is stronger when every stakeholder is aligned with each step of the program, and is advised on the knowledge and the workings of each phase of training.
• Reflect The Changes In The Curriculum Itself: Simple activities like play, activities, and even everyday experiences form a learning base for children, adding to their knowledge in the early years. To truly see mindset changes develop across levels in the ECCE landscape, each of these new age methodologies, the change in teaching patterns, has to be reflected in the curriculum, and the NEP 2020 highlights this very fact. This adds an air of gravitas to the methods previously labelled as ‘hobbies’ or ‘pastimes’. For added knowledge, learning outcomes expected from each activity can also be highlighted across the curriculum, which can then be conveyed to homes, again linking the early learning ecosystem together.
• Adopt Partnerships With Private Entities: An August 2020 study by UNESCO states that out of the 320 million Indian children affected by school closures during the pandemic, only 37.6 million across 16 states are continuing their education. As the pandemic has taught us, adapting to changing needs is crucial to creating a learning revolution capable of transforming our ECCE sector. Increased digital penetration, and subsequently teacher training and parental awareness programs, can be effectively wrought by robust public private partnerships. This PPP model can link each part of the ECCE landscape together, ushering an era of equality and inclusivity alongside changing mindsets.

NEP 2020 will remain a visionary document if we cannot nail its implementation. The success of this hinges majorly on our success in eliminating pre-existing misconceptions and bringing about a definitive change in the minds of each ECCE stakeholder, from the outset.

Square Panda India’s educator empowerment programs work towards the goal of eliminating mindset barriers & changing perceptions of parents & school administrations towards interactive early learning techniques & methodologies. Our team of ECCE experts train Anganwadi workers and early years’ educators in the neuroscience behind early learning, new age teaching methods, effective classroom management techniques, basic digital literacy and knowledge of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and English language skills. 

Learn more about our programs here.

Young children in developmentally critical periods of their lives, between the ages of 2-10, see a much higher impact when their parents get involved in their learning. The research into parental involvement in schooling is not new; a study called “Parental Involvement in the Classroom” by Machen, Wilson, & Notar, published in 2005, revealed that enhancing the involvement of parents in the classroom goes a long way towards improving the quality of the schools in general, besides contributing to higher standards and providing opportunities for students. The study also stressed the importance of creating parent-teacher collaboration strategies to eliminate all hindrances to parental involvement in early childhood education. During the years a child’s brain is still forming connections and synapses, building a network of supportive behaviour can define the chance of said child’s future success.

How Early Learning Centres Can Encourage Parental Involvement 

Parental awareness and engagement in early childhood development and learning can strengthen the experiences from the Anganwadi centres, pre-primary schools, and primary schools. This responsiveness plays a critical role in ensuring optimal and holistic development of young learners. ECCE centres need to do their part to ensure early involvement from parents. This can occur as:

• Introduction to the anganwadi centre/pre-primary/primary school: To leverage parental support and to gain tangible outcomes, early learning centres can showcase their internal infrastructure and personnel, to pinpoint the people and places responsible for turning their little ones into responsible citizens. This increases the level of engagement, and the solidarity from parents. 
• Develop an understanding of the curriculum: The comprehension that the early years’ education can build the foundations of lifelong learning in children needs to be cemented in the parents’ minds. A parent who understands the need for early learning, and knows what their child is working on in school, has a better sense of their child’s competency and areas of improvement.
• Acquainting parents with teaching methodologies: “If parents themselves don’t understand the (early learning) program and program components, it is very difficult for them to provide their support” was just one of the sentiments expressed in our second educative #EarlyLearningMatters session, as we spoke about the importance of parental resources. 

*Watch the episode here, and join us on 13th and 14th February for another educational session on the ‘Role of Public Private Partnerships in Innovation and Implementation of NEP 2020’.

Harnessing this particular hidden resource involves explaining the teaching methodology undertaken and the philosophy behind the methods followed. This step is aimed at increasing parental knowledge about new age methods of teaching, developmental milestones, appropriate learning outcomes, and more.

