Educational activities
After-school teaching takes place for two and half hour twice per week during school year. Children prepare for school under the guidance of the center's staff or volunteers. Individual approach enables to create personalized plan of development for each child and provides for tracking child's progress or difficulties. Children can use the time reserved for after-school teaching for making their homework, for practicing learning materials or for learning new tools and strategies for effective learning. We have books and teaching tools to help children through play or practical approach to learn necessary skills and knowledge. They can also use available computers to help them in completing their school projects. Some children use this service irregularly, some children come on regular basis twice a week and bring their friends or siblings. Some of them even ask for extra homework to practice more at home. As part of after-school teaching activity, we have introduced “homework for stamps”. If child struggles with some issue, they can ask for extra homework to practice the problematic area and when they bring it back, they get a stamp in their book of progress as reward. For five stamps, they obtain voucher to take part in cultural or educational activities taking place outside of community (such as visit to Children's creative museum Bibiana, or other Museums etc.)
Pre-school preparation serves the pre-school age kids. Small children can participate in pre-school preparation in summer before they enrol in the school, in case their enrolment was postponed or if they have to repeat the first year in school for different reasons. This activity is carried out in summer in two-week sessions, 4 hours per day. The focus is on development of schooling skills. The aim is to help children prepare for coping with school demanding tasks, to support their motivation and independence, to enable them to experience success and thus to help them to develop positive attitude to schooling as such. The pre-school preparation resembles partially school and partially kindergarden settings – we listen and watch fairytales, the play variety of games, for example on shop, we draw or we learn to respect others and comply with rules. At the end of each week, i.e on friday we take children for a trip. Depending on whether conditions in can be a trip to ZOO, Children's museum, Castle Devin etc. The pre-school preparation is an activity that is planned ahead, complexly designed to be accessible to broadest spectrum of children and their capacities. The content of pre-school preparation is thus unique every year.