You can hear children playing and laughing at Sopia Kindergarten in Pocheon City. You cannot see the typical scene of children solving questions with a hand scratching their head on a round table in front of the white, and rather dull, board at Sopia Kindergarten. Instead, you might feel like there is a playground inside. Children carry out their tasks, encouraged and motivated, and work together with friends through playing. They learn to respect diversity, think and decide by their own initiative and become selfless. They learn the way to overcome hardships to have a sense of accomplishment and foster the virtue of consideration and team work. Sounds perfect? It is a new children education program called 'SKY PROJECT'.

 

Inspired by western education system, CEO Myeongwoo Seo applied the method to suit the Korean elements to introduce the program. In accordance with the flow of private education being turned its direction to public education in 2012, Seo set his educational direction to humanity cultivation from typical school record and put SKY PROJECT into practice for the fist time at Sopia in the hope of proving his method. The result was successful. School parents were impressed by watching their children becoming confident and independent through the project. Seo's method is currently used in 260 kindergartens and day care centers in 38 cities nationwide. 60 SKY PROJECT educators and supervisors are actively engaged in 400 nursery facilities. Seo said "SKY PROJECT is a self-directed learning program built on children's psychological mechanism. It is consisted of Sky Maths, Sky Gym, Sky Music and Sky Korean which develop independence of children. The program boosts creativity, comprehensive thinking skills and physical strength. Children are known to have six psychological mechanism which are competition, challenge, imitation, acknowledge, interest and sharing. The project is designed to stimulate the mechanism."

 

Seo imported and distributed self-directed teaching aid used in Israel and Europe and introduced benchmarked play schools to Korea. Seo said "I have built my career in the education industry for 27 years. From a very long time ago, I thought that children's education was better off with self-directed learning rather than teacher-centered. Discussion and process of learning are more important than marketing. I can confidently say that children found, and is finding, their potential with SKY PROJECT. To take an example, a child from a divorced parents of multi-cultural family, who skipped the classes regularly and hurt himself, eventually changed to be a normal child like his friends in 3 months of receiving SKY PROJECT. The secrete was to give the thing the child was interested and capable of doing it. A child with hyperactivity disorder, for another example, could be able to learn social rules and standards and at the end found his creative side."

 

Seo plans to write a book that contains examples of SKY PROJECT. He already opened branches in LA and Las Vegas and partnered with NGIS International School near Manila in the Philippines and other schools in Qīngdǎo, China and Mongolia. Seo is teaching students majoring in early childhood education at Kyungin Women's University and Myongji University and introduced SKY PROJECT to Department of Early Childhood Education at Ainheueochilleong University in Monglia. Also, Taiwan and Uzbekistan are considering to introduce the project. But Seo's bigger ambition is to export the project to Japan, Finland and Germany, the countries famous for global level education system.

 

Seo values personality education very high. He emphasizes consideration and cooperation more than winning a team competition. Meanwhile, to make a role model for social contribution, Seo takes the initiative in charity activities which his fellow teachers and school parents are ardently participating. Seo is carefully planning to build a global network with which teachers home and abroad share information, knowledge and experience about the excellence of SKY PROJECT.