For example: Square Panda India’s teaching-learning programs involve an introduction to play-based and activity-based learning, the adoption of which we believe impacts early learning outcomes to a great extent. 

• Building a connection between school and home: Extending the classroom experience to the home, by expanding the curriculum to involve home-based play-and-learn activities, can establish a connection between classroom learning and real-life experience. Additionally, this connection supports further learning, acquisition of key skills, and promotion of school-readiness, resulting in a lower drop-out rate.
• Encourage active parental participation: Schools can request parents to be more involved in their children’s progress, through volunteering programs, regular parent-teacher meetings, hosting special events for parents, inviting them to share their expertise and talents, and more. Schools can also make useful resources available to the parents, to increase their intervention and help them feel more engaged in their child’s education.

Square Panda India has always taken steps to ensure parental awareness as we teach, knowing that parental involvement is a key ingredient in raising the quality of ECCE provision. Building a program like Aarambh is not effective without strong support from parents and families. We recognise the role parents play in ECCE and work towards enlightening educators with the same level of understanding. Our educator empowerment programs include explaining the importance of parents in the ECCE ecosystem and in collaborative learning.

Children learn better if their parents are actively involved in their education. Parents serve as a critical partner to educators in the ECCE landscape. When early learning facilitators are able to work together with the parents, we will be able to build a successful network of learning, allowing our students to develop holistically.

Learn more about how Square Panda India’s educator empowerment programs change the way we approach the parental involvement aspect of early learning, at ecce.squarepanda.in

Children are not born knowing how to read; in fact, it is a learned skill. Yet, it is one of the foundations on which other academic learning is based. The benefits of reading at each stage in a child’s life are well documented. So, how do you help your children along the path to reading readiness? We have some innovative and easy activity suggestions to enhance foundational English literacy and reading readiness in your children:

FOR CHILDREN JUST BEGINNING TO LEARN THEIR LETTERS

‘The Bird Nest’ – Identify The Short Vowel Sound:

*Short vowel sounds are vowels (in words) that have a short sound, usually different from the way the actual vowel is pronounced. For example, words like ‘ten’, ‘cat’, ‘yet’, all have vowels with short sounds, that don’t sound like the vowel itself.

In multiple small corners of your home, create ‘bird nests’, using lots of blankets, pillows, and even colourful scarves. Assign a letter to each ‘nest’ (for children who have already learnt their letters, you can even write the letter on a paper and place it near the designated ‘nest’). Call out a letter sound. Your child has to correctly identify the letter, and step into the corresponding ‘nest’.

NOTE: You can even simply designate small corners of your home as ‘nests’, without the physical materials, if needed.

FOR CHILDREN WHO ARE LEARNING THEIR LETTERS, AND THOSE WHO CAN READ SMALL WORDS TOO

Pumpkin Bowl – Play And Learn Word Families:

Use orange coloured paper or paint on two large bowls, so they resemble pumpkins. No orange colour OR paper? No problem! Simply use sticky notes to represent the colour you want.

For Beginner Readers: Cut out pictorial representations of common CVC words like ‘MAT’, ‘CAT’, ‘MAN’, ‘PAN’, and ask your child to sort the common sounding words into the same bowl. So, the images of ‘CAT’ and ‘MAT’ go into one bowl, and ‘MAN’ and ‘PAN’ go into the other. Once they have mastered this, you can further boost their phonological awareness by asking them to sort images based on the initial sounds of words, like ‘TAP’ and ‘SAP’.

For Slightly Advanced Readers: Write a different word family (like -AT, -OG) on the side of each bowl. Write various words belonging to these word families (like HAT-FAT, or DOG-FOG) on paper (in keeping with the pumpkin theme, these can also be orange coloured). Have your kids read out the words, figure out which word family the words belong to, and put the paper in the correct bowl.

FOR CHILDREN WHO CAN READ SMALL WORDS

Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (CVC) Word Box:

Turn any old box, like a delivery box, into a word box. Add in tactile (something you can touch and hold) letter shapes, like the Smart Letters from our Square Panda early learning system (or you can create your own letters too, using craft material). Add a few commonly used letters like ‘A’, ‘M’, ‘N’, and ‘P’ into the box. Keeping these letters in mind, say a CVC word out loud (like ‘NAP’), and ask your child to spell it using the letters from inside the word box. At a higher level, they can even be asked to create their own CVC words, or rhyming words, using any letters from the word box.

