Category: Blogs

Is there any difference between Cyclone, Typhoon and Hurricane? Do they change names with their nature or different countries? Where are cyclones formed? Why do they are born in Ocean? What is Tropic? Why cyclones formed only in Tropic oceans? How does the difference if the temperature leads to Cyclone? What is the eye of…

Fears are good! They allow us to learn more, keep informed and go deeper into the topic. Few kids going to nearby ponds. Some of them shared the concern of “what if someone is drowning?”. This led to a training on drowning! A little research revealed that none of us knew anything about rescuing a…

This week it was about exploring creativity through – Visualization, Collection, and Constraints. Many of us are very much familiar with ‘constarinst’ (we experience many at the campus). But it was difficult to find the difference between thinking and visualization. And also to collect out of the box (as one of the children expressed). We…

A small group from the community decided to visit Kaigal with the focus on understanding trees, learning afforestation, and nursery techniques. It included seed collection in the forest, seed treatment techniques and planting of seeds. Collection of some species as saplings from the forest for planting in nurseries. Also understanding species that can be raised…

One pot one shot (OPOS) style of cooking for efficiency of resources, introduced by Prachi. A mother, A CA by profession who got interested in OPOS cooking after birth of her twins. She emphasised on understanding the principals of OPOS cooking – like Maximum heat and minimum time, just the right amount of water, standardized…

One child decided to have ‘Gandhi’ theme in the music session. We have been having themes like colours, war, nature, festival, language etc as our themes for our music sessions but Gandhi theme felt very unusual. But this child was very clear of this theme. I was looking forward to a different music session and…

Visit to TDU Herbarium is like a livr museum, a dictionary and encyclopedia of plants.It helps in collecting information about a plant.To make Herbarium at the campus/ home – Make a list of plants. Herbarium sheet should have flower and fruits. Press between two newspaper sheets and press with weight. Arrange them as per your…

Headstream – a social NGO team was here. They conducted a small session for us. So the first logical question was – What social organisations do? To understand the session Naveen began with involving us by asking questions “What are the problems in society?”Responses were “dirty places, health issues, public transport, water, environment, crime, etc.”…

Collection is another ingredient of creativity. It is the raw material for the creative process. The more we collect, possibly the more we would have resources. Similarly a wide variety of collections helps creative thinking. To stimulate the process of collection we began with a pile of tyres. We observed them, we visulaized various usages,…

Jatre on visualization was to introduce kids to this tool. Lets help kids to get used to this wonderful tool. At the end of this note are some link to resources for parents/ facilitator. The session began with ponderingWhat is visualization?How it is different from seeing?How is it diffierent from dreaming? It is special imagination…

The week began with questioning “What is in any GAME that we enjoy it?” And we explored Why do you like? What gives you excitement? What is that different you like? Why is it fun? Why are they called games? Why it gives relaxation? What is common in all the games? What brings the competition?…

First crop harvest of the campus – It was different. For most of us, it was the first interaction with the farming and harvesting the crop by our hands. There were joy, excitement, and connection. I grew up without knowing where does the grain I eat come from. I read in textbooks so I knew…

Each leaf is different. All we need to do is spend time with them. Jatre on leaves began with stimulation of seeing a bunch of leaves and guessing the name of the plant ( all leaves were collected from the kitchen garden). Identification was done based on smell, looks, memory, and a wild guess.We moved…

Sketching Introduction: I am the publicity media officer of aarohi and my new blog is about sketching. I am going to talk about a few techniques on sketching. So let’s dig into it. Shading: Shading is when you make any object dark or light by applying a certain amount of pressure. It also depends on…

Visit to Maker Faire gave us the stimulation, experience, exposure of various fields all in one place for all ages. Maker soul came back excited, stimulated and inspired – just 3 hours of exposure stimulated us with the joy of experiencing innovations in makers space. Its is a gathering of curious people who enjoy learning…

Do kids plan their bday parties? And given a chance they start planning their parties by the age of 4yrs, some even earlier – whom will they call, where will they have the party, what shape of the cake, what candies to distribute, what snacks to have, which dress to wear and so on. If…

Sophrology means knowing of consciousness and knowing our emotions and manage them. A session with Marie from France allowed us to play with emotions. After working for various companies in accountancy in France, she opted for an alternative life and that led her exploring Sorphology and she enjoys it! We played with two emotions –…

Sophrology means knowing of consciousness and knowing our emotions and manage them. A session with Marie from France allowed us to play with emotions. (from wikipedia –Sophrology, from Ancient Greek σῶς / SOS (“harmony”), φρήν / PHREN (“mind”), and -λογία / -logia (“study/science”), is the study of the consciousness in harmony; a healthcare philosophy made…

“What did you eat? I also watched this movie. I went to a restaurant. I went to a party. That is cool”…often the talks are limited to limited experience kids have around them. To add value to our conversations, we engage ourselves in sharing the circle and meaningful conversations.Anyone is free to announce the topic,…

Just one book, few colur papers, few colur pens and just one person were enough to bring Origami fever at the campus.

This blog is wriiten by Asawari, she was part of Aarohi for few years and then joined Swaraj University at Udaipur and here are thoughts as guide, as learner and as a facilitator. Her blog also athttp://asawarimathur.blogspot.in/2017/11/peer-feedback-in-self-directed-learning.html My thoughts of Peer feedback as a process in self –directed learning, this is from my experience at…

One way to learn and get trained about SAFETY – is by taking a quiz – which we have purposefully designed not so much to test – but to help assimilate important SAFETY information in a clear manner. Link for Aarohi Safety Training Quiz 1: https://goo.gl/forms/3S1dqXhiRCi1SMe63 We will be making many such SAFETY quizzes –…

Watched this documentary on Friday in continuation of our “Passions o profession”. The movie was chosen consciously to not to bring any excitement or bring cool stuff. Few found it boring, few found it slow. few were restless while some were engrossed. But the movie brought reality and life behind any creation!A 52 minute documentary…

The journey of a 12yrs old, who grew up with a love for vehicles. As a child of 4yrs old, he would draw and draw jeeps and buses and trucks. He even started to save money to buy a bike when he would be 18urs old. Soon he grew out of vehicles and started making…

Jam just a minute – pick a topic and speak for a minute. Topic was “my fears”.We all have fear. But we don’t talk about our fear much. We just spoke for a minute and that’s all. None have a any suggestions to deal with it, none was looking for any solutions. We just came…

No knowledge, no degrees, no education in growing our food. Yes! this is where we began our journey of kitchen garden. All we had was desire to grow. We experimented, we failed many times, we read, we met people, we tried many things, we understood our land (soil), we visited places and continued to work.…

Jatre Halloween – The eve of celebrating holy spirit. Hallow (holy spirit), Eve (evening). Namrata took us through the journey of this festival. Its origin ( Celtics celebrating Samhain) to be safe from evil spirit.Belief – Most culture believes that in some or other forms spirits visits us. And that’s the culture behind dressing up…

Abhiram, a Khoji from Swaraj, shared what all he has learnt about trees and farming in last few years. It began with ponderingHow did life started on the earth? What is life?What is forest?What all helps in creating life ? How to water the trees? Or where to water trees? At the roots, around the…

Three years back we just started planting trees. We planted 100 trees in first batch, only 10 survived – we did not know how to care for the trees or simply we did not know anything about growing. We learnt as we grew with our kids at the campus. We experimented, we read, met people,…

We all dream of becoming something, we all connect with something or other but when it comes to doing often we are disappointed with our own lack of skills and our own capabilities. Each dream needs necessary skills to be developed – some skills we have , while some skills we develop. Isn’t education is…