FAQ
There is no such thing as too many questions
Operations
We cater to children from 18 months to 6 years. The youngest start in Level 1, moving up through Levels 2, 3 and finally, to Level 4, following which they are ready to graduate from our program and go into Grade 1 in “big school”.
We invite parents to visit us, take a tour of the school and meet with our founders to understand The Earthlings Approach. We recommend that parents bring their child in for an interaction with our facilitators as well. To proceed with enrolling your child with us, you’d fill out an admission form and pay the fees and we would give you a joining date along with a customized transition plan based on our interaction with your child. Easy!
We take in new admissions through the year, depending on the availability of a spot in the Level applied to.
- We know your mornings can be hectic. That’s why we offer a flexi drop-off window so your child can come in anytime between 8.30 am and 9.30 am.
- Core hours for Level 1 and Level 2 are 9am to 12 pm; we have a Daycare program from 12 pm to 3 pm for those who’d like to avail of it.
- Core hours for Level 3 and Level 4 are 9am to 3 pm. and we also offer Extended Play for all levels from 3 pm to 5 pm.
Saturdays and Sundays are weekly holidays.
Please click here for our annual holiday calendar.
- At Earthlings, we recognize the challenge of planning, prepping and getting healthy meals ready and packed in time for school amidst the morning rush. That’s why we decided to take that off your list of to-dos and add it to ours instead.
- Our commercially-licensed kitchen run by experienced hands within our premises provides a freshly prepared breakfast for all children, plus lunch and a snack for those staying on post 12 pm.
- Our menu is planned to ensure the children receive well-balanced, nutritious food that carefully accounts for fussy eaters, children with special dietary needs or restrictions and celebrates our diverse food cultures. All meals served are vegetarian and cooked daily using fresh produce. We do not use processed foods, refined flour, or refined sugar in our cooking.
- Eating together helps children settle into a regular meal routine and encourages them to eat independently as well as try new foods.
Yes! We currently have 2 school vans that our students are picked up and dropped off in. In addition to the driver, a female staff member always accompanies the children. The vans are also equipped with CCTV cameras and GPS trackers. Parents are free to choose transport both ways or one way. Transport is charged over and above the academic fee and is based on your selection as well as the distance of your residence from Earthlings.
Yes, you can withdraw your child at any point during the academic year. Please note that no refund on fees will be made for withdrawals.
Management reserves the right to terminate the enrolment of a child on non payment of fees or on account of unacceptable behaviour by the child or parents towards the Earthlings team or their peers.
Approach
- Our custom-developed curriculum is the result of extensive research into various pedagogies and educational philosophies like Place Based Learning, Play Based Learning, Te Whariki, Reggio Emilia, Waldorf, Montessori as well as educational philosophies closer home such as the work of Sri Aurobindo, Rabindranath Tagore, and Krishnamurti. This resulted in a uniquely blended curriculum – The Earthlings Approach – which incorporates practices from Place Based Learning, Te Whariki, Reggio Emilia and Play Based Leaning. We have also incorporated the principles of Universal Design for Learning in the planning and delivery of our curriculum to expressly enable an inclusive learning environment for all children while recognizing their individual learning preferences, and provide challenge or support as and when they need it.
- With the child at its heart, the Earthlings Approach is both agile and responsive to the child’s experiences, interests and abilities as they explore the world and develop meaningful and personal relationships with it and all whom they share it with.
- Guided by the rhythms of nature, the curriculum uses seasons as a living text that provides opportunities for observation, curiosity-driven exploration, and embodied learning. These are the entry point for theme-based learning experiences which integrate what would customarily be identified as language skills, math, art, music, dance, drama, science, social science and activities of daily life.
Reflecting our geographical and cultural context, the Earthlings curriculum – and calendar — is based on the rhythms of nature as we in Bangalore experience them: Monsoon, Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer.
Our classes are called Levels and we can accommodate upto 24 children each in Level 1 and Level 2 and upto 20 children each in Level 3 and Level 4.
Our teachers are called Facilitators as we believe that our role as educators is to facilitate learning as we go on learning journeys ourselves with our children. We maintain an average ratio of 1:5 Facilitator: Child ratio which in turn enables us to pay individualized attention to each child in our care.
Our facilitators are all qualified educators and come with the relevant experience to be able to be highly engaged with the children in their care. Our periodic training and upskilling programs further arm them with learning aids and methods to provide a responsive, safe, creative, and fun learning environment for our littles.