Loved these early reading activities? Tell us how much in the comments below.
Spread the learning; share this article with other friends and parents who would love to try out these activities.

Multiple articles and research show just how important acquisition of reading skills is, particularly for very young learners. Development of these skills turns emerging readers into independent and fluent readers for life, adding to their global competency, future job prospects, and overall quality of life. Every parent/teacher chooses to introduce the reading habit to the child/student in their life. What happens, though, if an otherwise enthusiastic child suddenly shows a definite reluctance to read? How do you entice young children to make an effort to pick up a book?

Take help from the below tried-and-tested steps, to help you inculcate a reading habit in your little learners:

#1: Create The Perfect Reading Spot.

Finding the perfect book for emerging readers will take experimentation and time, but as adults, you can ensure they are prepared for this experience by setting aside a dedicated reading space to call their own, inside homes and classrooms. Add comfortable pillows, blankets, and bright lighting. Fit in a desk full of books at a height they can easily reach, and voilà, you have a junior reader’s paradise!

#2: Teach By Example.

Your kids look to the closest adults to teach them things, which, more often than not, is you. So pick up a book, and show your kids how much fun reading can be. When they see you reading, it will automatically encourage them to try it themselves.

#3: Take Reading To The Next Level.

Forcing your kids to read can make them view the reading habit, which is already hard enough to acquire, as a major chore. Use various tricks and activities to show them that the reading habit is more than just reading, it is exploring new worlds, meeting new characters, and learning new things.
Introduce a new story using life-like images and sound effects (you can get these on the internet; just check the terms of usage).
Encourage more interaction by reading through live-action ‘stage shows’ with your kids acting out their favourite part of a book.
Change up their reading routine slightly; make them read the story aloud to you. Their pronunciation gets a huge boost, along with their confidence level.
Host storytelling competitions amongst the children; the winner gets an extra half hour of playtime with Square Panda, or gets a snack of their choice.

#4: Get A Daily Dose Of Reading In With Square Panda.

Even the most resistant learners will never say no to Square Panda play-learn time! With educational games and an early reading app that is perfect for kids as young as 2 till the age of 8, combined with adaptive technology that personalises according to an individual child’s learning level, you could not ask for more! Additionally, our educational screen time is backed by a curriculum that is completely research-based.

#5: Ease Up On The Pressure.

Children shouldn’t like reading just because the adults in their life do, nor do they have to read the same books you favour. In fact, the more choice they feel they have in choosing how, when, and which books to read, the more likely they are to turn into fluent and confident readers for life.  Let them discover their own likes and dislikes. Children will be more inclined to become lifelong readers if they are not forced into it. Give them as many different reading options as you can, like, different genres of books, special reading apps, kid-friendly podcasts, and more.

#Bonus Point: Discuss What You’ve Read.

Take a minute to chat about what you just read, whether it was the label on a toy box, or a magazine cover, or even a picture book. Have an open conversation with much structure, so it doesn’t resemble a lesson in any way. Open-ended questions like ‘Why do you think Pan sat on the mat?’ can encourage children to reason with you, asking them to recall a certain page can help their memory. This task has the added benefit of helping develop vocabulary skills, further leading down the path to reading success.

Remember that each child learns to read differently. Let them set their own pace. Provide all the support you can so your child/student feels less self-conscious about coming to you for help.

Want more educational tips and articles just like this? Watch this space for more…
Until then, grab a SquareBox (our very own multisensory educational kit for kindergarten), which not only has the Square Panda phonics early literacy playset, it also boasts loads of additional fun learning materials to make schooling at home a breeze during the lockdown.



