Category: Blogs

The session started with saying good afternoon differently…. Using our ears and hands…. Kids were involved in doing it… Then kids were made to sit in 2 concentric circles as we couldn’t make a single circle… Then we introduced ourselves one by one telling our names along with 2 things about us and something that…

The session started with a formal Good morning…..Then I asked the kids to say Good morning in different ways without opening their mouth.. So they did Namaskar, salute and few other actions also…. And then we said Good morning using our ears and hands.. Kids were very involved and enjoyed doing it….. Then we introduced…

Science is MAGICAL and it’s all around us and all we need to do is take out tags like physics, chemistry and biology. We began with science in Kitchen – What we use in our daily life we take it for granted and just use them. This week in thought club we pondered about things…

Words are all around us – Let’s play with them. Each day for 15 minutes we just played with words – looked for words from newspaper, rhyming words, words we know or don’t know – very simple and common activity, but worth repeating it many times.

Use games to bring awareness about various aspect of one word, we explored ‘SENSITIVITY’. We did not introduce the one meaning of the word, we explored it through the games for few days. We all started with five tokens (assumption that we all have some basic sensitivity within us). We added one token for every…

We had safety drill at campus on ‘people’. Your child may like to express more or not express at all, just listen and if require encourage to talk more. Safety means ‘being safe’. Today, in human society we are afraid of stealing, loss, threats, robbery and kids are not alien to these fears – they…

Kids were given constraint of not using ‘cardboard box and cellotape to create, SO INSTEAD OF MODELS – create something out in real and work with different materials’. They went around and choose to ‘upgrade tree house’. They choose to work with Bamboo and ropes, they worked with hammers and nails, they explored ‘creating. In…

Often when kids work with different paints they are depending on us to know which paint to use for which purpose. We realized that they have not spent time with different paints at leisure, rather used them often in hurry (I want to use now). This week we began the week with ‘spending time with…

Kept old cans and few stones – we invented games, played old games in new way (bowling with empty cold drinks cans and stones).

Most of us are healthy (no major disease) but are we all fit? Can we run 5kms, can we do regularly do push ups?, can we bend forward?….health, fitness, exercise, food consciousness are left to extra curricular activities in our education. We rarely bring the aspect of fitness as equally important part of living life.…

Each day we reflect and assesses ourselves and we do it in many different ways. Each week Thursday night we compile our reflections of the week and document it. It takes few hours for us to compile each week. Since this is a different way of assessing ourselves, each child takes own time, own pace…

“How is my painting? Is it beautiful? Am I doing it fine? Can you tell me which color to fill? I am not good at painting, do it for me? You finish for me…we often hear this ANXIETY in children. Last week asked kids to make ‘dirty painting’. Initially they rejected my idea. As we…

Give some empty cans, few stones and see the magic. No instructions, no designs. Just simple play. We played Bowling with stones – the idea was to just create our own games.

Just one chart in our dining area created joy of exploring ‘which vitamin am I eating today?’. After realizing what all vitamins we are eating, we started wondering ‘which vitamins in rice?” We are exploring what are we eating and what goes in our food…it is not something we can do in one session or…

Festivals brings joy at Aarohi, sometimes we do elaborate planning and celebrate. Sometimes we just do impromptu. Janmasthmi was one of the impromptu celebration. One child arranged for toffees, another one hanged in the basket (Krishna’s pot), one lighted the Diya and collected some flowers from campus…and we used ladder to break matki and enjoyed…

Free any facilitator or teacher from the boundaries of ‘curriculum’ and then see the magic of learning. Often parents are worried that ‘no curriculum at Aarohi will lead to no learning or notmuchlearning ’. I see contrarily, that ‘no curriculum’ leads to LOADS of learning. Any person whom we meet, we learn and we do…

We continue to explore measurements and realized so much we can explore in cms and mm, feet and inches or gms and litres. One child who wanted to measure circle, was given circles to play. After two session he came up with his own way to measure the circle with a thread “wrap it around,…

Stories are meant to be told to kids, and kids are suppose to listen and enjoy. This week we asked kids to get some books for themselves and share not the story but what were they thinking when they were reading. They shared about the author, the imagination of the author, about the characters, about…

Laughter is powerful. In Thought Club we brought thoughts on laughter – we asked each one to make others laugh. It was difficult to make others laugh! We wondered, we all like laughter but we seldom make others laugh – shared our thoughts what makes us not using laughter so often, If we enjoy laughter…

Each day we did this just for 15 minutes to start the day Day one collect stones – kids ended up not only collecting the stones but also smelling them and making games with them Day two – collect leaves – all kinds of small, big, dry, wet leaves were collected and different arrangements with…

Thank you Sunita for introducing this art form – simple but beautiful.

Grand parents are blessing for us – important part of eco system of our community, they bring love and affection. Thank you uncle for coming and spending time with us. Playing with us, working with us and living with us.

Fear is not a problem, it is a choice. We do not need to solve, we need to dissolve it!! We began session on fear with kids. It began with a survey on fear with few questions. Kids answered following questions What are the things you are afraid of? Recall one or two situations that…

Various travelogues by kids – For many of them it was first experience to write a travelogue. Some had heard this word ‘travelogue’ but had no idea, some took it literally ‘travel’ and filled up travelogue with travel details like when they did what … read more to explore how various children made sense of…

How does one learn history or rather how else can one learn history? How about MOVIES!!! Yes we announced a history course with movies. Many were clueless how movies can be a source to learn, we watch movies for entertainment and that’s all!!! We saw some movie clips and noticed the words which we would…

Each individual is a wonderful story and Thank you Sunitha for spending time with us at campus – you came to experience Aarohi, but our children benefited by getting exposed to your story. You came as a guest and soon you were part of community – thank you for cooking with us, playing with us,…

Here are 12 reasons to drum….http://artdrum.com/TWELVE_WAYS_STUDENTS_BENEFIT_FROM_DRUMMING.HTM We drum every week, we drum in rhythm, we drum in group, we drum to listen, we drum to be with ourselves, we drum to ENJOY!

We celebrated ‘relationship’ at Aaorhi. we live together, we have different relationships and Raksha Bandhan was a good day to celebrate relationships. Not only brother and sister, but all kinds of human relationships.