Category: Blogs

A 20ft feet long 4″ pipe, cut into two halves….collected 1000 liters water in one rain. Every drop matters. Add to that – we got the 1000 ltr water drum – from a junk shop – for just Rs1000/-

AFL – Aarohi Football League at Aarohi to explore how do we respond under pressure….experiencing winning, loosing, practicing, reacting, responding, blaming, accepting, listening, competing…along with excitement, disappointment, anger and jealousy. Exploring co-operation through reflection.

Some children like to lead, some think leadership means commanding. Sports brings anopportunity for them to experince leadership. Many likes to conduct sports session for manyreasons Command over others Bring sports of my choice In case of conflict ;I am leader, you listen to me”. In case of decision making ‘my decision is final, I…

Am I German or Indian? Am I German, just because I stay here? What is German? What is a country made up of? Left with a thought what a country is? Family of four from Berlin, Germany. The parents, son is 8yrs and daughter 6yrs. Both kids attend a free, democratic school in Berlin which…

Outdoor trips are part of learning system at Aarohi. Sometimes we do wonder why are we going week after week on outdoor trips? This time again we asked the same questions ‘why do we go?” Based on the experience various children have gone through, the group came up with a list Understand Working Experience first…

Exploring language through music – Dancing to the tune of Dandia music for Gujrati OR to dance on Oriya music OR Spanish music OR simply chanting chants in Sanskrit OR a simple Music march.

At Aarohi, coaching or teaching is not the only way we learn, it is need based rather a requirement to learn. We began working on fitness by our own understanding, we brought many fitness format based on what we read, learnt from different people. After some time we needed some more inputs. Fitness expert, Praveen,…

It began with a need to have clay station – proposal was made for the place, one child sketched the space, the layout and arrangement of clay station. Soon it was working – We explored making clay with pond mud and also making our own toys with clay. It’s fun to play with toys, it’s…

Sterilization of Coco’s (our pet dog) … From the finding of vet doctor, calling, fixing up an appointment, preparing for the visit to the doctor, stayed at the clinic during operation, understating medicine plan, giving her medicines … that’s a lot of work. Typically we would think this is work for an adult but here…

Sometimes when we see Pepper pouncing on Coco, we get worried for Coco’s safety. We started observing more and this is what we also observed…..how lovingly he is letting Coco play with him…..watch video

We read comics, we enjoy, we share….Dirk from Germany who is professional comic book writer joined Aarohi to share his skills of making of comic strips. After a demo session comic course was announced with the commitment of 90 minutes daily for four days – all ages took part. Each one had their own story…

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…