Written by Sanjana Shukla (Content Writer, Square Panda India)

*for ages 3-6

Learning to read is undoubtedly a very important life skill, one that determines all future success. But how do you get your child ready to read? Read on for some activity suggestions, to help children develop reading readiness skills, to help them turn into independent and confident readers:

SKILLSET #1: DEVELOPING VISUAL IDENTIFICATION & VISUAL DISCRIMINATION SKILLS

Why These Skills Are Important

To be able to read, a child has to be able to identify and differentiate between letters first. Also, syllables, word groups, word families, etc. have their base in identification. These following activities help children develop and sharpen their identification and differentiation skills, getting them ready for reading.

#Activity: Sort The Card

You Will Need: Any solid coloured paper (2-3 different colours) that can be turned into a card, a pair of scissors
How To Play: Cut up the paper to create square-shaped ‘cards’ of two different colours. Ask your child to identify the colours. Keep adding more cards of the same two colours, and task your child with sorting them into same colour piles.
Level Up: You can move from 2 colours to 3, then 4, and so on. You can even teach shapes from this activity, by cutting the cards into circles, triangles, etc.

#Activity: The Card Pattern

You Will Need: The cards created for the earlier activity
How To Play: Show your children the colour cards in a pattern like “Red, Red, Blue”. Repeat this pattern. Now, ask your child to make the same pattern, by themselves. You can even try this activity with multiple different patterns, and with more colours, depending on your child’s learning level.
Level Up: Switch it up by utilising solid objects like balls or books, then teaching them to match pictures, and finally, match letters.

SKILLSET #2: DEVELOPING VISUAL MEMORY

Why These Skills Are Important

A critical factor that determines a child’s strength in reading, spelling, and writing, visual memory also helps boost awareness, mindfulness, and alertness in daily life.

#Activity: Can You Spot The Change?

You Will Need: Any ordinary household item your child sees everyday.
How To Play: Shift a routine item (maybe a pillow from the sofa or bed) away from its usual spot, making sure your child does not see you do this. Then, ask your child to move around the room, and identify what has changed.
Level Up: Gradually, as they get well-versed with picking up visual cues, increase the number of items being moved to 2, then 3, and so on.

#Activity: Which Picture Comes First

You Will Need: Picture cards, or flashcards

How To Play: Show your children 4 pictures in a row, then ask them to recollect the order they were shown in. This activity can also be turned into a number learning exercise, with questions like ‘What was card number 1, do you remember?’ and so on.
Level Up: You can start with pictures, and then move to letters (which don’t necessarily have to be introduced in order of A, B, C, D, and so on).

SKILLSET #3: DEVELOPING AUDITORY DISCRIMINATION & AUDITORY MEMORY

Why These Skills Are Important

‘Auditory Memory’ helps children recall what they hear, while ‘Auditory Discrimination’ helps them identify sounds and words correctly, both of which are a prerequisite to learning to read.

#Activity: Trace The Line

You Will Need: White paper, coloured paper, glue
How To Play: Stick the coloured paper onto the white, at the bottom, in a straight line. Ask your child to trace this with their finger. Switch the coloured paper from the bottom to the top of the white sheet, and ask your child to trace it again. You can then move the coloured strips all over the white paper, including to the left and the right.
Level Up: They can slowly move to tracing zigzag lines, or lines of more than one colour each. Slowly, you can ask them to trace over letters too.

#Activity: Storytime

You Will Need: Storybooks for your early learner
How To Play: Depending on which hand your child prefers to use, sit on their right or left. Slowly, open and close the book multiple times, then while reading aloud to them, trace the sentences from left to right. Ask them to turn the page. Repeat with every book you read to them.
NEVER sit opposite them, as they cannot see how the pages are turned, etc. in this position.
Level Up: Over time, you can not only ask them questions about the story (like, ‘Where did Pan sit?’) to help them recollect, but also ask them to put the story in order, or recreate their own story, using the characters in the book.

Early readers can practice reading with the SquareTales Reading App, along with practicing multiple pre-reading activities to help develop foundational reading skills.

Loved these ideas? Get more fun tips and expert advice in our (absolutely FREE) special ‘parent and child’ SquareTales Sunday webinar series. Register here: https://squarepanda.app.link/e/webinar2106

Join our exclusive, content-only, Square Panda club, to view this series live: https://squarepanda.app.link/etribe

Credits: Written by Sanjana Shukla (Content Writer)

Start homeschooling your kindergartner with the SquareBox, and with no learning loss. Keep reading to learn more.

