HIT Holon Institute of Technology and the Holon Municipality’s program sends excellent HIT college students into municipal kindergartens to interact preschool kids in science, inquiry, and hands-on discovery.
The initiative realizes a long-held imaginative and prescient of HIT President Prof. Eduard Yakubov: a steady instructional arc that begins effectively earlier than first grade, on the very age when kids discover the world by means of play, curiosity, and marvel.
“I feel I am fulfilling one of my greatest dreams,” stated Prof. Yakubov on the program’s launch ceremony. “Technological education from early childhood is one of HIT’s core values. This is a continuous educational journey, from kindergarten all the way to the academy.”
Science Through Play, Not Lectures
The idea is straightforward but highly effective. Selected HIT college students from science and know-how disciplines go to three kindergartens throughout Holon regularly, introducing toddlers to worlds of exploration, curiosity, and scientific considering. All of this occurs in playful, experiential language suited to their age, and supported by knowledgeable pedagogical framework developed by the municipality’s early childhood training division.
The kids don’t sit and pay attention to lectures. They examine, experiment, ask questions, and uncover that science isn’t merely a topic to be studied, however a mind-set and a complete world of risk.
Students Who Learn by Teaching
There are advantages for all concerned. Before this system started, collaborating college students underwent devoted coaching periods making ready them to work with young kids, together with growing communication abilities and the power to convey advanced information in easy, inventive methods. For many, that is the primary time they’ve utilized their tutorial information within the discipline, past the partitions of the institute.
“The connection between HIT students and the community is an inseparable part of our social vision,” Prof. Yakubov emphasised. “This is an opportunity for students to apply knowledge, fulfill social responsibility, and influence the future of early childhood at its earliest stages. They are not only giving, they are also gaining professional experience that cannot be taught in a classroom.”
A City Investing in Tomorrow
Holon Mayor Shai Keinan sees the initiative as an expression of deeply held municipal values and a transparent instructional technique. “In Holon, we promote educational excellence from the earliest age, expose children to the worlds of science and technology in an experiential way, and forge connections between the community, the student population, and the education system,” he stated on the launch.
The aim, the mayor added, is to nurture a era that’s curious, inventive, and contributive to society, values that start to take form within the kindergarten yard.
A Broader Vision: From Kindergarten to Academic Degree
The preschool program enhances HIT’s flagship initiative, “Metzuyanoa’r”, a track that enables outstanding high school students to begin working toward a technology degree as early as ninth grade, a program founded by Prof. Yakubov some 30 years ago. The new early-childhood expansion creates a natural continuum: nurture scientific curiosity at age four or five, sustain it through elementary school, and channel it into serious academic study by the time students reach middle school.
Three kindergartens across the city were selected to launch this pioneering and innovative initiative, with the aspiration of expanding the project to additional kindergartens in the future. Led by the city’s Education Department and HIT’s Student Dean’s Office headed by Dr. Limor Sahar Inbar, Dean of Students, and Mrs. Yafa Sitbon, Head of Social Engagement at the Student Dean’s Office, the students underwent professional training sessions to prepare them for working with young children.
Early success has already generated considerable interest and HIT and the Holon Municipality are looking ahead together, aspiring to make Holon a national model for technological education that begins from day one.
Written in collaboration with HIT