What do Green Energy; Elementary Schooling, a Community Kitchen and Sprawling Lawns with a Duck Pond have in common? What in true sense is an Urban sanctuary, a public theme park or a top playschool in nature's backdrop, connecting India to its past learning practices. Further East on the NOIDA expressway, where the high-rise residential gated communities are; nestled is an Oasis of Green, the GAIA School. When the kids are away, ducks & rabbits strut the campus freely. When with children, they are their playmates. GAIA is Greek for Mother Earth. GAIA is not Greek to Noida though or its gigantic housing neighborhoods, for its well-established reputation as a unique center of excellence is widespread for future generations.

HISTORY

We at Gaia Playschool have helped parents raise their children of this great and ancient land, Bharatvarsha, to be institutions like the banyan tree that transforms its branches too into great trees.

Great ideas do not need an upmarket address, they just blossom. In the beginning, at the turn of the millenium, our school came into reality when no development had started in this area and Sector 93 Noida was a wasteland. This has something to say of the dreamer; from a dirty drain, inhospitable land, no streets and sans civic amenities, the Gaia School Project germinated out of small savings and investments of the Founder, a retired bureaucrat but more so a Philosopher, Poet and Author with many published books. Sweat, toil and investments in personal assets turned the decade of hard work into a modern-day center of learning.

KNOWLEDGE PHILOSOPHY

Ancient Indian education was an education of four levels of intelligence in ascending order:

Dhi - Matter
Medha - Mind
Pragya - Gye(object of knowledge e.g. food), Gyata (knowledge of the object e.g. its taste) & Gyan (the resultant and final knowledge as a result of the experience of the earlier two).
Ritambhara - Sharing of that knowledge for the greater good.

Early childhood is the most formative period of the human personality. From birth to age 5, a child’s brain develops more than at any other time in life. And early brain development has a lasting impact on a child’s ability to learn and succeed in school and later life. In later years, if the child uses it rationally and compassionately, the heart becomes a source of causeless joy. A play school is useful, because it helps the child’s inherent powers develop their positive aspect.

Pragya is the intelligence of a child that they are born with. It is with this God’s knowledge that a child opens their eyes in our world. It is the purest of senses and vision, full of innocence and divinity. Next in the magical Indian education trove is ‘Dhi’ the succeeding form of Human Intelligence, which assists kids in defining elements, the myriad objects, their ownership and the matter in its vast and multidimensional form. ‘Dhi’ sharpens the senses and intellect.  After this stage awakens ‘Medha’ which acquaints the child with wonder and imagination beyond the tangible and corporeal material world. Indians believe Pragya returns once this innate spiritual awakening manifests. Post this two-fold transition of Intellect and Evolution; the Mind ignites ‘Ritambhara’ stage, helping the mind in the combined function and application of material and spiritual knowledge for the greater good of the world.

In short, the first 5 years are crucial to the development of the child into a successful and good human being. We must believe children are angels who come from God wrapped in innocence. The personality of a child is fundamentally divine. Children speak the truth as they know it. The teachers here try to get familiar with every child’s individual nature so they may better understand every child’s perception of situations, in spite of variance in narration. It would be an abuse of power by teachers and parents if they cast children in some mould. We must be committed to retain the originality of every child.

METHOD & DESIGN

People ask what is so unique about Gaia PlaySchool? The answer is simple — Education is not about worrying to learn but a joy that makes both, living and becoming familiar with life and Mother Nature, a child's joy. Gaia does not intrude in a child's unique world that the child inherits by birth from God. We help them live their own divine life with confidence.

You will observe the sculptures of wild animals aesthetically placed around our campus. Children do not differentiate between a life size effigy and the living. We have reared rabbits and ducks’ side by side. It presents to the child's mind a mixed scenario of the living jungle. Here the self of the child teaches itself not to build a relationship of fear with wild life but one of harmony. They learn to be strong and friendly with Mother Nature's landscape and different species of life. We help the child in opening the springs of courage, friendliness and love for all forms of life that they carry within. It is not an illusion, because the opposite of what Gaia is, is already available to them all around readily in the world. They notice violence on TV and in real life outside Gaia, for life is what man has made of man with his insensitivity, greed, anger and vanity.

Nurturing creativity amidst idyllic Mother Nature will develop firm foundation for enquiry, this curiosity will open doors for higher thought and accepting education at all levels. The Platform for growth is connected to Mother Nature with that subtle assistance from our trainers, the GAIA experience is setting a firm foundation for the evolved mind right from the beginning of their educational mission. We are a unique destination where education is not judged by enrolment numbers alone, but underwritten by quality, where setting models and national standards for the generation at large is the target, not balance sheet curves. Gaia is playing a role.
 
We enrich the child's imagination first, for man becomes great if his world of imagination is robust and friendly with all forms of life. Each child builds their world of imagination freely without fear. What is imagination but the reality of the child's tomorrow! Most of the world for every human is what he imagines it to be. When the children of Gaia will turn into adults hopefully their world will not be violent as we perceive it. Imagining the world as violent does not help any adult. The child of Gaia Playschool imparts freshness to the adult society, for the imaginary world that lives in the minds of the adult is different from the minds of the children of Gaia. Whatever the reality of the present world, the fact is, the world of tomorrow shall be what the imagination of today's children make of it.
 

HOPE & BELIEF

We must realize that Mother Nature is God present in Female form. She creates and gives the best of herself to every child. Nature had sent the child with the nature of an angel, and whatever distance he has attained from the angels, his cousins, is due to the intervention of people. Admonishing children inhibits expression of what wrong their nature has received from this world. The right way is to revive their innocence, by treating them as innocent beings.

We hope and very often get feedback from our past students, who occasionally visit Gaia PlaySchool, which proves the saying — your intellect is what the world makes of it, but your imagination affects the world itself, which is changing every moment. It is because the world is not a reality. It is a dream of God and God the Almighty never envisions bad dreams. He wants us children of His to fill the world with our truth, beauty and good (the age-old Indian philosophy concept of Satyam Shivam Sundaram).

Let’s respect what the child says and not hurry to correct their speech. Instead listen to what they have to say. Let our teachers learn from the child their natural language. Teaching should begin after their 5th year.  Education before that is to help them feel confident with what God has provided each child. So, if you find your child is innocent at five we had to educate ourselves much to keep him such.