Category: Blogs

Each week quiz clubs on skype teaches us something new and different…..one of the week Sangitha talked about not only only revealing facts but also reading question well to pick up the main clue. Break up terms to understand better, see patterns, learn some basic suffixes and prefixes, arrive upon a few answers, eliminate options…

Campus training on sexual awareness. The session was interactive and had lot of inputs from children. While this topic is very vast, we could only work on awareness regarding our responses, our thoughts and beliefs regarding some common sexual situations, on body parts, good touch – bad touch and sexual touch. Recommend parents to take…

Lot happens during the week at campus…..not necessarily structured as curriculum but curriculum from life. We pick what comes on our way as we live our life Planning various things – Outstation trip – schedule, travel, connecting with resource people, identifying and finalizing the places to visit, stay arrangements and communication. Team of four consisting…

Gift Outdoor – As part of outdoor, it was turn to work in neighborhood. We began with idea of gift outdoor – spend some time with people in the market, work for them, eat our breakfast within limited budget, save some money and buy a gift for our helpers (station master, doctors in hospitals, police…

Adults at campus have been managing kitchen, buying grocery and food quantities. I as an adult never tried to understand how we learnt this organizing. I think we did not need to know, as we grew in our experience, we learnt more.Now, one of the child has taken up the role, she is our kitchen…

When two people fight… it leads to more fight or judging right and wrong….. Here is a story to read. We read this story on the theme of compassion in Aarohi thought club .. how words can create love and compassion and change lives. By TERRY DOBSON A turning point came in my life one…

When a child vomits, do you we worry about the vomit (we need to clean) or you worry about the child and his or her well being. Chances are you focus on the child, how is he or she feeling, worrying not about the vomit perse, but about the child’s stomach – you connect with…

Last month we announced ‘Jobs@Aarohi. There was excitement to apply for job – some want this job to earn money and feel independent, while some wanted to apply for this job purely for their joy of doing and taking more responsibility. Additional notice was sent to those who wanted to apply for job to earn…

‘Aarohi is a community of self directed learners – Children who decide what they want to learn, how they want to learn, when they want to learn and who use self assessment.We do not follow any philosophy, we follow the child’. This naturally brings skepticism “HOW is this possible?”To make this possible kids at Aarohi…

Life brings many opportunities to learn. Last month we had to depend on water from outside campus. This brought an opportunity to re-think, re-look and re-plan. While the work on rain water harvesting is on, one of the possibility was to malfunction of our bore-well pump. This was an opportunity to see where does water…

A day with Chandu……day started with bird watching…. Had day full of exploring nature of Sam Fransisco….talks, videos and photographs. Started with bird watching, moving to ants, nature, food…. And many more things related to nature. In the process explored many more topics. Began with geography, we traced the location of California on the globe……why…

My interaction with chemistry started with h2o and ended with benzene ring. As I became more conscious about my food, I got introduction to chemicals as ‘not good for health’. Somewhere something was missing….special week at Aarohi allowed all of us to come closer to chemicals and chemistry and unreveal the mystery of chemistry and…

There is a saying ‘charity begins at home’. I think participation in society also begins at home. During Id akkas took holidays for ID celebration. We announced ‘shram daan’ – asking community to come forward and take part in work beyond our regular campus care. Some signed up for morning, while some for evening and…

Live music has its own charm. We had an evening with Live Guitar and Keyboad. One child shared ‘how well he plays, must have practiced a lot’. Another one slept in deep sleep after a melodious evening.

ID – We got introduced to the festival of id through two of our kids who celebrate and fast at campus during this festival and Fatima akka. Invitation to celebrate ID with her at her home in town was irresistible. All at campus decorated ourselves and since most did not have ‘festival dress’ some borrowed…

Petrol pump is very commonly used space…we rarely stop to see what it is all about, This time we stopped at our neighborhood petrol pump during outdoor visit to understand working of petrol pump. We discovered that we have right to ask for ‘purity check’ and each petrol pump display that. After knowing how billing…

We use Granite in our homes, but where do they come from? Are they natural (how can they be without any chemicals?), or they are processed ? Well, we went in search to find out about them and also to know what all is happening in our neighborhood. Just few kilometers from the campus we…

Richard, from Germany, living in Goa did not fail to inspire us with his yoga session to bring more stretches in our routine. He is a tree climber and a language teacher. Hmmmmmmm to be tree climber he needs fitness and he needs food which allows him to be active. A strong believer of ‘child…

Food and me……Food is so much part of our life, ever wondered what are our food values, what are our family food beliefs. We explored food through different families in Aarohi TV channel…. Each participant shared their family food values. At Aarohi We began with a question ” can a campus teach?” And food and…

Sports is very integral part of our life at Aarohi – each week one child with a guide brings different kinds of sports.Some of the guidelines for our community sports Active sports (includes running, movement, ball etc) Bring variety (including athletic sports) Clarify rules in advance (we twist rules of the each game to suit…

Yash, a Khoji from Swaraj joined us for his mentor ship. The focus of his mentor ship was learning and experimenting with how to cook a variety of foods that appeal to and bring joy to children. So truly he worked on his goal – each day a different dish with different flavour, cooked with…

What you do when it is windy and cloudy at campus? Make and fly your own kite. Why to wait for an occasion – we create our own occasion as we live. There was no kite paper, he first tried with chart paper, then plain paper, then magazine paper and then calendar paper. Some flew,…

Campus training every alternate week allow us to connect with our safety needs to live. While we worship peace, we also work on equipping ourselves face any unwanted situation. While we train ourselves in avoiding conflicts, we also train ourselves to respond back in unsafe situations. Hernan introduced us to Kick boxing. Initially some of…

Many of our laptops are donated and loosing their health with time and usage. Needs expressed “we need more laptops, all these are not working appropriately”. Infact many of the kids have invested in their own devices and prefer to use their own gadgets because the use of laptop is painful for them. We were…

Quiz….. It’s not about winning or competition. We were introduced to quiz with a different perspectives by Sangitha last week. The session on quiz began with what all quiz can do – Skill development- Able to make connection, learn intelligent guessing, thinking on feet, work in team, discuss and have deeper understating, collaborate well under…

How does one gets introduced to various topics? The occasion of special week helping us to know that there is something like ‘human rights’ exist, or chemicals can be explored for learning and poetry can be fun and also history can be worth reading or may be animals can be learnt in depth. Special week…

Helpmate is the space to take help of community to express/solve issues which are disturbing to anyone. While kids solve their problemns in their own ways, we also intrdocue them to variouys tools -NVC(non violent communictaion), circle time and Art Expressions are some of the tools we have been using. All these tools empower one…

Revolution, gold, independence, dialectic, conflicts for land, surrounded by mountains, discovery of land, development, religion, colony, ports, changing landscape, losing soul of the place, paradise, big mountains, faith, beaches, dessert, hunger, salt dune, snow, river and its dynamics, coffee exporter, jungle, flora and fauna, country side, wonders of nature like seven color river, before the…