Which means, these early years are incredibly important for your children. So, if a child is not learning in this period, there is a potential for great learning loss, the repercussions of which will be felt for years and years to come. That’s also the reason why the school closures due to the pandemic are keeping your children safe at home, but might just end up negatively affecting their education and overall development.

For a company whose entire raison d’etre is early literacy, this was unacceptable. And that’s why, we’ve come up with a whole new learning tool-the SquareBox!

WHAT IS THE SQUAREBOX?
A homeschooling kit for kindergartners, the SquareBox is an actual box (square-shaped, of course) that we’ll be sending your way, each month. Combining digital and physical learning, the SquareBox helps your child receive the best educational experience possible.

WHY SHOULD I SUBSCRIBE TO THIS?
Uniquely developed to enhance a kindergartner’s essential skills, the SquareBox boasts the following features:

• Square Panda’s Educational Tools: Our very own multisensory early literacy tools are included in this kit, to be introduced in a phased manner so learners are not overwhelmed.
  We’ll be giving you:
  • The Square Panda multisensory phonics learning system (see how our games work, here)
  • The SquareTales Reading App (learn more about it, here)
  • More educational tools, as they release in India.

• Guides:
  You have the SquareBox. Now what?
  To help and guide you through the entire set-up process, to tell you where to start, and how, we created a ‘Quick Start Guide’, and a ‘Parent Guide’ (also available on our website to download). These two guides will help you learn more about how the SquareBox works, to help you become a great teacher to your little one(s).

• Planners:
  For all those parents wishing they had a detailed blueprint to teach their children for every day of the week, throughout their school year, we have something for you too! We created planners for the year, each month, and every week, so you never have to worry about what to teach them.
  These planners are structured as per a carefully designed curriculum, introducing thematic units to keep your children engaged and learning. As the complexity increases, so do the challenges, as does the skill level.
  The yearly planner comes to you in Month 1, and the monthly and weekly planners are sent every month.

• Additional Learning Material:
  With every month’s box comes learning material to support your kindergartener’s education, including flashcards, conversation booklets (to aid them as they start to speak), 5 sets of SquareTales physical printed books (to be used from Month 2), and even sticker sheets (to be used as rewards for your little learners).

• Develop Essential Foundational Skills:
  The SquareBox has been developed to get children ready to enter school, teaching them skills like:

WHAT DO THE WEEKS LOOK LIKE?
Typically, a week will be 5 days of digital + physical fun learning, followed by 2 days of fun play. Instructionally appropriate, these activities are a mix of educational and social; we’re teaching them about using their fingers to make shapes, and we’re teaching them to value housework, too, with fun cleaning exercises.

WHAT IT GIVES MY KIDS?
The SquareBox ensures your children are still learning even while they are away from school, without realising they are learning.
Our bite-sized lessons (only 45 minutes per day) are perfect for their little attention spans.
Don’t have 45 straight minutes to spare? Don’t worry, our program is flexible too!
You can schedule their learning AROUND your own schedule, for the best experience for both you and your kindergartner.

IDEAL AGE GROUP
The SquareBox was developed for children in kindergarten only. For queries about other age groups, please contact us at 022-49394444 or email support@squarepanda.in.

WHAT IS THE PROCESS AFTER I GET THE SQUAREBOX?

WHERE CAN I GET IT?
For details about the subscription plan and how to get a SquareBox for your kindergartner, visit our website.

The pesky virus that is waging war on the planet might be responsible for shutting down schools, but don’t give it the power to derail your child’s education too! Subscribe to the SquareBox today! Learn more at www.thesquarebox.in.

Credits: Written by Sanjana Shukla (Content Writer)

*While this article is aimed for parents of children in junior kg, the main points apply to parents with older children too.

Scene: You are on your sofa. Your child is scribbling away on the wall, while their study books lie abandoned under the sofa. The television they insisted be turned on, blares loudly in the background. You make one more attempt to get your young child to sit and study with you. Suddenly you realise, it’s time for a Skype call with your boss, and your hair isn’t even brushed yet!

