Maple Bear Canadian Preschool, Whitefield, Whitefield, Bengaluru

Play is the serious work of children. Children are naturally curious about their world and are eager to learn about it. They need to manipulate, explore, and experiment with real objects. Through play, children clarify information, integrate ideas from their previous experiences, and explore and experiment with their environment. Play also gives them the opportunity to add knowledge, learn new skills and practice familiar ones. They learn to deal with their feelings, interact with children and adults and resolve conflicts. Here’s where their imagination and creativity flourish, which is a crucial step to helping them develop problem solving skills. All Maple Bear Early Childhood programmes emphasize play and play-based learning as a critical component. Whether the children are learning language, developing literacy, exploring numeracy or discovering the natural world, they do so through activities and experiences that are play-based.

Bear Care, the Maple Bear infant programme, recognizes that the infant is a capable and active learner. The infant does not need to be “taught” lessons or content. The infant is respected as an already very competent learner, and is allowed, and encouraged, to explore, play, discover and practice in ways, and on a schedule, that best fits his or her emerging abilities, interests and skills. The Bear Care programme understands that strong attachment between the infant and care-giving adults is critical to healthy growth, development and learning. Infant programs are organized to ensure that environments, experiences, activities and routines have relationship building as the starting point. The care-giving teacher is the most important part of the learning environment for the infant. Bear Care places the infant at the center of the curriculum. The design and development of curriculums is based upon knowledge of the sequence and milestones of infant development combined with an understanding of the present needs and interests of the individual infants.

Maple Bear is unique because it is based on immersion learning which is different from more traditional language instruction. Maple Bear stands out among other immersion and language programs because its system is proven in 20 different countries. The research is clear, the younger the better. There is a definite window of opportunity when learning languages is the easiest. Up to the age of 7, children can learn a new language more effortlessly. As development progresses, this window of opportunity begins to close and further learning has to be gained through hard and more traditional learning. Other studies have also shown that children who learn a language before the onset of adolescence are much more likely to have native-like pronunciation.