Category: Blogs

Vineeta, a homeschooling mom, shared her experience of co-writing a book – book with stories of parents, children and teachers. We began other pondering “What is creative writing”? – Thinking, imagination, adding jazz, metaphors, using huge words, etc. Next was “What writing is called when you don’t use creativity? – text books, copy whatever on…

Our Purpose: We Love animals and we wanted to know more about them and we decided to visit People for Animals. We started our day at PFA with an introduction about their work. They rescue, treat, care for and rehabilitate urban wildanimalswith the aim of ultimately releasing them back into their natural habitats. Awareness onhuman-animal…

Multi session taken by kids of various ages – It was not about us knowing and learning from them – but it was all about various exposures and various opportunities to look at learning. A session about the life of an Astronaut in space by a 14yrs old child began with pondering “what is space?”…

Since we have no curriculum at Aarohi, the need of learning arises from living, interests and exposures – Painting, Baking, Fractions, Film making, Football, Craft, Crochet, Stone Collection, Stitching, Market visit, Cooking, Film making, Carpentry, repairs, playing drums, singing, dancing, Mud work … The list is simple from simple needs of life. The process is…

Its not about study harder but to study smarter.Sometimes some simple tools can enhance the way one can understand a topic and grow. But any different way looks difficult. There is a inner battle to not leave what looks comfortable and adapt what is new or different or unknown. Why do we need a different…

Open learning brings an opportunity to be AWARE of self. As we travel the journey of learning we realize that there are some things which accelerates the process, while some puts brakes in our journey. Weekly theme on brakes and accelerator brought the awareness on what can brakes and accelerator play a role in my…

Often as an adult we explore various aspects of child development, we learn various theories and some of us even learn various psychological aspects of children’s world. But our learning and awareness is not complete without our kids understanding and participating to understand their own growth. A session on “Cognitive Distortion” to understand how we…

Good news – Campus phone got lost. Concern of not loosing but the usage and question of care came up very significantly. Few kids have personal phone, some more planning to get – concern of phone becoming part of basic survival hence each one thinking or required to own one. Team voice brought the opportunity…

Session on Sexuality and sex education started the journey of looking at the topic from a different perspective. What are porn video? How to understand your responsibility? How do we look at relationship? How do we understand basic needs of growing body? What all myths do we carry? Puberty is not only about hormonal change…

Coming together to make a play gym A sloppy surface Few strong logs Few ideas Few ropes FewTyres All of us together on a cloudy morning to make A place to doDangal A place to swing A place to dogymnastics Just the right recipe for our imagination to turn into action

Music bring people together (countries don’t matter), changes your mood, transport to memories … Often music is locked in “nice or bad”. We limit music within playing instruments nicely or singing melodiously.Is it possible to explore music to enjoy life?Is it possible to find music in the heart which beats, air we breathe, vegetable we…

Teen age brings excitement as well as confusion. A little listening, a little awareness, a little understanding and that’s all to bring joy in this process of growing up. Teen club – exploring judgements and inner surface Are we into the habit of judging too soon? Based on appearance (cool or dumb), based on the…

16 adult students of Bhoomi College, students of Holistic Education programme joined Aarohi for a day to explore the open learning. People from various backgrounds – software engineer, human resource, corporate world, finance,PhDin Physics, Engineering graduate, IT professionals – degrees did not meant for them, they are starting the journey again with questioning the concept…

Questioning – not to question but to ponder. The week we asked questions, we asked why, how, how else, what, more and so on –Questioning? Questions can be about anything – experience, learning, self, and others and so on. Questioning is not necessary to get answer.We often ask question to others as well as a…

Have you ever wondered about “FindingNemo”? We all have ability to find that right Information or the resource we are seeking, but that is buried somewhere. A 3yr old child asks a lot of questions, while a 13 yrs old makes a lots of comments. Ability to find is lost and replaced with faults (in…

Who are our teachers? The world is our teacher – anyone who is passionate about any kind of learning becomes our teacher. Living together with them not only bring exposure to learning but also bring an opportunity to explore various facet of the life. Iban from Spain, who works in a train fabrication factory came…

Thought club on movie making with Kannada movie director Madhu. Since childhood he was interested in drama, and he started started with directing dramas, writing stories and now into film directing. But the question one needs to ask “whatyou want to tell and why?” He shared, Movie means motion picture. It’s different, how a film…

“A day in Auroville! For the list you have, you need weeks”. The person who said the above was the same person who was telling us the names of so many interesting places we should visit. Auroville sounded, and turned out to be like a multi-university. In every corner was a small organisation or group…

Bamboo is a grass. That a grass could be so versatile, so life giving and so artistic is something we related to the work we did with it.When eight of us from Aarohi (seven children and one ol’ man) reached, the tranquility, the earthiness and the forestry of Auroville welcomed us with a subtle touch…

Computers is a subject of fascination and desire to learn for all rural children. From the beginning of Karral at Aarohi children are asking to bring computers in the session. However we took around 2 months to settle down the program before we introduced computers. We also wanted to create a sense of responsibility towards…

Open learning does not start or stop only at “CHOOSING what I want to do” But REFLECTING to understand why and how I want to do. What makes me work and what stops me from my work … here are some reflections What worked for me in the last one month is that I became…

Bad News – Parents concern over kids food intake at the campus Good News – Parents concern over kids food intake at the campus Well, every bad news in our living at campus bring good news for us. Parents and adults have their own sets of anxiety, concerns, related to growing – some of us…

Dear Teens, Children around your age – 14 to 16 yrs sometimes could be lost as to what to do. (This is true both for children in open learning as well as children going to school). What we see is that there are three options in front of you / children: Some childrencontinue to explore…

As we walked down the road to Chinigiripalli,we saw farms to both sides of the road where beans, tomatoes, coriander, roses were being grown. We stopped to see the cultivation. Talks were about what techniques farmers were using to grow them, how modernised farming has become, struggles of not having enough rain and hence no…

Applied Arts with Nima, as Nima shared “The form of arts, which can be used on any object. Installation is one of the form of applied arts, where we collect things to make big forms of art”. Collected lots of Leaves Crushed them Added a bit of water Added a bit of fevicol Saw colurs…

Open learning does not start or stop only at “CHOOSING what I want to do”. As we travel the journey of OPEN LEARNING, we understand the IMPORTANCE of resources and being resourceful in journey. Being RESOURCEFUL is a habit of mind – cooking or playing piano…being resourceful adds value in learning journey. For one to…

I am fat, I am dark skinned, I have hairy legs, I am not tall, my nose is small, my hair is not long … Each of us have our own images and thoughts on our body and physical appearance. Every time we look at the mirror we have some judgement on our physical look…

I am standing in front of you because of the books I read, places I visited, people I got inspired from, movies I saw and experiences I had….. Do you think you life experiences have shaped who you are today? Tree of life is a tool to help one to look at past, present and…

Outdoor visit on Friday, 29th June. Purpose: The visitwas to meetSunil Uncle at his residence,who is an inventor and bike enthusiastic. He owns four bikes (includingDucati:), had designed a remote control jeep, and a bike ambulance. We wanted to explore a tour on bikes and his inventions. Story of our Visit: Sunil introduced himself to…