Sound familiar?

This scene repeats in hundreds of homes across India, and even the world, as you read this article. Parents and families everywhere are scrambling to balance all the tasks that have suddenly landed in their laps.

Square Panda is here to help. Use the below suggestions to balance your schooling at home, with working from home.

– Share The Work: You don’t have to do each and every task by yourself. Ask your partner and family to share in the responsibility of managing your house and your child’s lessons. For convenience and a lighter workload, you can even plan your work in shifts.
An example: If you are doing the cooking, let your partner and child clean the table and dishes. That way, your child develops their motor skills, and also understands dignity of labour.

– Plan In Advance: You do need to know what to teach your child a few days or weeks prior, to avoid confusion on the day in question. Laying out everything clearly ensures that there is repetition of certain essential tasks, but allows you to space them out far enough that your child is not bored.
An example: Select a theme for the week, like plants or vehicles, and set all your activities during that period to this theme. If you want to teach them numbers, do it using plants/vehicles. Use plant/vehicle examples to teach them about different colours.

– Introduce Self-Learning Activities: Allow your children to learn independently allow you to attend that Skype work call in peace, satisfied that your child is engaged in a fun learning task.
An example: Task them with creating their own storybook (see how). This little craft activity gets their hands moving, their creative skills are completely engaged in making up a new story, and they are then more enthusiastic to read this book they have authored.

– Plan AROUND Your Own Schedule: Create (or find) a program that allows you flexibility to work with your schedule.
Examples: You can plant engaging scientific facts into your bedtime stories, your cooking time can be their play time-just hand them some dough and let them unleash their creativity. Everything you do can be a source of learning (for more ideas, watch this webinar on Montessori learning by our incredible guest speaker, Ms. Jayamala Jadhav).

Want more on schooling your kids at home? Watch this space for more…Until then, check out our amazing early literacy products here and here.

Credits: Written by Sanjana Shukla

*for ages 3-5

Do you find yourself suddenly thrust into the role of teacher? Struggling to ensure your child learns just like they would in school?

Cast those worries away with Square Panda’s handy tips to teach young learners at home.

Set Up A Special ‘Learning’ Space: Create a special learning space for them and fill it with all kinds of colourful stationery, just like a preschool or junior kg class would. This designated space puts children in the right frame of mind to study, and actually encourages them to seek out study time. But remember, children shouldn’t be hounded to study constantly; give them their space. And the best way to do that is…

Schedule. Schedule. Schedule.: Make a daily learning plan to help your little one study, but keep it flexible. Think of it like guidelines, rather than a rulebook to follow. Schedule their lessons around your own daily work; you can even break up these lessons into mini pieces to be conducted throughout the day (like teaching them about taste during breakfast, enhancing their digital literacy while you work on your laptop, introducing them to cooking instruments and new food vocabulary while cooking, and so on). Whether you are teaching them after work, during lunch, or even early in the morning, one thing you must remember is…

Mix Physical Activities With Learning: Let your creative brain loose, and come up with multiple fun multisensory activities for your children to enjoy. Everything can be a play-learn opportunity.
For example: Have to cook? Great! Hand your kids a little dough and let them make shapes from it.
Working on a spreadsheet? Get your kids actual sheets of paper and a crayon. Let them go wild doodling anything their hearts desire.
Lots of cleaning to do? Task your little ones with becoming your helpers; hand them mops and brooms and let them clean away!

Include Their Hobbies Too: They might be little, but they have their own opinions, likes, and dislikes too. Make sure to incorporate all such activities into their learning. If you draw a blank, ask your little ones what they want to do, or even learn. Then, follow their instructions to the best of your abilities.

It’s Not School, And That’s Okay: You are NOT their teacher, and their home is not school. No one expects this from you, either. This current situation demands new roles from all of us, and we must adapt as best we can. Enjoy the advantage of this unexpected time with them; take advantage and bond with your little ones.

Keep coming back here for more fun and educational articles on schooling at home during the lockdown, parenting, early literacy, and everything in between, right here.

