Einstein, one of the world’s biggest genius once said, “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” Every child is also born with that gift of an innate, passionate, inquisitive curios mind, with a brain containing more than a hundred billion healthy and hungry neurons. Hungry for learning and as healthy as a neuron could get.

Every healthy, hungry, and blank book of a brain with its innately passionate and curious mind craves for learning novel, noble, good, moral, and spectacular things. It looks at everything in this world with awe, wonder, inspiration and enthusiasm. It wishes to know, experience, sense, touch feels, and live through this world full of unknown and unseen things for him.

Its future depends on the nourishing, nurturing, and education it thus receives. Initially, parents, immediate siblings, and people around the baby and its surrounding environment is its world. It begins grabbing, tasting, enjoying, imbibing, learning, and grasping things, people, and their expressions with that blank book of its mind. It is a baby’s earliest learning days in the world, though most of that period never gets permanently written in that book except mother’s love.

We can call it the first paragraph of the prologue. At the age of two to three years old the most important phase of a child’s future progress and development begins. The time for pre-school. Although it is the most crucial period, traditionally, nursery education is rather overlooked by our society in general.

And ninety-nine per cent of the pre-schools are just an excuse for the owners of those pre-schools to give artificial satisfaction to the parents whose children they accept into their inadequate and half-baked pre-school environment and pilfering those parents of their hard-earned money.

It was the case before entered Raghu Kankanala – Founder and Chairman and Surekha Kankanala – Co-founder and Principal of NextGen Kids Educational Society, one of the most futuristic yet most affordable pre-schools in the truest sense.

Nurturing and Educating the Future Generations of Budding Minds

And it was Raghu and Surekha’s ever-increasing love for children and passion to nurture, educate and fulfill the curiosity of these young budding generations’ minds that they commenced their journey with NextGen kids in the year 2010. They want to give the best preschool education to the children with international standards with a reasonable fee structure for the parents.

NextGen kids started its mission in the year 2010 with 40 students located at KPHB 6th phase, Hyderabad and reached the 400 students mark in the year 2020 with the help of 50 Teachers and supporting staff members.

As per the pre-school statistics, the NextGen KPHB branch has the highest student strength of any other individual pre-school branch in AP and Telangana States, and it is one of the biggest in India. NextGen recently started new branches at Pragathi Nagar in Hyderabad, they are also doing excellent in expanding their education further into the society.

NextGen Kids Curriculum and Methodology:

Surekha reveals, “Our curriculum is designed to provide all-round development for your child. We use the Play-Think-Explore-Learn method of teaching by using sensorial development activities. Our low student/teacher ratio enables individual attention and care. We use ‘Modern Teaching Aids.’ Sensorial Development Activities with Touch-Explore-Learn methods.”

Raghu shares, “We give respect to the ideas of each child. We encourage young children to explore their environment and express themselves using multiple ways which may include speaking, singing, movement, drawing, painting, writing, building and designing, dramatic play, dance and music.”

The children have the opportunity to engage with concepts, ideas, and interests, which arise within the group. True to providing a holistic environment of learning for the youngest minds, infrastructure wise, NextGen Kids is equipped with world-class preschool infrastructure.

The journey of lifelong learning begins at NEXTGEN KIDS

At NextGen, Surekha and Raghu believe that Education is more than giving knowledge. It is about inspiring children to do significant things. Therefore, NextGen’s curriculum is inspired by globally accepted teaching methods. “We believe that any kind of learning should be the outcome of the actual experience,” adds Surekha.

Curiosity is encouraged and learning is always a fun-filled, exploratory process. The environment has been carefully designed to encourage exploration and experiential learning in a fun-filled and interesting way. The physical environment at NextGen kids provides opportunities to Play-think- explore- learn.

NextGen had a vision, and its first priority is the safety of children and the comfort of parents. Raghu says, “We can Proudly say that we are the first school in INDIA that began online teaching-learning-observing facility in the year 2010.”

While Surekha recollects, “Still we can remember those days. How parents wondering while watching their kids’ classroom online in the year 2010.”

Interactive Smart Learning

NextGen is always ahead of using technology for education. Surekha shares, “We are the first pre-school in India providing interactive smart books for Nursery education.” NextGen started using Interactive Smart Books in the year 2014.

Interactive Smart Books: “We are born with five amazing sensory instincts that we learn from. We can see, hear, speak, smell and touch,” states Raghu. You would have noticed the difference in your quality of experience when what you are doing involves one or more of your senses. Interactive Smart Books – The right bit of technology for your child to enjoy learning in the most traditional, organic and simple ways. Simplify everything!

Surekha believes, “Our classrooms and surroundings provide a fun-filled, comfortable and safe environment for children. We use best of class specially designed apparatus and materials.”

Kids Theatre and Hobby Room: Audiovisual aids help children to understand lessons in a simple, effective and easy way. Music helps kids remember basic facts such as the order of letters in the alphabet, partly because songs tap into fundamental systems in our brains that are sensitive to melody and beat. That’s not all. When you play music, you are exercising your brain in a unique way.

At NextGen, children explore the joy of growing their own plants, fruits and vegetables and observe the nature process in action.

Learning in the Digital Age

Surekha says, “…now we are in YouTube and Facebook age.” While Raghu furthers, “Without any efforts, our NextGen Kids youtube channel received more than 15600000 (15.6M) impressions and 3600000 (3.6M) views. We can proudly say that no school or college annual day performances achieved these numbers. All this credit goes to our children and NextGen teachers.”

Raghu and Surekha’s advice to the budding educators aspiring to venture into this niche is to the point. They say that if you are not able to spend your full time for the children, please don’t venture into pre-schooling. It requires a lot of passion and patience.

Surekha expresses, “We always give first priority to the safety and happiness of the children. NextGen Always try to create the best learning environment for the children with the help of our teachers.”

Expanding Today’s Learning Universe into the Tomorrow

At NextGen, Surekha and Raghu are developing and using different educational tools for the better understanding of concepts to the children. They are doing it by the continuous monitoring and improving child social, emotional and learning skills by understanding and interacting with the children.

Future-Ready:  Surekha explains, “Science and Technology exhibitions and awareness programs are conducted to provide hands-on experience to our children.”

Here Raghu states a quote: “Mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires,” said years ago by William Arthur Ward.

Inculcating William Arthur Ward’s philosophy Raghu says, “Our teachers are committed to teaching and nurturing your children who are at this age of immense growth and change.” At NextGen, each teacher plays an important role in encouraging your child’s zest for learning.

Teacher’s Teaching Forever: “Most of our teachers working with NextGen for more than a decade and we create family-friendly teaching environment,” says Raghu.

And Surekha concludes, “Finally, we want to say only one thing…We only gave birth to NextGen. Our students’ parents and teachers helped us to bring NextGen kids to this bigger level.”