Work and Play at Chimply Fun
“Work while you work and play while you play”, sang Malini in a low voice as she walked around the group of children, holding out a bag for them to drop their puzzle pieces into. This is the song that educators at Chimply Fun use to signal a transition from one activity to another. The children recognize the signal and wind up their work, getting ready for the next activity. They line up to form a “train”, with some negotiation about who will be the “engine”, before they head outside to the sand pit.
Malini Rao founded Chimply Fun in 2004, opting out of a career in advertising and media because she wanted to work in education. Over the last 15 years, her preschool has been a second home for many children in Kalyan Nagar. Their curriculum is inspired by the Waldorf and Montessori philosophies, with reverence and respect being at the core of everything. There is a great deal of emphasis on working with your hands, giving free rein to imagination, physical movement and play.
They have six main goals for the children:
- the child loves to come to school (in some cases, teachers do home visits to bond with a new child and gradually transition him to school)
- the child learns to independently perform his own chores and tasks
- the child learns reverence for things (books, material, growing things)
- the child maintains a healthy body (as evidenced by all the physical activities they have)
- the child develops creativity (there is a lot of time given for artistic activities and imaginary play)
- the child develops a love for reading (they have a library from which each child takes home 3 books a week. Parents are advised to tell them the stories in their mother tongue initially and then transition to English.)
Seeds and soil
I started the day by observing a group of nursery children (ages 3–4 years) working on a gardening activity, guided by Shrobona and Sudha. They started off by singing the song “I am a tiny seed”, with actions describing how it grows into a tall tree. Then they sat in a circle around Shrobona, who was holding a basin.
Each child has brought a pot of soil and a particular kind of seed from home. Sudha fetches their pots, and one-by-one, they pour the soil into the basin and break it up using a rake. Stirring and mixing energetically, one child says this feels like cooking!
Shrobona asks them if they can smell the soil. Then she brings out a packet of compost and puts in a couple of handfuls into the basin, explaining to them what it is and how adding it to the soil will help the plants grow better. (Older children are taught about waste segregation and composting.)
By now, one girl ‘S’ has become very agitated that they seem to have forgotten about the seeds, so she goes and fetches hers. Shrobona asks her to bring it over.
With help from Sudha, each child fills a pot with the soil-compost mixture. ‘S’ sprinkles her seeds liberally into her pot. So do the others. They press them into the soil. They will watch these plants grow over the next few weeks.
Colours and rainbows
Another group of nursery children are indoors with Manasi and Mangala, matching coloured tiles. A set of tiles is laid out on the floor in a grid. Each child picks up a new tile from a box and places it next to its matching colour in the grid.
One child mutters the names as he scans the tiles: blue-blue, green-green, black-black…and then pauses. Manasi tells him the name of the colour ‘lilac’, which is a soft shade of purple.
Another child wants to sing the Rainbow song, so they chant, “How many colours are there in a rainbow? Seven lovely colours are there in a rainbow.” Each child is holding up seven fingers, but they are all different fingers!
Now, it is time for their outdoor play. They form a ‘train’ and chug upstairs to the terrace.
Outdoor play
The entire upper floor is a terrace; half of it is shaded with a fibre-glass roof and the other half is open to the sky. The walls are painted with caricatures depicting various forms of play. There are simple props: painted tyres, hula hoops, wooden boxes, that are used by the teachers to ensure that the children get to play and exercise. The concrete columns that jut out have been covered with rexine padding, to form seats.
Manasi gets the children to warm up by singing ‘Fire in the mountain, run-run-run!’ as they run around in circles. She then creates an obstacle course using wooden boxes and four painted tyres laid out in a line. Each child has to crawl through the box backwards, and jump in and out of the tyres.
The children are exuberant in their play. Some of them start a game of running and catching each other; they run circling around the terrace, shrieking with laughter!
Manasi now lays out a padded mat, and helps the children do somersaults on it. One child learns to do it for the first time today, and he practises over and over again.
A couple of boys open an imaginary ice-cream shop in a corner! Manasi asks for butter scotch ice-cream, another child asks for strawberry. Their sales are quite brisk!
By now, some of the children are sweating. Manasi asks them to take off their jackets and collects them in one heap. At the end of the session, Mangala escorts the children one by one to the toilet in the corner.
Imagination and expression
Back inside, Viji is conducting a story-weaving session with a mixed-age group of Prep 1 and 2 children (4 to 5.5 years). She gives each child a picture card, that they have to introduce into the story.
The first child has a picture of a fish. He says, “This is a golden fish. It swims under water and goes into a hole.”
The next child has a picture of children. She says, “The children saw the fish. They were very naughty and took it out of the water and it died!”
Viji asks, “How did they reach the fish?”
“They were in an aeroplane with their Mama and Dada and they caught it with a net and ate it up!”
Now, a man enters the story. “The man saw the children go to the beach. And then he went off to office.”
The next character is the moon. (This is tricky, I thought.) “The moon came out and the children had a sleepover with their Papa (the same man who had gone to office earlier). They ate marshmallows on sticks.”
The next picture card has a well. “The next morning, they drew water from the well, for brushing and washing and drinking.”
