Creating change makers of tomorrow needs children to learn to deal with successes and failures in their own terms. In one of our visualization games, the prompt given to the child reads 'overcoming fear of failure'. The visualization process helps a child become aware of moments when they have faced failure and how they have perceived it will determine what they have learnt. 
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One of our 10yr olds, R, is a proud recipient of this prompt. R attends our  After School Program, Young Thinkers and Achievers, developed to create inspired, independent and confident communicators. This is achieved by developing various skills such as creative and critical thinking, emotional and self- awareness skills, communication and interpersonal skills, decision making skills, and values. These skills are imparted through designed games which are considered to be the highest form of experiential learning; visualization games being one of the many that we play with children in the course of the program. 

Sharing R's visualization output.
"Doing something that I'm comfortable with is okay, when I'm doing something I've never done before and coming out of my comfort zone is overcoming fear of failure. In the baking committee I took on a challenge to make a cake which I hadn't done before. It was something completely new for me! I had never switched on an oven, or broken eggs. I had a 100 questions and was worried that when I break an egg, are egg shells going in or the yolk, should I put the vanilla essence a little bit or too much, then I was wondering will people like it or not? I told myself, "I'm going to do this and learn" a 100 times. It was a success, everyone loved it at school. But, the part where I baked and stepped out of my comfort zone is the part where I overcame the fear of failure!"

R is also a 4th grader (Leopards), at Sparkling Mindz Global School. Children were given a challenge to move beyond their comfort zone by opting to do something that they would like to  but have never done before, and R chose to bake a cake!

Raising challenges and building the sufficient skill set is imperative in raising a generation of inspired and confident learners and achievers. We at SMGS believe that every child is capable of anything that they put their mind to, all they need is a little push in the right direction towards creating the change that they want to make, to enable them towards a brighter tomorrow.

#sparklingmindzglobalschool
#inspiringconfidentlearners
#youngachieversacademy
#everychildcan

As narrated to Sreeja Iyer by Poonam Pradeep, Facilitator Young Thinkers and Achievers Program at the Sparkling Mindz Young Achievers Academy. 

As I interact with children across age groups at Sparkling Mindz through our Young Achievers Program, through the TED-Ed Clubs, I see a shift in the attitude towards learning. Most of them trivialize learning, want to run away from it, don't think it is useful or meaningful in their lives and those who put in hours of effort too only know how to figure out the answers for questions in the text book so they could excel in exams. When you run on the treadmill of exams there is little time for anything else.


The world, however, has higher expectations from your child. The world expects your child to discover and nurture their uniqueness, develop an opinion, a voice that they can use to stand up for not only themselves but the community and world at large, to solve problems bigger than themselves and how are you training your child to develop these skills?


The classic moment was recently when I asked a bunch of children, "What do you learn English for?" pat came the answer, "for exams" and after a moment of silence I heard one of our Young Achievers voice, eyes shining, she said, "for communication." and the room lit up in awe. I would think every child should have thought of and known the answer to that question as most of them learn the English language for well over 16 years as a subject!


Another interesting conversation I had with a 14 year old. He was quite angry with the fact that his mother thought that video games were a waste of his time. He loved to play them and saw a future in the industry. However, according to the mother not wrongly so, no exams, no marks, no future so he should study and keep the video games aside for a while. He took it up as a challenge to prove to her that video games were not so bad. It took him a while to research the pros and cons, articulate what he felt, figure out what to use/discard from the research and eventually change his stance to "too much of anything is bad" and pick up and analyze examples of learning from games that he liked. Much of that too was researched data, the child did not yet know/understand how to add a layer of own insight into the research. Diving deeper into topics results in children discovering their own interests, passion and a sense of identity like nothing else does. Like everything else in life, it is a matter of choice to empower your child with the skills to go deep and discover themselves or skim the surface of learning where everyone else remains too.


At Sparkling Mindz, it's our mission to nurture and develop children's curiosity and make them confident learners. 

Can you imagine a child in kindergarten as an author of a story? Our children had been experimenting with visuals, words and sentences for a while now to express their ideas. We thought it would be a wonderful thought to ask them about stories. We saw excitement in their eyes when the concept was introduced to them. They had been hearing stories since they were babies and now was their chance to make one of their own!

 We explored the book, “The little Cloud” and we wondered aloud whether we could see more shapes in clouds. All the children volunteered to lie down and watch shapes in the clouds on our open terrace garden. Lying on the cool green patch, experiencing the light wind and the harsh sun they squinted their eyes to make out the clouds and the shapes within them. Finally something had caught each one of their eyes.

They stepped back and designed their own clouds on different colour papers of their own choice and traced shapes on it from their imagination. Then began the journey of their own little cloud which had a family and would listen to its parents and so on. In children’s eyes everything around us is alive and learning merges with imagination to breathe life into the stories they create. 

As children we are natural Kinesthetic learners. As adults too, we may not realize it but many of us feel drained and are unable to think of ideas unless we move our bodies around. Our mind-body is a connected system and for many of us restricting our body movements can lead to an inefficient learning experience. So, then, why are classrooms, conference rooms, training rooms designed the way they are? Well...that's an interesting question best answered through an interesting design that we used for our classrooms. Keeping in mind that children needed multiple kinds of learning experiences and not merely "Auditory or Visual" lectures we chose minimal furniture and a design that let children move around, dance, huddle in groups and achieve maximum learning through movement. We chose to use stories, role plays, drama, experiential and hands-on activities to engage students through multiple modalities of learning outcomes. Most importantly, we chose learning outcomes that would engage their whole being in the learning experience - developing a positive attitude, perseverance, focus, deep engagement and multiple connects with prior knowledge, a thirst to learn more, perspective to look at problems as challenges and more...

A child who can connect with learning outcomes higher than mere knowledge, use their entire mind-body to experience learning and work with others confidently to achieve desired results is going to be successful in any economy, any crisis, any situation that you put her in. In fact, she might be the one that chooses the toughest situations to spend her energy on because she can, because it is worth her while and because nothing LESS will do!

Seriously, as parents it is time for us to collectively decide, NOTHING LESS will do for your child. It is important that they experience learning in enriched visual-kinesthetic spaces with facilitators who understand the importance of visual-kinesthetic learning. It's upto you, you can choose to give them an EDGE today.

We really appreciated her thought and will take care of it. I thought, my daughter had grown up all of a sudden. She had started thinking positively and showed assertiveness, which I as a mother really lack. 

Sparkling Mindz. Thank you so much! You are the reason for her positive attitude and motivation
I remember that last year she did not win any prize or perform well. At that time, she felt very low and said, "Mamma, I know I cannot do anything. I am not good and that is why I did not win any prize." We tried to motivate her after which she was fine. 

But all of a sudden this morning, just before her sports day, she remembered everything and discussed last year's incident. She told us, "I will do my best and not demand anything in return."In the end, she did not ask for anything after the program, though she deserves it and we will give it to her.