Primary School

This programme offers training in the key areas of Islamic economics, finance and Shariah in both theoretical and applied aspects. It provides candidates with a comprehensive understanding of the economic, financial and legal environment in which providers of Islamic financial services operate.

The MIF (Masters in Islamic Finance) is designed for academics and practitioners who wish to extend their knowledge as well as fast-track their career in Islamic finance. The programme provides a strong foundation in the principles and practice of Islamic finance. It also equips students with new skills, analytical tools and strategic perspectives from which they can make sound financial decisions.
the United States, a primary school is the same thing as an elementary school. It is for young students usually kindergarten to fifth or sixth grade. In the United States elementary school is a more common term. Primary school is often used in private or independent schools. (In private or independent schools the government does not give the schools money.)

In the United Kingdom, a primary school usually comprises a nursery and the first 7 years of a child's full-time education.

In India, "Primary Education" means the 'Nursery', the 'Kindergarten' and four years of regular schooling thereafter. Admission to Nursery classes is for children above two years so that the age is 6+ when entering Class I. Children are taught language (mother tongue and English) reading/writing skills, basic arithmetic and quite a good amount of general information about the country, people, statesmen, great people, flora & animals. However, this is true only for schools in the urban areas. Rural schools do not have Nursery or Kindergarten; they admit straight at Class I when the child is six. Further, the rural schools use the mother tongue as medium of instruction, not resorting to English in any way. Primary education is free in government schools. Moreover, rural primary schools offer free mid-day meals to children (the government pays for it) so that the drop out rate comes down. States of West Bengal, Maharashtra, Manipur, Nagaland and Kerala have done very good work in this way of spreading primary education.

In Singapore, Primary School refers to those students who are normally between the ages of 7 to 12. Primary School is classified as P1 to P6 for Primary 1 to Primary 6 respectively. At the end of P6, students sit for a national level Primary School Leaving Exam (PSLE) which is used for placement into Secondary School. Prior to Primary School, pupils attend Kindergarten School for 2 years.


MIF can be studied on campus full-time or part-time. For both full-time and part-time students, classes are held after office hours from Monday to Friday and during the day on Saturday. The number of students accepted each semester is limited.

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Posted in: Fomal Education

Kindergarten

Teaching problem solving helps children develop discrimination and reasoning skills. Children will learn to group similar items together or discriminate which items do not belong in a group.

Our Problem Solving applications are available exclusively through itunes and are designed to work on Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch. Your child can learn on the go, at his or her own pace in a fun, interactive way. At only .99 cents per application of approximately 120 beautiful, clear, concrete, colorful images, your child will have fun learning at an affordable price. Our Problem Solving Series includes the following:
What Rhymes

Teaching rhyming words in preschool and kindergarten sets a solid base for reading comprehension. Rhyming is a basic component of phonics and a very important pre-reading skill. Teaching kids to find words that rhyme or creating a list of rhyming words helps children recognize phonetic sounds. This prepares children for spelling and decoding words while reading. Our What Rhymes application provides children with many different combinations of easy rhymes such as chair/pear, dog/frog, bell/shell, cat/hat, fan/can, etc.
Click here to purchase
Which Does Not Belong

Our What Does Not Belong application introduces your child to the negative form “NOT” which requires some expanded thinking. We’re created many combinations of common objects that are of high interest to young children to help them develop critical thinking and problem solving skills. Our What Does Not Belong application provides your child or student will be shown 4 images per page, and asked which one does not belong. Such as grapes, strawberry, orange and a chocolate cupcake. Another example may be three chairs and a stool or a police man, a firefighter, a construction worker and a young girl.

Our Which Go Together application is a great introduction to associations and helps develop visual discrimination skills and understanding of different objects and events. We’re created many combinations of common objects that are of high interest to young children to help them develop critical thinking and problem solving skills. In our Which Go Together application your child or student will be shown 4 images per page and asked which two items belong together. For example, frying pan, bacon, a toucan and an umbrella. Or a piggy bank, coins, marbles and an alarm clock
http://kindergarten.com

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Posted in: Pre-education

Early Childhood Education

Education begins from the moment the child is brought home from the hospital and continues on when the child starts to attend playgroups and kindergartens. The learning capabilities of humans continue for the rest of their lives but not at the intensity that is demonstrated in the preschool years. With this in mind, babies and toddlers need positive early learning experiences to help their intellectual, social and emotional development and this lays the foundation for later school success.

First Three Years

During the first three years parents will be the main influence in the child’s learning experience and education. What parents do and expose their children to has a vast impact on the development of the child. Parents sometimes forget that an interested parent can have a tremendous impact on a child’s education at any age. If the parents choose to participate in a Mothers and Toddlers group or child-care arrangements, including family babysitting or center-based child care, these all have the potential to provide high-quality, individualized, responsive, and stimulating experiences that will influence the child’s learning experience. With this in mind, a child in a negative enjoinment could also result in negative effects as well. This fact makes it essential that the environment that the child is placed in during these early years be as positive and intellectually stimulating as possible. Very strong relationships are imbedded in everyday routines that familiar caregivers provide. It is the primary caregiver that a child learns to trust and looks to for security and care.

