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August - 2015 - issue > Top Pre-Schools in India 2015

CosmiKids: Creating Emotionally Intelligent Personas

SI Edu Team
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
SI Edu Team
A bad day at work, followed by a series of arguments and fights with friends and family is a part of life. Perhaps, for many of us, it might be a routine scenario. Experts call it a lack of emotional intelligence (EI) or the understanding of one's own emotions to act at the right time. However, many believe that emotional intelligence would develop naturally as we grow older, which can only be partially true. It is a skill that can be learned, to a certain extent at a very young age. Proving it to the world is Judy Julin from U.S. who developed a ground breaking enrichment program called CosmiKids, which is designed to help children of all ages develop their character and emotional intelligence. Filled with colorful Stations of Discovery, specifically designed to unleash the imagination and encourage self-directed play, at Judy Julin's CosmiKids, children can learn essential life skills including inner wisdom, the power of one's thoughts, personal conflict resolution, self-awareness, confidence, self-esteem and much more.

The move to enrich character traits in children has been highly receptive in the U.S. and Judy received numerous calls from all over the globe to setup franchisees of CosmiKids outside U.S. One among them was from India by Bela Kotwani, an educationist who over a period of 22 years has nurtured over 2000 children. Bela was in search of an effective curriculum that can be used to develop young kids at Mumbai and CosmiKids matched perfectly to her requirements. After a series of interactions with Judy Julin, Bela Kotwani with the support of her brother Rakesh Kotwani opened the first international location of CosmiKids in Santacruz, Mumbai on May 19, 2012. Though, the Mumbai center has considered as master franchisee of CosmiKids, U.S., the management has added many more features for the Indian parents without deviating from Judy's philosophies about early childhood education.

Angel Bear Yoga (ABY) a program founded by Christi Eley in the US, has been adopted to suit CosmiKids Mumbai. "As children love to hear stories and use their imagination, ABY has a character called Angel bear, which is a white panda with red-shiny heart and his friend Sweet Pea. Using these characters, our teachers take the kids to an imaginary enchanting forest, where kids learn the character traits and yoga poses," explains Rakesh Kotwani, Chief Financial Officer. ABY is first of its kind to promote character building through yoga with 50 Character Traits like gratitude, respect, love , sharing and abundance to name a few. This program allows children to step into an enchanted world where Angel Bear leads them through adventures in the forest. To reinforce the character trait ABY has a coloring book for each character trait in the form of a yoga pose.

With many more programs that have been imbibed to develop emotional intelligence of kids, CosmiKids with two centers, is one of the most coveted preschools names in Mumbai now. The flexibility for parents to drop their kids on hourly basis in the daycare has also helped the institute gain popularity in the highly competitive child care centres of Mumbai. However, the management has not yet opened the doors for creating more franchisees in the city as they want to focus on the quality of the curriculum and display the positive impacts of CosmiKids approach in kids lives. While, Bela Kotwani, an educationalist and Rakesh Kotwani, a business man, are joining together to promote a different class of early childhood education, the country can witness a generation with higher EQ than their predecessors.

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