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Here is the fourth unit test portion for KG: link

On another note, I will be putting up reviews about the Gathering, Science Exhibition and Fun Fair soon… the past month was full of whirlwind activity!

On the 12th of December 2009, there was a seminar organized by DAV school where heads of different schools spoke about the best practices in their school. Dr. Phatak had a whole lot of things to say as our school has so many different things going on all at once - and each one is thought out carefully and is therefore, a best practice. All the principals and reporters there were very impressed by the whole working and concept of our school.
The next day there was a report in the TIMES OF INDIA on page 2. The only school’s activities mentioned were ours!
Here is an extract from that report -
Sudheer Phatak, principal of Millennium National School, explained that the concept of the school he had founded arose from his own experiences as a parent. “I have tried to incorporate in my school all the things that working parents would want for their children.” he said pointing to in house meals to teaching with the help of multimedia to fully furnished subject rooms for different subjects to an emphasis on sports with a view to the child’s overall development. “Also, there are no long queues for admission forms outside our school - they are available online” And, instead of the principal interviewing the parents, I would prefer to give them a chance to interview me before they decide whether the school is suitable or not.”

The school recently hosted a Spell Bee competition on Saturday 19th December 2009. The Spell Bee is the official Indian version of the famous American Spelling Bee contest.

It was conducted by the Times of India Group andhad about 135 schools participating in the event.There were 1200 students participating in the event. The Times Group folks had selected about 10 candidates from these schools. The participating schools were from all over - Pune, Kolhapur, Solapur, Nasik, etc.

There was a written round of 100 questions, which was quite easy for our children, given that they are so used to getting those questions on myEshala!

From 1200 students, 10 were chosen for the final audio visual round. What was so special about this? There were TWO children from our school in the final 10! Wow - think about that a little. 1200 children participated. 10 were chosen. 2 of them were from Millennium National School. That means for the second round, less than 1 percent were chosen from the first round. Out of those ten, two were from our school! Wow. That, in itself, is a feat! Even if we had no winners, the school would be proud of these two children - Neel Kelkar and Chinmay Markale!

The children were put through 4 rounds of intense spelling tests, and out emerged the winner - Neel Kelkar from Millennium National School! Any guesses on who was the runner up? Chinmay Markale! Again, WOW!

So, now, it is easily possible for us to proudly say because of Neel and Chinmay, that our school is an authority in English speaking and reading in and around Pune!

The participating schools were from different boards - SSC, CBSE, ICSE and IB. There were convents and non-convents. After this win, it would be safe to say that not only is our school the best, but also that convents don’t matter in English reading and writing capabilities of children (which is a popular misconception). One more important point is of the syllabus. If all the other syllabi other than SSC were “advanced”, why weren’t there performances like ours? So, as we go around clearing misconceptions, here we go again - there is hardly any difference between the syllabi! Believe it, or not.

Well, that was a long post! And I hope you share our joy and wish Neel the very best for the National Spell Bee Final that is going to be held in Mumbai on Jan 9, 2010!

Here is the article from Times of India, dates 20th December 2009: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/pune/Neel-Kelkar-wins-city-round-of-Spell-Bee-contest-/articleshow/5357228.cms

I have great pleasure in announcing that our school children have won the district level badminton championship tournament organized by the Shiv Rudra Pratishthan.

1. Sujoy Shivde got the Gold medal in the Under-12 category (Boys).

2. Sakshi Shelar got the Gold medal in the Under-12 category (Girls).

3. Narsing Pochiraju / Vedant Gore and Vedang Date / Chinmay Bhelke won the Bronze medal in the Under-14 doubles category.

In addition to that, we also got a Champions Trophy, as we were the only school with so many wins!

Over 20 schools participated in the event, and our school was the most prominent of all!

Kudos to these children and our Badminton coach who takes out extra time to coach our team!

I know that the Kolhapur trip was done a long time back, but its better to be late than never!

The day began early at 6am when all enthusiastic kids came to the school with sleepy parents!

The kids had a gala time at the Kent Club Resort in Kolhapur. It was a recreational as well as an educational tour. The first day was spent at The Kent Club where the kids swam in the pool, went to the biggest Snow World in Maharashtra, played in the park, went on train rides, saw a horror show, and danced. In the evening, the children saw a cultural show called “Maharashtrachi Lokadhara”, where traditional art and dances were presented by local artists. Kent Club had bunk beds for children to sleep in. They had loads of fun chatting away through the night and sleeping on the beds!

The next day started early, as the kids had to travel to see the fort of Panhala. Panhala was one of the strategic forts of Shivaji Maharaj, and it was good that the children went there, so that they could see for themselves all the hardships that Shivaji had to go through!

Next, they went to Shahu Maharaj’s palace, which was beautiful, and had a lot of world class wax statues.

That took up most of the day, after which they headed back to Pune.

They came to the school late at night, making the 2 days that they spent one of the most memorable trips of their lives!

Here are some pictures that we took on the trip: http://picasaweb.google.com/millenniumns/KolhapurTripDec2009#

M.A.D - the super-creative show on POGO channel on TV is coming to our school! The dates are from 27th December 2009 to 3rd January 2009. We’ve already sent you a circular about the details. The organizers have a presentation which can be downloaded here (its a ZIP file with individual JPEG images - the original presentation was 35MB).

See you all there!

After many delays, the Kolhapur trip is set to go finally on the 3rd and 4th of December! I will put up some pictures once we get back!