An ant comes along and drinks up all the water in the well, and the children are very upset! This is followed by a hen, a cat, and a baby who are all given roles in the story.
Finally, a tap comes to the rescue and the children get water to drink again!
“What a nice story!” exclaims a boy spontaneously.
Pretend play
The other group of Prep 1 and 2 children were now outdoors with Malini.
Most of them were in the sandpit, digging and scooping the sand with coconut shells. Imagination was running riot. ‘R’ exclaimed that he could see treasure! Another boy was making a ‘mountain’. After some time, he poked holes all over it with his finger and converted it into an ‘anthill’!
Two girls were in the doll house — a space enclosed by a sari draped to form the roof, and shelves at the side. The girls were arranging coloured cushions on an upturned wicker basket, patting it and shaping it. This was a cake that they were making for their friend ‘S’ whose birthday it was. They decorated it with dried leaves and a soft toy.
At the end of the play session, Malini gathered all the children around her, asking them to close their eyes and breathe deeply, placing one hand on their tummies, to feel the breath going in and out. She counted to ten. Then they rubbed their hands together, and placed them on their eyes, their cheeks and their ears. They went indoors to use the toilet, wash their hands and head to the snack area.
Chimply Fun also has toddlers (2–3 years) who come in for 2.5 hours a day, to get comfortable with spending time away from home in a new environment. They are here in two batches, one from 8.30 to 11 am and the other from 11 am to 1.30 pm.
I saw them trooping out and trooping in, with shy smiles on their faces and handkerchiefs pinned to their shirts.
Stories and theatre
After the snack break, Malini reads out the story of ‘The enormous turnip’ to a group of Prep 1 and 2 children, about a farmer who grows a giant turnip that cannot be harvested from the ground. He calls for help. His wife and child and various farm animals come to his aid, forming a long chain to tug at the turnip. Malini becomes the turnip, sitting firmly on her stool and refusing to budge as the children tug at her leg with every attempt. Finally, the ‘turnip’ is loosened and they all fall backward as it emerges from the ground!
Then Shrobona takes over to do a puppet show of ‘The hungry caterpillar’. She uses a glove puppet of the caterpillar that crawls all over the stool, eating up strawberries and oranges and burping realistically! A ladybug and a bee (made out of crepe paper and cardboard) visit and ask him to fly with them to the garden beyond the lake. But the caterpillar sadly replies that he cannot fly. After awhile he is sleepy and spins a cocoon to sleep in. Days later, he emerges as a beautiful butterly! He can now join the others as they fly across the lake.
Both these stories are familiar to the children and they rush in with their cues and comments, eager to participate in the magic of storytelling.
Reading and writing
In the last hour of the day, the Prep 1 and 2 children are in separate groups for level-appropriate academic work.
Viji is working on phonics with the Prep 2 children. First, they revise the ‘cr’ sound that occurs in words like crush, crab, crawl and crown. They also go over the ‘br’ sound as in broccoli and brick. The children supply the words and she writes them on the board, explaining that in later lessons they will learn how to sound and spell the rest of the word. For example, one child ‘S’ remarks on the difference in sounds of the two ‘o’s in broccoli.
Today, they will learn a new sound ‘dr’ as in drum, drip, drink. The children add dragon, dracula, drive. She erases the longer words and asks them to write down the first few words on their slates. They write in cursive and hold up their work to show her. For homework, she gives them the same words to practice in their workbooks.
In the other room, Shrobpna and Mangala are working with the Prep 1 children. The children have spread out their mats and are working with Montessori material taken from shelves along the wall. In one corner, Shrobona works with two children at a time on their writing tasks — numbers or letters — depending on each child’s progress.
The day ends with some silence time. The children put away their mats and material, and sit in a circle, cross-legged, straight-backed, with their eyes shut and take deep breaths. They softly chant the sloka “Guru Brahma, Guru Vishnu, Guru Devo Maheshwara”. Finally, they rub their hands and place them on their eyes, cheeks and ears.
The children disperse, with a lot of hugs and high-fives to their teachers as they leave for home.
The atmosphere at Chimply Fun is very simple and homely. The interiors are decorated with simple artifacts — a sari pinned to a wooden frame to form a partition, hand-painted wooden signs in each environment, chattais to cover the shelves. Nothing is over-the-top or expensive.
The teachers work in a co-ordinated manner. Malini tells me that their schedules are all decided in advance — in terms of which groups will work in which environment (terrace, outdoor play area, classrooms, verandah) at any point in time. Even so, when working with young children, it is no mean feat to achieve this synchronization (and make it appear effortless!)
Malini explains about the importance of having the right kind of energy when working with children. It requires a high amount of physical energy to engage with children in play and discussion. However, if a teacher has too much nervous energy or is distracted, the children sense that and do not engage well in the classroom. So a balance must be maintained.
The children’s activities are planned in alternate cycles of being active and passive, what she calls “breathe-out” and “breathe-in”. So while one activity involves interaction with other children, the next one gives them an opportunity to focus inward.
All this effort is visible in the demeanour of the children — they are bright-eyed and curious, lively and eager to participate in every single activity. And that is a testament to the work done by the educators at Chimply Fun.
Photo credit: Chimply Fun team
