Category: Blogs

I like textbooks for many reasons. Textbooks are designed to develop very specific skills. When the kids want to work on any specific skills, textbooks are very helpful. Often when a child asks for a resource to learn a specific concept, we give books from 1 to 10 levels, they choose which level they want…

Take few Bamboo sticks, few wooden blocks and some empty oil cans…play with them and see the magic.

Kids see mixie, some even use it…in two minutes activity they converted themselves in mixie and explored the working of it through body.

Someone has agreed to give old bus to Aarohi. We began with what and how to use this bus (bus has still not arrived). Last two weeks, some kids have been working on ‘bus designing’. Initially it was difficult for some to visualize the arrangements of racks inside for arranging books (library). They know multiplication,…

Mind Mapping – A visual tool for learning. This week we explored during planning, We planned in many different ways using symbols, key words in mind map. How will I use my body? How will I use making? How will I use my brain? How will I use my friends? Further we branched them as…

We all make decision, but how do we make decision? We would like our kids to be critical thinker and develop the ability to take decisions. Wonder how we take decision? At campus we had to take decision ‘get up in the morning to go for running or not’. First we went for running at…

Making butter from milk cream (Malai) brought many thoughts and excitement. We spent our time in thinking and understanding what is cream? How it comes out? What churning does? Why add water? What is butter milk? Why Krishna liked butter? How butter is made in the market … and while we are chit chatting, we…

We live, we buy, we shop, we do many things…wonder how does our markets looks like? How do we place them in our visual maps? We began the exercise of mapping our town market. We walked with our note books on the road, noted what all we SAW, we placed them visually on our maps…came…

We began online punctuation course. Initially some came with ‘know basics’. We began with online quizzes and self test. Quiz aroused curiosity when some did not score 100%. They wanted to know where they went wrong? Some went beyond online quiz. Text books came out, grammar text books came out….we wanted more ‘worksheets’, more games…

Few kids bought Nerf guns and wanted to play war games in the night. To make there play safe – they made their own shields and helmets etc, and then made own safety rules. The time and safety codes were put up on notice board for others to comment and give feedback. They identified a…

When we announced measurement course, response of many kids was”‘we know how to measure”.Well, we began with understanding what all is measurement and why do we need measurement and what if we don’t measure at all? We all then tried to find what all we can measure and came up with big big list –…

Solve this puzzle. Be aware how (what strategies, methods, tools) you are using to solve this. If day before, day before, yesterday was Wednesday then what day will be day after, day after, tomorrow? When you are solving this puzzle how are you solving? How do you normally solve any puzzle? Are you solving it…

Few kids wanted to draw, initially it looked like all wanted to draw the same thing. As we interacted more we realized all wanted to draw for different reasons Sketch to get the same picture Draw for neatness Sketch with proportions Sketch for shading Sketch for light and shadow Sketch for detailing Sketch real life…

in a span of 15 minutes, with zero instructions other than “HANDLE WITH CARE” note, children came up with so many different usage of mirror was a new experience for me. The excitement, strategies, discussion, group involvement and thoughts were amazing and i enjoyed being a child along with them, learning from them, and being…

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, I, the Body and Kinesthetic intelligence, was much sought after. Warriors depended on me; craftsmen used me to create both articles of utility and beauty; dancers and dramatists added depth to culture; sport was the primary pastime, and many professions used hands dexterously to achieve and…

Only one instruction “do not make any sense of what you draw”. It began with stimulating various senses…first sense of hear, sense of sight and sense of touch. Then we made story in 2 minutes using pictures and then we started feeling colors. Used music to stimulate imagination. One child expressed “this was real art”.Thank…

We sing poems to pre-schoolers, wonder why we do that? More wonder why we do not sing as kids grow up? Why we poetry is left to some English Text book chapters ? Last week explored poetry, we began with a question What is poetry?”Some said “rhythmic expression of words, an art, expression of feelings,…

Visual intelligence is left to art and drawings. Often this is not considered as a skill to express or learn. This week we planned our day with visuals only 🙂 We used symbols, storyboards and mapping.

One child drove bike in the campus, disciplinejury was set Case Driving vehicle and breaking safety codes Driving vehicle, under age Driving vehicle, without taking permission Nature – serious Jury – kids of various age with one adult took part in the case. They all met for 4 days, reviewing each day. Kids spoke to…

There are many ways one can learn, all we need to open up different doors to kids and see the magic. This week some new courses started at Aarohi. A Child can learn any concept or skill by taking up or joining a “course”. A Course typically is something that has a fixed time slot…

Three teams One team took care of food – Veg and chicken Biryani, and Sewai One team took responsibility of sharing stories of the festival One team took responsibility of decoration and music We had only two hours to do all the preparation. First hour we wasted. Second hour we all pulled up ourselves and…

We asked children at campus ‘basic skills’ they would like to learn? They came up with – Speed reading, reading for understanding, beautiful handwriting, multiplication, spellings, fitness (exercises). They set their goals how much they want to learn, they set their timings (each day how much they would work), they set their levels, they decided…

Bring various weights Sometimes guess the weight Sometimes guess heavier or lighter Sometimes just balance All ages will enjoy 🙂 This week welcome was ‘weights’. We experienced weighing in many different forms.

See this funny small advertisement video and then do the above activities (in any order).https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4y1U3jrBTI Do as many as activities as you can do. Do it as per order of your preference. Where did you start? Why? What did you get out of these activities? Were you comfortable/easy doing any activity and not very comfortable/easy…

Many of us have our own fear about snakes and many other animals, we grew up with our fear and unconsciously passing to kids too.When we started talking about snakes at campus we had many reactions Oh !! snake, It bites, its dangerous, it will run behind you, it will chase me in the night,…

Visit to hospitals are reserved to adults and only in case of medical needs. This week we looked at hospitals as a learning space at Aarohi. First, we visited nearby hospital to know how far are we from medical facilities? We timed our watches, set our milometer to know the distance. We also visited to…

We normally do not talk about what worst can happen, but we do think about it (that is why we get anxious). Our kids also do not talk freely about what do they think what worst can happen, but the reality is they do think about it and sometimes get worried and sometimes also do…

ropes came in welcome,Just bring some ropes (jute thread), add little things metal plates with a hole, next day add Bamboo sticks….and see the magic of creations.

Sneha, Kabir and Naman along with Shailaja and Gauri joined us at campus from Snehadhara. Snehadhara works with children and adults who are differently-abled, their caregivers and families. They use Arts Based Therapy as the only methodology to work with children and adults with special needs. Initially we did not know how differently we need…