Navratri is just around the corner, and the city is gearing up to celebrate this vibrant festival. Navratri or Dusshera is celebrated with enthusiasm and gala for ten days with ‘Navarathri Golu’ – festive display of idols and figurines.

During this season, friends and relatives visit each other’s homes. To show their love and gratitude, people will gift their guests in return.

We at Swabodhini understand the importance of sharing love because love is the only thing that grows when shared.

Our students make wonderfully decorated diyas, agarbatti stands, sambrani stands and eco-friendly paper bags. These products are widely sought after as return gifts.

These activities help in improving the fine-motor skills of our students, keep them occupied and thus, provide tremendous improvement to behavior issues.

We also take corporate orders and bulk orders and customize the decorations are required.

For placing orders, write to us swabodhini@gmail.com or call us @ +91 98847 46078. For WhatsApp orders – +91 8056094848.

The items can be couriered Pan- India (courier charges extra).

What is Language? Hindi, Tamil, English? These are vernacular languages, meaning the native language of certain regions. Language in the true sense is a system that our brain uses to understand things around us and make sense of the information we constantly receive, by giving it symbols (speech/print/pictures/gestures, etc.). This is further strengthened by adding social rules to the symbols, so we know how to combine these symbols, what effect it will have, and when to use those symbols appropriately to communicate or express ourselves. Speech is simply the spoken form of this expression.

Language has four components. The “phonological component” – rules for combining sounds (phonetics) to form words, the “semantic component” – the meaning of these words, the “syntactic component” – rules that help us combine words into sentences, and the “pragmatic component” – rules of how language is used.

Early language development has a direct impact on a child’s early literacy development. Research firmly states that the quality and not quantity (the number of words in vocabulary) determines reading and writing proficiency in later years. Educators influence language development through every interaction they have with the child at school.

Educators, while focusing on academic content, must make classroom activities meaningful by syncing the children’s daily experiences with the curriculum. Books and teaching resources must be used not simply to teach content but to help the child connect the learned information to real-life experiences. The learning environment (classroom) must be designed, keeping in mind the child’s learning needs. Educators must encourage children, irrespective of their challenges, to observe, interpret, think, and become independent learners to facilitate a good quality of life.

Ms. Sowmya Menon, Speech-Language Pathologist and Co-founder of FIVE

Parent’s and partners feedback and testimonials are essential to us. Feedbacks help us analyze the effectiveness of the program and aid us to identify what we are doing well and how we can improve.

It gives us great pleasure when parents see their child’s progress. Here’s is what Mr. SatyajitChakravarti, parent of KaustavChakravarti has to say about our school.

In his own words:

“Enabling students to live an independent life with dignity.” Wonderful words Ma’am which ring so true through the untiring effort put in by Swabodhini School. My spouse, Chitrangada& I genuinely acknowledge your contribution to our son, Kaustav’s development each day! He graduated last year. Trust you remember him. He’s a wonderful boy like the rest of your students, and he adores Swabodhini. We are proud of him!

I’m based at Ahmedabad while my spouse has relocated to Chennai for Kaustav’s further development. We are blessed to have found a caring, able & visionary institution in Swabodhini. The odd difficulties of staying apart so far away are all well worth because of the love, care, compassion & wisdom you’ve been imparting to Kaustav. I’m yet to visit your School though, and am eagerly looking forward to being there someday soon.

May Swabodhini rise in Glory even further. May Swabodhini Family be eternally blessed for the selfless & pioneering effort!

Satyajit Chakraverti
Parent of Kaustav Chakraverti

Student Kaustav Chakraverti

Students from the retail and culinary program visited the Big Bazzar at Phoneix market city, Velachery on the 27th of August; part of the experiential visits.

This was their second visit to the Big Bazaar. The students were more comfortable and familiarized.

Students were able to relate to signages and product categories. Students were so excited to recognize items in real-time as learned in the classroom.

Independence Day was celebrated at both our Centres like every year with great zeal and patriotism.

A week before the day of celebration, the teachers had meticulously planned the event with a lot of exciting activities to help kids learn more about the significance of the day.

The celebrations at Thrivanmiyur started with a patriotic song sung by student Aradhana followed by song ‘Vande Mataram’.

The students also put up a small skit and patriotic dance.

Students at GNC, celebated Independance day with lots of enthusiasm.

