As a Harvard graduate, I deeply believe that our children deserve the most innovative and effective teaching methods. My Mother, Mrs. Ilona Chukwudebe, had the first PlayLearn Nursery school on No. 5 Nwakobi lane in Enugu. She had her masters in Early childhood education and a vision to provide hands on creative education to preschoolers. Her school integrated Montessori philosophy and with my father, a Sandford trained electrical engineer, they made wooden and mechanical Montessori inspired toys both for the school and to sell. In my mother’s honor, I asked her permission to give my school the same name in 1999. She gave me a little warning however that the word “play” was often misunderstood. People had a hard time combining the concept of playing while one was supposed to be seriously “learning.”
The success of our program became very evident to parents when their children refused to go home at closing, asked to come to school on weekends and no longer regarded their aunties and uncles (the teachers) as individuals they had to fear. They saw Playlearn as a place that embraced and celebrated their very existence as being simply children. You were a child and thus you were special and loved.
A“Play” meant using the most creative ways to teach and giving children the opportunity to give their own life to what they learned. This blossomed into termly activities like our toddlers dressing up and decorating the school to show how much they knew their colors; our first graders interviewing professionals then role playing all they’ve discovered when learning about occupation; and even turning a gruesome discovery of a huge dead rodent into a murder mystery. Our school was often strategically targeted as the play-play school, which we proudly embraced and transformed into a bigger positive because when calling the school such a name, one could never take away the fact that our children were the brightest, the boldest, and had possessed decorum that stood out in any crowd.
At Playlearn, teachers are all trained intensely to meet each of our children at the point of their uniqueness, and to the point of understanding intuitively that each child has his/her own special learning style and area of intelligence. Our curriculum integrates the best of early childhood practice inspired by exceptional theories and methodology e.g. The Reggio Emilia Approach and Montessori. Knowing that the foundation of a child’s learning journey is heavily dependent on how well she or he can read, our learning is heavily influenced by the method of Guided Reading and Read, Write Inc. We weave American standards and the British curriculum throughout our own National curriculum. Each learning objective is carefully for every age group-preschool to elementary examined to seek the best method for passing on the concept. We challenge our children using giving our students leverage in any academic environment.
The PlayLearn learning environment holds the child central. Thus, along with academic excellence, we encourage creativity, and above all fun. Finally our children are exposed to music, dance and languages. Our methods have proven extremely successful. The PlayLearn child is inquisitive, self motivated, well mannered, confident and successful.