Speech development is one of the first tools that a child will demonstrate in his/her lifelong education. Wordlessly at first, infants and toddlers begin to recognize familiar objects and to formulate the laws that systematically govern their properties. With encouragement through books and interaction, toddlers soon pick up vocabulary.

It is really useful to understand how language unfolds. The first words that toddlers learn are normally the names of familiar people and objects around them. Then they learn words that stand for actions. Only then do they start to have the words that describe their world, that are about ideas. This development is usually in the second part of the second year of life. A parent or caregiver can have a vast impact on a child’s speech development by the amount of time that is spent talking with and reading to a child.

Every caregiver can, in culturally appropriate ways, help infants and toddlers grow in language and literacy. Caregivers need presence, time, words, print, and intention to share language and literacy with infants and toddlers. All five qualities are important but it is intention that can turn a physical act like putting away toys or lining up at preschool into a delightful learning experience. Even a trip to the grocery store can be turned into a vocabulary lesson about colors and the names of fruits.
Importance of play

Child development experts agree that play is very important in the learning and emotional development of all children. Play is multi-faceted. Although it should be a fun experience for the child, often many skills can be learned through play. Play helps children learn relationship and social skills, and develop values and ethics, Play should always be considered an essential part of a child’s early education.

Functional play helps children to develop motor and practice skills. This kind of play is normally done with toys or objects that are stackable, can be filled with water or sand or playing outdoors. Water play or sand play is a favorite amongst pre-school children and a valuable teaching tool. This type of play can make up about 50% of the type of play that toddlers through 3year-old children practice.

Constructive play is characterized by building or creating something. Toys that encourage this type of play are simple puzzles, building blocks, easy craft activities, and puppets. Normally 4 or 5 year old children enjoy this type of play, but it continues to be enjoyable into the first and second grades of school.

Hands and fingers are the best first art tools. Soon they will manage thick paint brushes, wedges of sponge, wax crayons, and hunky chalks. It is advised to avoid rushing a child into making something in particular. Letting them do what they want encourages individuality and decision making. Toddlers also enjoy play dough because they can get hands and fingers in it for poking, rolling, and shaping. This type of play develops thinking and reasoning skills, problem solving, and creativity.

Pretend play allows children to express themselves and events in their lives. Normally a child will transform themselves or a play object into someone or something else. This type of play is popular with children in preschool and kindergarten and it tends to fade out as they enter primary school. Pretend play helps children process emotions and events in their lives, practice social skills, learn values, develop language skills, and develop a rich imagination. Because of the important skills that are developed through this type of play, efforts should be made to encourage children to pretend.

Playing games that have a definite structure or rules do not become dominant until children start to enter elementary school. Board games, simple card games, ball games or skipping games that have specific rules will teach children cooperation, mutual understanding, and logical thinking.

A playground can be a turned into a learning experience for a child. Although a playground traditionally has certain elements, these elements may pose an unsafe surrounding for your child if the equipment is not properly supervised or built of unsafe materials. To provide a safe environment that allows gross motor activity it is important that some considerations of the equipment be made. The following elements have been found to be unsafe in group care settings:
Metal slides can cause burns when they are exposed to direct sunlight. The intense sunlight in a tropical climate heats metal to very high temperatures.
Enclosed tunnel slides make observation difficult and can allow one climbing child above the enclosed tunnel to fall on top of another at the tunnel exit.
Traditional seesaws can result in injuries when one child unexpectedly jumps off.
Spring mounted, rocking toys with very heavy animal seats can strike a child. (There are acceptable, lighter weight rocking toy alternatives.)
Swings, other than tire swings, can easy hit a waiting child and cause injury. Light weight plastic seat swings pose a much lower chance hurting a child.
Things to look for in a Preschool Curriculum

It is important that when considering an early education facility, caregivers and teacher in the facility have knowledge of the cultural supports for the language and literacy learning of the children and families they are serving. They need to have sufficient skills in guiding small groups of children in order to give full attention to individual young children’s language and literacy efforts. They need to be able to draw out shy children while they help very talkative ones begin to listen to others as well as to speak. Caregivers or teachers need to arrange environments that are symbol rich and interesting without being overwhelming to infants and toddlers. Even the simplest exchange becomes a literacy lesson when it includes the warmth of a relationship coupled with words, their concepts, and perhaps a graphic symbol.

To be effective, an early year’s curriculum needs to be carefully structured. In that structure, there should be three strands: provision for the different starting points from which children develop their learning, building on what they can already do; relevant and appropriate content which matches the different levels of young children's needs; and planned and purposeful activity which provides opportunities for teaching and learning both indoors and outdoors.