Credits: Written by Sanjana Shukla, Illustrated by Aaron Gomes

Each time you crack open that book and read to your child, they are getting better and better at building essential reading skills. In fact, children actually acquire their reading skills through repeated exposure and practice.

*For a more in-depth look at how a child’s brain works as they try to develop their reading skill, check out this blog post.

With this in mind, Square Panda is introducing SquareTales, a unique set of digital and printable PDF books, to help develop an early reading habit in children, and promote independent reading. Additionally, each set also contains additional learning materials (rhymes, songs, and fun learning activities), absolutely free of cost, available to download from our Kids’ Library.

The SquareTales curriculum follows Square Panda‘s custom-made, research-based curriculum, introducing letters in small groups (around 4-8 new letters are introduced with each book). SquareTales engages students through endearing Square Panda characters–like Panda and Cameo, a friendly pair consisting of a little panda and an enthusiastic chameleon–and compelling storylines.

Additionally, the books are divided into groups or sets, where each book focuses only on a particular area of study (For example, Set 1, which is available for a FREE preview , focuses on word families).

Word families are groups of words that share a common pattern, such as “hat“, “mat“, and “cat“. In SquareTales, this is how we classify words into word families, making it easy for children to learn and understand them, and identify these common patterns. This gives young learners a strong grasp of the rules that make the English language.

SquareTales For Parents:
We know you are very invested in your child’s future. Which is why SquareTales has a ‘Parent Portal’, to help you monitor your child’s progress as they start reading. A ‘Parent Guide’ to help you navigate your way through our early reading app, complete with expected learning milestones, can also be found on our website.

How SquareTales Works:
Step 1: Students learn letter-sounds.
Step 2: Then they learn to blend these letter-sounds to form words (e.g. c-a-t).
Step 3: They practice each word and letter for as long as they want.
Step 4: They start reading connected text, and later, full sentences.
Step 5: They can now read a whole book!
Step 6: They practice what they learnt through instructional activities.
Step 7: They learn to read the printable PDF book corresponding to the ebook.

This is a systematic, easy-to-grasp, and effective way to learn English in a fun and engaging manner, beginning with easy letters and simple words, and graduating to the ‘book-reading’ stage very quickly!

What Children Learn With SquareTales:

• Knowledge of letter sounds and how to blend them, with guided practice.

• Learners learn to use the knowledge of letter-sound relationships to correctly pronounce written words.
• Builds vocabulary, comprehension skills, and knowledge about written conventions.
• Learners will be exposed to various CVC (Consonant-Vowel-Consonant) words from each word family, for example, ‘tap’, ‘nap’, ‘sap’, from the word family ‘ap’. This teaches them to not only sound out, read, and spell these words, but also identify the phonetic pattern that marks them as a part of a specific word family.
• Learners will also be introduced to common sight words (i.e. words that don’t follow the rules of blending) like ‘the’, ‘is’, and more.

Additional Skills Developed By SquareTale’s Instructional Activities:
– Vocabulary building
– Sight word identification
– Story sequencing

The Benefits Of Teaching With Square Tales

• To make reading and learning easier, all the books (of initial sets) are arranged in terms of word families. The learning level gradually increases, book by book, to help learners stay challenged and engaged. 
• Similarly, in terms of a roadmap, each book series deals with a different, slightly more challenging theme, for example, the first series deals with word families, the next one deals with a more challenging theme, and so on. 
• SquareTales builds the essential components of reading we focus on— phonemic awareness, phonics, listening comprehension, and vocabulary.

With the first set of learning books (5 in-app digital books) completely FREE, what are you waiting for? Download the app today!

*Subscribe to SquareTales…

Monthly: At just 199/month (including GST)
Yearly: At just 1799/year (including GST)

…once your FREE digital books are done, and unlock all the new reading kits (which include digital books, printable PDF books, and activities) monthly. As the curriculum advances, so does your child’s learning and reading!

