Scholars around the world agree that a child’s idiosyncrasies can actually lead to myriad of destinations, which can only be comprehended after longterm observation.Being an expert educationalist, Dr. Sapna S(Founder & Director, Butterfly Montessori) has encountered many such cases where the child was a late learner, but has achieved greater goals over time under her care-roof. Her beliefs, unique inventions and accurate depictions in transforming numerous lives, propelled her to found Butterfly Montessori, which started as a preschool in 2009 and expanded to an elementary, structured under Montessori philosophy.

Dr. Sapna says, “We completely follow the Montessori technique where children are not forced to read and write, rather exposed to an environment where they can explore and learn at their own pace”. Yet another striking feature of Butterfly is its circle time activity, where the children are taught rhymes in ten different languages including Spanish, English, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi and Bengali.

The institution has six mixed age group learning platforms for children from five months to 12 years, where most of them stay under the foster care of Butterfly’s daycare services. The school that has a limited capacity for 35 students and its own Montessori training centre assigns one trainee to mind each child throughout their activities.

Introducing Sensorial Learning Methods
As the infants lack the knowledge of accurate reality, they need a gradual and coordinated schemes related to looking, listening, and touching. Thus, Butterfly Montessori presents a unique blend of play and worktime followed by a discovery model of learning under a roof of a stimulating environment. First toddlers are trained using touch pads, audio boxes and others to develop sensory motor skills and then provided tactile training (sandpaper cutouts of alphabets and numbers) to sensitize and

memorize. By these interventions, at the end of five and a half years, a child learns how to read and write. Along side, it introduces number concepts like counting, simple additions, and subtractions which progresses to learning advanced concepts of Mathematics (squaring, cubing, decimals and more).

Going the extra mile, Butterfly even trains children on life skill activities(like chapatti making, baking, cleaning, gardening, folding clothes and others) with child friendly sized equipments. Furthermore, it has aligned recreational activities like science experiments, short yoga sessions, theatrics (create the drama concept on their own by reading books & execute it), recitation of Sanskrit slokas and more, to ensure holistic development of the child. Butterfly has arranged a children library for reading and an outdoor play area with eco friendly decors like Jungle gym, Burma Bridge, a small pool and a garden area maintained by the children. The outdoor activities are well co-coordinated with geography lessons to teach the children to identify of the common landscape. “We take road schooling seriously. In a year, I’ve taken them to five different places like Tanjavor, where they were taught to do accounting & purchasing by themselves,” remarks Sapna.

We completely follow the Montessori technique, where children are not forced to read and write, rather exposed to an environment where they can explore and learn at their own pace

Butterfly has started a rural offset, Karunaru Susikshana Kendra, where the classrooms are equipped and arranged with zero investment learning plans. This is an endeavor by Sapna to train more people on the teaching methods to raise a regimen of teachers to conquer smile by providing education in the farthest remotes. Moving forward with steady growth, Butterfly Montessori would like to expand to a 50-acre facility soon, to practice 85 ‘tatva’ of knowledge offering under a single umbrella.