If your child is between the ages of three and six and attends a preschool or kindergarten program, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) suggests you look for these 10 signs to make sure your child is in a good classroom.

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Posted in: Pre-education

sexual education by age

Children as young as seven will be taught the facts of life in compulsory sex education lessons.

Pupils aged five will prepare for the classes by learning about body parts and sex differences. More explicit material will be covered if it is raised by the youngsters.

Family campaigners are furious at the measures. However, ministers have yet to decide whether parents will be able to withdraw children from the classes, due to be introduced by 2010.

The reforms bring personal, social and health education on to the mandatory school curriculum alongside subjects such as maths and English.

As well as covering sex and relationships, primary and secondary schools will be under a duty to teach pupils about the dangers of drugs and alcohol.

Unveiling the shake-up, Schools Minister Jim Knight blamed 'soap storylines and music videos' for increasing children's exposure to 'sexual imagery and sexual content'.

He said age-appropriate sex and relationships education from five onwards was needed to combat the 'earlier sexualisation' of youngsters.

But family campaigners described the lessons as 'too much, too young' and said they could have the opposite effect and encourage sexualisation.

They accused ministers of reneging on a promise to hold a full public consultation before accepting the conclusions of their sex education review group.

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Posted in: Popular Education

Phases of Child Development

During this period, young children's physical development is very rapid and they gain increasing control of their muscles. They also develop skills in moving their hands, feet, limbs and head, quickly becoming mobile and able to handle and manipulate objects.



They are learning from the moment of birth. Even before their first words they find out a lot about language by hearing people talking, and are especially interested when it involves themselves and their daily lives.

Sensitive caregiving, which responds to children's growing understanding and emotional needs, helps to build secure attachments to special people such as parents, family members or carers.

Regular, though flexible, routines help young children to gain a sense of order in the world and to anticipate events. A wide variety of experience, which involves all the senses, encourages learning and an interest in the environment.

1 - 2 Years
As children become mobile new opportunities for exploration and exercise open up. A safe and interesting environment, with age-appropriate resources, helps children to develop curiosity, coordination and physical abilities.

This is a time when children can start to learn the beginnings of self-control and how to relate to other people. In this period children can be encouraged to develop their social and mental skills by people to whom they have a positive attachment.

Building on their communication skills, children now begin to develop a sense of self and are more able to express their needs and feelings.

Alongside non-verbal communication children learn a few simple words for everyday things and people. With encouragement and plenty of interaction with carers, children's communication skills grow and their vocabulary expands very rapidly during this period.

2 - 3 Years
Children in this phase are usually full of energy and need careful support to use it well. Growing physical strengths and skills mean that children need active times for exercise, and quiet times for calmer activities.

Playing with other children is an important new area for learning. This helps children to better understand other people's thoughts and feelings, and to learn how to cooperate with others.

Exploration and simple self-help builds a sense of self-confidence. Children are also learning about boundaries and how to handle frustration.

Play with toys that come apart and fit together encourages problem solving and simple planning. Pretend play helps children to learn about a range of possibilities. Adults are an important source of security and comfort.

3 - 4 Years
Children's fine motor skills continue to develop and they enjoy making marks, using a variety of materials, looking at picture books and listening to stories, important steps in literacy.

Self-help and independence soon emerge if adults support and encourage children in areas such as eating, dressing and toileting. Praise for new achievements helps to build their self-esteem. In this phase, children's language is developing rapidly and many are beginning to put sentences together.

Joining in conversations with children is an important way for children to learn new things and to begin to think about past, present and future.

Developing physical skills mean that children can now usually walk, climb and run, and join in active play with other children. This is an important time for learning about dangers and safe limits.

4 - 5 Years
An increased interest in joint play such as make-believe, construction and games helps children to learn the important social skills of sharing and cooperating.

Children also learn more about helping adults in everyday activities and finding a balance between independence and complying with the wishes of others. Children still need the comfort and security of special people.

Close, warm relationships with carers form the basis for much learning, such as encouraging children to make healthy choices in food and exercise.

At this stage children are becoming more aware of their place in a community. Literacy and numeracy can develop rapidly with the support of a wide range of interesting materials and activities.

Children's language is now much more complex, as many become adept at using longer sentences. Conversations with adults become a more important source of information, guidance and reassurance.

5 - 6 Years
During this period children are now building a stronger sense of their own identity and their place in a wider world.

Children are learning to recognise the importance of social rules and customs, to show understanding and tolerance of others, and to learn how to be more controlled in their own behaviour.

Learning and playing in small groups helps to foster the development of social skills. Children now become better able to plan and undertake more challenging activities with a wider range of materials for making and doing.

In this phase children learn effectively in shared activities with more able peers and adults. Literacy and problem solving, reasoning and numeracy skills continue to develop.

Children's developing understanding of cause and effect is encouraged by the introduction of a wider variety of equipment, media and technologies.

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Posted in: Fomal Education