All photographs on this website have been shot on location at our two other schools.
The Jump Start Advantage
for Pre-schoolers
Pre-primary, being a child’s first experience in formal schooling, can be an anxious time for both children and parents. Which is why we have taken special care to create a warm, welcoming and cheerful environment, in which children feel secure and happy. An environment that makes them want to come to school each morning.
Teachers become one of the most important persons in a pre-primary student’s life. Our teachers live up to a trusting child’s expectations—caring, friendly and fair; yet firm and discipline-conscious when needed.
Classrooms are bright and friendly. A special children's playground provides ample space for supervised play. A carefully selected range of toys, learning aids, craft materials and books completes the picture.
And, last but not least, there's Jump Start—a system of pre-school education designed and developed by The Brigade Schools, for The Brigade Schools.
The Jump Start System
The Jump Start system has been created by our in-house curriculum development team and is the basis of pre-school education in all our schools.
Jump Start introduces pre-schoolers to different subjects and ideas in comfortable, age-appropriate steps-so that learning is interesting, not intimidating.
Some of the Jump Start programme's advantages are:
- It combines the best practices of Montessori and traditional systems of education, using methods that promote intelligently guided freedom.
- Learning is through a multi-sensory approach, in which all five senses are tapped. (For instance, reading is introduced through phonics and whole language.)
- Teachers play the role of friendly facilitators of learning.
- The classroom environment is designed to be friendly, encouraging intellectual inquisitiveness and socialisation.
- Children are encouraged to work both independently and in groups
- A Montessori Math curriculum encourages children to understand mathematical concepts, so that math at higher levels is easy to grasp.
- And the Jolly Phonics initiative that introduces children to early reading and writing through sound. Children are taught not just alphabet sounds, but the 42 main sounds of English. They soon learn to blend thee sounds to form words and then move on, quite easily, to reading.
Some differences between
traditional learning and the
Jump Start system
| TRADITIONAL | JUMP START | |
| Focus on imparting information | Focus on developing the child's personality | |
| Teacher-centred learning environment | Child-centered learning environment | |
| A rigid, strictly defined curriculum | Flexible curriculum | |
| Somewhat non-scientific learning methodology | Learning methodologies based on scientific research and observation | |
| Pace set by teacher | Pace set by individual learners | |
| Teacher decides what the child has to learn | Child has some flexibility in choosing preferred activities | |
| Use of reward and punishment in motivation | Self-education through self-correcting materials | |
| All children are treated alike | Recognition of sensitive periods in each child | |
| Play materials for non-specific skills | Multi-sensory materials to develop specific skills | |
| Rigid rules on sitting in specific place | Freedom to move | |
| Silence is, on many occasions, enforced | Liberty to speak (without disturbing others) as one pleases |