Vimal 10 yrs old and Mishti 8yrs old are not too small to lead their dance Klub – they come together every Thursday, dance practice together, teach each other and Leela is around with them to sometimes bring resources, sometimes just watch and relish or stimulate their thinking. They call it Dance Klub.
Mukunda, Shaunak, Shadhak, Krisha all 9-11yr old do not need anyone of us to teach them video game designing, along with Ambica, a mother from the community have formed a group and meet very religiously few times a week to seriously work on their project – they call it “game project space”
Preeti, a mother, is not too much grown up to be in art space along with other children and resource person Ranjini. Ranjni brings her love of art and experience of techniques while the group brings their enthusiasm and consistent chatter in the art Klub.
Saba, Mythri, Roshni, Anjali, Ambica, Sailiaja, Prapun, Praveena, Chitra, are not behind in learning making it a learning community, each week holding space to learn facilitation, and parenting.
Pooja and Sirirsti are not of the same age but they come together in teen space to understand emotions
Smriti sometimes finds it boring, sometimes participates, sometimes just plays, or Sometimes listens.
Shobitha, Bhaval, Sunitha, Preeti, Bindhu, and Ravi are not only for their own child, but they are the parent conch for a group of families in the community.
Achalesh 9yr old is excited to design and implement a chicken coup with Ratnesh a facilitator and guided by Sanjay a parent of the community
Yusra, Siddhatan along with other parents can endlessly talk about insects with Chandu who brings excitement by making it alive, so what it is online
Ajesh, Kowshik, and Dwiji ensure that the finances are taken care of, Mishti is our contribution manager and she is not a 9yr old small child.
Avani, Srishti, and many other gathers to explore the history – from mythology to east India Geography and other interesting points about Maharashtra State, Shivaji Valour stories and Marathi Sanskrit Song and many other digging into the history
Soham, 12yrs old is working on setting up the e-library for the community, he is not small or irresponsible.
Asawari, 22 yrs old bring people together to chit chat over entrepreneurship klub and gift factory
Skanda, Aswathy, Shikha, Dhrupad, Advik, Trisha, Nidhi, Sreya ….and many others are part of the space in different ways, in different forms coming together to make it a learning community.
Some glimpses from some of the collaboration
In drawing Klub, there is no time for getting to know each other. We just start exploring together and as we explore we also get to know each other.
Language KLub brings a unique style of collaborative learning. Here we follow all types of learning – Few minutes, we learn by listening and sharing what we know. Few minutes we learn by teaching, in few minutes we all collaborate our guesses and knowledge and learn. Few minutes we get an opportunity to bring one new exposure and one gets their turn to lead the group. Here we learn Sanskrit – through reciting shloka, teaching shloka, story reading and guessing meanings, sometimes videos, rhymes, stories, and so on…
Tween Klub Brings an opportunity to bring us different perspectives from peers of my age group. This week on Cyber Safety, we did not teach or learn about Cyber Safety, but instead, we chitchat, questioned, wondered, pondered, shared experiences to many “What if” situations through a game.
In Exploration Klub, we all hang on to our questions to explore and think and being with the thoughts and observe evidence through experiments. This week we explored Light Reflections using Torch, Mirrors, Endless reflections, Conduction through aluminum foil, Video filters.
History Klub members, – We just don’t teach or Read and learn, We do various stuff in History Klub. This week we want to decide which state we all want to know and explore. Decisions were made by questioning and questioning and question? We started to learn about that state from Capital city, to Food culture to Mysteries about that city to Geographical features to Population to Staple food to Economy and flora and fauna aspects of that state and also how to travel and if it needs permit or no. These were the questions pondered and hanged on without answers and finally decided to choose to know more about Seven sister states of India which are not known much and are part of North-East India. After the decision, we all took responsibility for reading, researching, and sharing with the group. It’s a joint effort and not one person’s responsibility to bring the information.
Fitness Klub brings us a variety of exposures to work out, including Strengthening, Cardio, and Flexibility. We used various resources like videos, demonstrations, and co-creating exercise routines.
In Teen Klub this week we explored Change keyword g what is changing g Mind, Body, Thoughts. This started the conversations to talk about Changes with redirects to different aspects.
In Art Klub this week we did not do the art which we know, we shared all our favorite art forms and made a list, and decided to choose an art form that we did not know. We did not want someone to teach us the art, instead, we created our own art from our understanding of the name and shared why it is called so. We exchanged our understanding and thoughts about an unknown art form.
Parenting Klub with different parents sharing the responsibility to bring new exposures in the form of book reading on parenting aspects. This week we read about Nonviolent Communication – Observation without Evaluation. We read, discuss, share our experiences, question our beliefs and the session flows towards brainstorming our thoughts and beliefs.
Theatre klub brings a variety of theatre concepts. We explored Visual, Music background through various activities like dumb charades, miming and guessing.
Programming Klub, Scratch team purely brings the concept of peer learning alive. Every week One child brings a new game that they create during the week and shares and teaches and makes sure that the other child learns to program that game.
This week in Literature we explored Mark Twain books, as part of exposure to different authors and their writing styles
In Writers klub, We explored Simile scramble.
Learning through Vedas in spritual klub – Just one line of Sri Rudra Laghunyasam “agnirve vachinsrithah…” lead toexploring what are some elements of nature, moved on to elements of the physical body anda discussion of various scenarios in our life where the mind says to do a thing while our heart(or soul/intuition) says to do other things. “Vimal said this discussion helps him in his planning where his mind says we can some task tomorrow and so on.Then moved on to another example of having a conflict with someone when the mind says to take revenge while the heart says work on yourself to know what triggered you.Then Mukunda brought up the wonderful discussion of why don’t we take revenge or why taking revenge is not the best solution.We realized if we spend our time, energy, and effort on taking revenge we will lose out on doing many other wonderful things in the world. Ultimately we use our energy either for revenge or building something cool.Even brought up the point that the mind is not bad or something. We shouldn’t be seeing it as such.We have an all-powerful mind that we need to use, just that, there is also another part to it that is the monkey mind.Why do we have a monkey mind was another question.Whether you want to use your powerful mind to build something cool for the world or you are controlled by the monkey mind to take revenge or get into conflicts was another discussion.Also, had a discussion of part hurts. Realized we cannot forget but only make peace with them.Learned about ho oponoppono prayer and some other perspectives to deal with hurts.Next week, we will move to the second line of sri rudra laghunyasam”.
More than 4o spaces created based on various interests – breaking all the boundaries of who is teaching and who is learning – no age bar. And that’s all about the learning community – connections, collaborations, processes, and support. It’s joyous when we all learn and grow together.