Carnival is a lot of fun. Ooruni foundation is an NGO which works towards uplifting education, environment and equal opportunities for the underprivileged.

The foundation had recently organized ‘Freedom carnival’ 2019.

It is an opportunity for the students and teachers to engage in several extracurricular activities and show their talents to the world.

It provides entertainment and relaxation away from the classroom environment.

Students from various organizations participated in the carnival.

Students of Swabodhini showcased their talent with a dance and skit performance. The carnival had lots of fun activities like Bowling, Shooting, Water Games, Frooze ball, Tattooing, and more.

‘He who sees me in all things,
and all things in me,
is never far from me, and
I’m never far from him’- Lord Krishna.

Janmashtami is the celebration of the birth of Lord Krishna. The birth of Krishna is celebrated with great enthusiasm, devotion, and warmth by everyone in the county.

The children were dressed up as Lord Krishna and Radha to dance to ‘Kanna ne thoongada’ song from the blockbuster movie Bahubali.

The ‘Velicham marathon’ was held on 26th August, was organized to promote and create awareness of education for children with special needs.

One of the main sponsors for the marathon was Redington who organized the event for our students that day. Two of our students, Sarvesh (Primary Class-Guru Nanak College) and Keshav Narayan (Vocational Class-Guru Nanak College) participated in the Marathon.

Sarvesh (14 years) took part in the 2km category and Keshav (19 years) took part in the 5km category. Both of them completed the marathon well within time and enjoyed the experience. To make it more fun, 2 of our students Ashwin and Aditya came along to cheer the students who ran the marathon. As always, parents of the students were enthusiastic spectators of the event. Ms. Usha Pillai, Director of Swabodhini and Ms. Deepika, Vocational trainer at Swabodhini were present to coordinate the event for the students. At the end of the run, all the participants received Medal, a hoodie, and a certificate for participation. Redington sponsored the breakfast as a gesture of encouragement.

The Special Children Sports academy recently conducted an inter-school sports competition at Perambur on 29th August. Fifteen students from Swabodhini participated and won many prizes.

A group of 10 students represented Swabodhini at the yearly cultural event at World bank on 29th August.

The audience was spellbound by the group dance performance and skit. Aradhana, our primary section student’s solo singing performance was appreciated and cheered by all. The participants were given goodies and refreshments. We thank Ms. Deepa of World bank for organizing such a fantastic event and ensuring the safety of our students.

Birthday celebrations are always exciting for students of Swabodhini. List of students and staff celebrating who celebrated their birthdays:

Students: Gurudas, Abishek Rao, Akshay Narasimhan, and Nikhil.

Staffs: Mrs. Anita Somerwell, Mrs. Srikala Suba Wesley and Mrs. Preethika Pandya.

Ms. Soumya Menon conducted speech therapy workshop to our teachers andcoordinators. The aim of the workshop was to emphasis the importance of speech therapy for children with ASD and related intellectual challenges.

Ms. Sowmya has over 18 years of experience in Speech Therapy.She is the Co-founder and Director – Clinical services of “FiVE Incorporated”.FiVE focuses on standardizing service delivery to families, inter-disciplinary systems, evidence-based practice, documentation, family centered approach and world class fun learning environments.

Ms. Sowmya worked with several reputed organizations and schools in Chennai and Bangalore as consultant/therapist/trainer for parents/therapists/special educators/teachers.

She has also workedwith“National Health Service” and “HOPE center for Cognitive Education”, London,UK.

She is currently involved in training and hosting specialized certificate programs with reputed professionals/organizations, from across the globe.

Ms. Sowmya Menon during the speech therapy training session for teachers and coordinators.

She is a speaker at various professional institutions, conferences and the official host for professional certifications in India by ‘The Hanen Centre’, Canada.

Many people often think that speech means speech therapist will make the child speak as early as possible, which is not true always.

So, what is speech therapy exactly? The expert from the speech and language gave us an excellent talk about the difference between speech, language and communication.

There is a difference between speech, language and communication. Speech is related to motor functions. It includes voice, fluency and articulation. Language is related to our cognition. Communication is related to social communication. So speech is not only speaking. It includes our understanding, listening, and sentence formation and include verbal or non-verbal too.

The way she taught us is exciting. It was a very interactive session.

Ms.Sowmya Menon during the speech therapy training session for teachers and coordinators.