Found this article helpful? Comment below; like and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

– By Sanjana Shukla, Content Writer, Square Panda India

The fact that becoming literate opens doors and avenues previously unexplored is known to all. It is the ultimate goal for all parents and teachers, something they spend their lives and careers striving to achieve. Learning to be literate is more than simply having knowledge of the alphabet and the language, however. Literacy also involves developing cognitive skills, preferably during the preschool and kindergarten years.

That’s why so much of early education is play alongside learning. Research supports the ‘learning through play’ method, with esteemed psychologist Lev Vygotsky, in his article, Play And Its Role In The Mental Development Of The Child, examining the different components of play and the way they affect a little learner’s just-developing mental functions, and thus concluding that play might not be the primary activity, but, in a certain way, it is the main reason for a child’s development in the preschool years.

*At the time Vygotsky conducted his research, in Russia, formal schooling started around the age of 7. So it is fair to include both preschoolers and kindergarteners in his findings.

**Vygotsky only looked at play in terms of role-play (kids putting themselves in imaginary situations, kids taking on and acting out roles, and following a set of rules determined by that role).

If you need more reasons to convince you learning through play is essential, read on…

1) Play Develops Their Senses: An educational game succeeds in stimulating a young learner’s senses the way simple learning cannot. Using props and educational toys that encourage kids to use multiple senses, including tactile ones, enhances their retention and learning.

2) Play Helps Power Their Mind: Imagine a large battery which you can plug, and voila, your kids’ brains are that much smarter. A learning game is exactly that battery, sparking more engagement and learning in a beginner learner’s mind. Not only are their cognitive skills much more developed, they also exhibit signs of critical thinking, and can understand cause and effect.

3) Learning Games Prompt Physical Play: Not every educational game has users sit passively to learn; the ones catering to a younger audience almost always incorporate an element of kinesthetic learning-whether it is dancing, or singing, or simply getting up and moving around. Boosting large and small motor skills, these games are perfect for added reinforcement of regular learning.

4) Games Boost Creativity: When kids play a learning game, their minds are almost always actively engaged. Whether it is the animated gameplay or the engaging activities in each game, young learners can explore and expand their minds to a greater extent.

Did you know the Square Panda Lagoon game encourages early learners to explore and experiment with making words?

5) Games Are A Confidence Booster: There is a tiny frown of concentration on your kid’s face, which clears away as soon as she realises the letter she was trying to identify is, in fact, the letter ‘A’. The more she gets answers and concepts right, the higher her confidence soars. The bite-sized lessons masquerading as games, and the colourful components both serve to make education simpler and a lot more fun. Finding this stimulating, kids’ success rates increase, which in turn raises their confidence in themselves and their learning ability.

6) Playing Games Helps Kids Play Well With Others: Whether in school or at home, playing these educational games have a positive effect on children’s social and emotional well-being. Playing these games (and sometimes losing) helps them with their emotional maturity; because they are pushed to interact with people—friends, peers, adults around them—these games can also develop their social skills. All this interaction has the added benefit of improving kids’ communication skills as well.

Playing, Learning, And The World: Governments around the world have started to recognise and acknowledge the importance of learning through play, and are taking steps (strides, in some countries), to incorporate a ‘play’ element for their young.

• Early childhood development was studied as early as the 1980s, with a study being conducted on children in an underprivileged Kingston neighbourhood in Jamaica. Mothers were taught to interact and bond with their children via play, by community health workers. Focused on reducing developmental delays in at-risk kids, this program was found to have a great effect on the earnings of those kids as adults.

• A global experiment was conducted by BRAC, the world’s largest NGO, to bring play to the world’s most underprivileged communities. Derived from BRAC’s 40 years of building schools for the at-risk members of Bangladeshi society, this program’s curriculum was created by a team of global scholars. Faced with stiff opposition in many communities who feel the ‘play and learn’ model is frivolous and cannot add value to learning, they soon change their minds when they see the results of such play in their now skilled and cognitively-developed children.

Pick An Educational Toy That Delivers

Why go for a simple learning tool when you can have one that develops your child’s early literacy skills AND cognitive skills (plus a host of other essential life skills) through cool educational games? Not only that, our learning games are perfect for beginner learners as young as 2 years of age!

– Sanjana Shukla, Content Writer, Square Panda India