Category: Blogs

Self directed learning is not always learning by self, it is when and how and from whom I want to learn. During winter camp, to begin with kids were surprised they can do what they want do and how they want they do. Soon the concept grew on them, things started falling in place, they…

Explored language with people during language week Rema from coimbatore joined us on phone to share about Tamil language. She shared how words originate in different languages – “Did word ‘cash’ comes from ‘kasa’ in Tamil?” Her talk encouraged some of the Tamil speaking kids to communicate with her in Tamil and one of the…

Language through poetry Anitha Murthy, a published writer shared, “Poetry is like perfume in a bottle, it is not rose, but extract of that perfume”. This was different way of looking at poetry. She shared how senses are part of learning. Often skills like langauge, writing, poetry are taken as pure skill (subject) to learn.…

Exploring language through music during language week. Home learners Anupama and Nihar joined with their linguistic energy and shared songs in Marathi, Kannada, Sanskrit and Kucth language. Leela, one of the Aarohi parent joined to share Tamil rhymes and one rhyme on elephant was just appropriate for the surrounding. Meenakshi and Madhav from Puvidham were…

Teeagers, often are misunderstood. They are not careless, they are not irresponsible, they are not rowdy … they are THEY. All they need is SPACE to glow and grow. They need acceptance for what they are. Interaction with teenagers at winter camp at Aarohi was fun. They listensd but they asked questions and they needed…

The child learns to design the car using different steps like measuring resources, to use colours using visuals and car models.

We believe each individualis a wonderful story and our children can be benefited by getting exposedto that story. With Amit, Children learning Visual arts design and hand arts.

Decide what you want to learn, how you want to learn, when you want to learn and how much you want to learn. 5 days of winter camp @ Aarohi had unlimited energy. Children and adults all were learning from each other – we had no boundaries of adult or a child, a teacher or…

No special week is complete without a movie. The week we saw the movie ‘The band’s visit”’.Eight Egyptian musicians who comprise the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra are visiting Israel to perform but get lost in the city and land up in the wrong place.With no transportation out or any hotels to stay at, the band…

Mr Saravana joined us to share about snakes. He is veterinarian doctor in cattle farm in Hosur, his one of the interest is to rescue snakes. He shared about various snakes, first aid and precautions. He did a live demo of rescuing a cobra snake which he rescued from a home near hosur. The live…

Language through senses Vinay from “Gift-able”joined to share about Sign language and Braille. The session started with watching national anthem in sign language – this set the stage for sign language. Often when I used to see people using their hands to communicate or see books on sign language, it used to look difficult to…

Language through Dance Nitya is trained Bharatanatyam dancer. She shared the language of dance through different demonstrations. Classical dance with contemporary and western music – in her words “making this dance available to next generation by connecting with contemporary music”.

Language through Art Story of “Tower of Babel” was the inspiration to paint this wall. It is said in the story that “God created languages to not allow human to reach heaven”. The story goes like this… “Everyone on earth spoke the same language. As people migrated from the east, they settled in the land…

Language through Art Story of “Tower of Babel” was the inspiration to painting this wall. “God created languages to not allow human to reach heaven”. The story goes like this…Everyone on earth spoke the same language. As people migrated from the east, they settled in the land of Shinar..read more on wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel

During language week, as we explored different languages ranging from Kutch to Swahili. It allowed us to look at language as a medium to understand other people and their culture. We explored language in various form – we used dance, drama, music, stories, movies, people, debate and art to understand language. Language through Stories We…

I really love the concept of outdoors. It brings lot of learning opportunities with fun. It also brings a big opportunity for me to understand children. Yesterday we went to a church by metro. It was different as we decided to go by metro. We all (including me) were ready to take the challenge. We…

We were doing soil experiments and trying to understand soil. One child came up with his own experiment of testing of soil and he drew conclusion based on his experiment. Let’s see what he wants to share with us.

Some of us, in some corner of our heart, some desire to see our kids famous, happy and successful… To fulfill our desire we also carefully expose our kids to many such people, create opportunities to get exposed to such skills beyond schooling. One of the thing we miss is to understand what makes these…

The title says “watch 3 movies…no homework, no school”. Well, it sounds as simple as homeschooling – not send child to school, no packing lunch bags, no chasing timetable or grades…as you read the book one can relate with every moment as homeschooler – like homeschooling the novel too bring experiences when one is doubtful,…

B’days bring opportunity to think SPECIAL about the B’day child. Another b’day , another celebration – but this time in different style. Kitchen team cooked food of his choice, Another collected 10 different kinds of flower from the campus and made bouquet for 10 yr old boy. Resource team made a “disco light” with LED…

At campus we try to minimize the usage of plastic – all grocery bought in bags/boxes. We do not accept any plastic bags. Buy local rusk, snacks. Still we do generate some plastic waste specially from biscuit packets, chips packets etc. By turn we sort plastic. One child who was separating plastic suggested, “Wash your…

He has invented his own way of reading. When he reads, he read letters of each unknown word, ask for meaning and pronunciation. he then writes, and reads the same lines and then reads more… This week we also introduced him to finding meaning of the same word in Tamil and then also making story…

Photography is word I associated with “technical details of light, aperture speed, lens etc” OR just click – what’s the big deal about it!!! OR the expensive equipment with big lenses and sophisticated cameras to click professional pictures. Well, we introduced photography to kids to “play around with” like a child play with paints before…

Thursday’s thought clubs are for “half done stories” – we read stories and just before the end stop! and predict the ending – its fun. One of the Thursdays we saw this video. we paused after explanation of first chakra. Kids predicted next Chakras as – greed, letting go, guilt, shame, jealousy, lie, bad behaviour,…

“Become Galileo for a day and imagine how he would have discovered the moons of Jupiter? or how he made telescope?”. One of the days – I was a KTM bike, while one child was Columbus, another was Leonardo, Abraham lincoln, Narendra Modi, Leonardo da vinchi, Mozart, etcEveryday, we all came up with some stories…

GOAL was the word this week or rather “specific goal” was the key of the week. Some kids set their goal like “making of monkey bar”. The goal had “product” inbuilt in it and that became the reason to work. Some wanted to work on different aspects of material, strength, different ways of using and…

It was full attendence..all kids ready for a story… Children heard a Tall Tale – it was having vivid description of color, texture, feel, fragrance, foul smell, film personality ( Amitabh Bachchan, mumbai travel, height, color, conversations, time schedule….it was full of details. Children travelled with the story and then were stopped abruptly. Faculty called…

When we did the stimulation activities for the objective of Visualization, it gave vent to our imagination, an opportunity to see in different perspectives and then to apply our visualization to create from our own ideas. The visual of half done pictures were observed…following day, when the pictures were completed by a child, children observed…

Watch this video for patience kids had, perseverance they showed, tried different things, looked for solution, listened to different ideas and at the end celebrated their success! Also, an opportunity to introduce the concept of “exchange” and “Replace”. Watch the 11 min video to learn about kids and also learn from them.

Gerry opted out of regular schooling – since he wanted to purse his passions – SNAKES and everything else that you will call Nature. Now a renowned Naturalist and Herpetologist – he is envied by many. Shows how open education can deliver. Gerry you inspire us ! To know more about Gerry – http://gerrymartin.in/ Watch…