Our gentle caregiving practices ensure that we interact with your child at the time of enrolment and work out a transition plan that suits the child and the parents. We encourage and welcome parents to be on the premises with their child during transitions, guide parents on what to expect, how to respond and how best to support their child through this period. Our parent lounge is equipped with a tea/coffee service and Wi-Fi for parents so they can be on the premises to support their child whilst still managing other responsibilities.
No. This is a developmental milestone that we support a child to achieve when developmentally ready. We work with parents to support ongoing toilet training, ensure that routines and messaging around toileting at school and home are in sync, and alert them regarding toileting readiness and progress.
At Earthlings we do not believe in the naughty step or corner or in labelling children for their behaviour. We understand that impulse control develops much later in toddlers and lead by example, by establishing simple but firm boundaries and by being consistent in our expectations and instructions. Our attempt is to respect the autonomy of the child — they are provided sound reasoning for the expectations and boundaries that are in place, are given the tools to articulate their own thought process, experience the natural consequences of their actions in a safe fashion and make better decisions on their own.
We strive to be an inclusive space for children and can currently support children who may be mild to moderate on the Autism spectrum. As children at this age do not typically come to us with a pre-existing diagnosis, our system of documentation and assessment has been designed to allow us to flag delays or challenges that may present themselves over a period of time, and put in place early intervention to scaffold the child while we parallelly alert the parents to the situation. We do not conduct clinical evaluations ourselves but can facilitate them through our panel of experts with the parents’ consent as well as work with the therapist to provide the care and learning processes needed by the child on our premises.
Health & Safety
If your child develops a fever while at Earthlings, we inform the parents and require that the child be picked up within the hour. In the meanwhile, the child will be isolated from other children in order to prevent a possible spread. Your child will need to be fever-free for 24 hours to return. Given the pandemic, we recommend that parents keep children with coughs and colds at home.
- If symptoms like fever or rashes appear while the child is at Earthlings, we isolate the child immediately (always accompanied by an adult) and inform the parents to pick their child up within the hour.
- A child must be fever free for 48 hours before rejoining.
- In case of highly infectious diseases, a health advisory is to sent out to the entire Earthlings community and parents are encouraged to report in cases.
- A doctor’s note declaring your child fit to resume school is mandatory to rejoin. This note must be submitted in advance to your child resuming school.
- Our stringent daily sanitization protocol and division of materials pod-wise, ensures limited spread between the children and every attempt is made to contain the spread.
While every precaution is taken to ensure that your child is safe from harm, in the event of an incident, our team – who are trained and certified in emergency first aid response — will attend to your child. Parents will be informed immediately. In case the child requires urgent medical attention, the child will be rushed to Ramaiah hospital which is 5 minutes from our premises.
- We take on the responsibility of medication only for those children who need it to help them function, as is the case with children on the spectrum or those with a diagnosed medical condition like thyroid imbalances, juvenile diabetes, etc.
- In the event of medical conditions like asthma, seizures, etc, parents are required to make a declaration in the admission form, provide us with the necessary medication and demonstrate the use of the medication for our team.
Security
- Our staff members are carefully chosen based on recommendations and reference checks. Our premises are covered by 20 CCTV cameras – these are both a deterrent as well as the means to check on what occurred in the event of an incident.
- Parents are required to register all adults authorized to pick-up and drop-off their children on the app and admission form. As a practice, a child will be handed over only to these registered authorized adults. If anyone other than these authorized adults are intended to pick up a child, they would be able to do so only after we receive written instructions from the parents to do so.
Communication
We welcome parents to reach out to us as often as they want to at Earthlings – we are always happy to receive updates from our parent community, provide support or share experiences, whether over a call or a meeting. We also have various avenues of communication like our reporting app Illumine, level-specific WhatsApp groups featuring our curriculum coordinator, facilitators and other parents in your child’s class and emails directed to the founders. The founders are also highly involved, as well as responsive to calls and messages –as Earthlings parents, know you are part of a closely-knit community where the family and the school are in close dialogue.
We use Illumine, our reporting app to communicate daily with parents. Real time updates are provided for food, toileting, naps and incidents, if any. Daily reports on activities engaged in by your child are updated by the end of the day with photographs for your reference. Parents can raise concerns, record absences from school, drop notes to facilitators, receive important announcements and more on the app.
