Category: Blogs

In the morning on Friday Ratnesh with Irritation in his voice showed my son the food fallen on the floor. With anger and anxiety in my voice I asked Ratnesh to check his images, if his response would be same If he was meeting our son for the first time? I realized I was talking…

I feel static, when I am stuck with one approach, one thought, one style in my facilitation. Every interaction brings a different kind of challenge for me, demands variety in my facilitation and a new approach from me. One child at campus, in session was screaming for two days. We listened, acknowledged needs, but did…

What is literature? How do we decide what is literature? Are stories literature? Why jokes and cartoon books are not literature? We began introduction of literature with some of these questions. We explored that there is much more literature available than just Harry potter. Many of the kids are reading Harry potter at Aarohi, kids…

Two kids were observing “dogs behavior and body language”. They recorded She was active? She was playing more She liked it? So, how do we decide “like, active, more”? After this question, they recorded data , this tiem they recorded with- time, before the action, during the action, after the action, duration, response…………….and so on.…

This week, during session I was conscious to not to decide the end goal for any child as per my needs or expectations. I gave inputs to all, but did not decide end results. Gave picture to one child, when she was stuck with drawing, gave her idea to cut the picture in shapes and…

What is Acceptance??? This word means a lot to me. I started understanding this word three years back when I did TTT. One session on acceptance and I started observing each of my interactions with my daughter. The acceptance which I started exhibiting that time was so superficial……but it was a first step for me.…

I was in reflection with one child. He came to me to share his reflection and I did not accept it. It looked incomplete to me. After sending him back I was just reflecting that I have been using the same style with the child in reflection from last three reflections, something which I really…

New child joined last week. I was totally unsettled. Her continuous demand for mother was making me think. It was totally new experience for me. I was not unsettled because I wanted her to settle in my session but the unsettlement was due to my approaches. All of my approaches were mainly verbal. I was…

New child from nearby village has joined “Aarohi”. I was very cautious. I was not sure whether I will be able to treat him the same way like other children or not? Here the point in my mind was sympathy. I did not want to facilitate him keeping in my mind his background. He was…

I started my journey as facilitator in Aarohi two years back. When I joined, every single day I used to ask other faculty: Is everything ok? What else I need to do? How am I doing? Etc….I was not getting any answers to these questions. Yes I was getting SUPPORT. In my journey I am…

Some thoughts from the sessions as kids shared in reflection This week I learnt, ‘things break for good, so we can make again like my bed curtain. In my life I will come acroos gross things like cat eating dead rat or vomit with blood”. I know now, that writing is not just handwriting but…

The day is filled with variety at Aarohi I can hear some sound……..thunnn thunn. One child in the kitchen lab is pounding something to cook. I can hear two kids discussing vehemently on sizes of bamboo for the tree house, they have to estimate the number and sizes of bamboos required to make tree house.…

One child want to learn English, He thinks “we can teach him, he does not know” He waits for us to teach him, rest of the time he has accepted that he cannot do anything else as he does not know English. So my task is not to teach him English, but to teach him…

In security lab, One child is working on understanding wild life and other insect at the campus to be able to protect us and know what do in case of insect bites, snake bites etc. This week he was clicking photographs of the various insects at the campus to find more about them. He shared…

What is literature – poems and prose What is prose – which is not verse What is verse – A number of lines of poetry A nice puzzle to solve. Specially for people like me who are trying to work on their vocabulary, this is helping me to work on logic intelligence.

Every Monday, we all plan for the week, we all plan together. While planning I prompted kids to fly kite whole day, but they were not much interested and they kept only evening time for kite flying. Well, next day when all were sharing our planning, one person announced “I am flying kits whoel day…

On Monday we entered a crowded train, we normally get the space to sit, but this time did not even get space to stand. As we moved ahead, more and more people keep on adding and at Hosur it was jammed packed – next was our station. This was a tensed situation, easily justifiable to…

One day as I sat looking through magic hive fb page, I saw Pika Nani. The name itself caught my attention. On further going through it I realized she was an author. Her first book was published and she was interacting with different children. Zooooooom the mail went to her to invite her to Aarohi.…

As part of exploring writing as the weekly objective each one had to write what does writing mean to you. This is what the mixed age response was- One 5 year old had to say- Take a nice paper. Write on that lines -like any lines. If somebody tells me something I should write that.…

Hi, Meet Vaishali who came to our live station. She has done her TTT and she had come to meet our Amable team. She mentioned was learning Mandrian. As you know for us evey person/situation is a learning opprotunity and we immediately latched on to her and asked her she could come for a live…

We added one more chapter in making of Aarohi government. First we understood about Monarchy in open house – we watched a video of Mughal-e-Azam, read history books on kings and rulers, we also read Amar Chitra Katha as resource. While kids were sharing about their understanding of Monarchy – one child shared “Once you…

We recently visited Sardar Sarovar dam. During project we were discussing about how even one person can move ahead with the project. One child shared “it is not possible, for example how can the project of Sardar Sarovar can be done with one person..many many people have to work in a team”.

The session began with exploring “what is composition?”. Can a photograph be composed, a painting be composed, thought be composed or expression be composed? One child shared “Photographs are not com[posed, you click what you see”

During water lab we were tracing paths of water lines and water sources at the campus. While our exploration we identified a cellular mark on the ground, Paramesh with confidence announced this is elephant’s foot mark. This brought a sensation in our exploration. We began to exploring other three foot marks, we could not. Some…

When Raghunandan Uncle was sharing his passion for cycling, we were all transported into the adventurous world of cycling. Raghunandan Uncle told about his 1st long distance cycling experience to Nandi Hills in 1989 and then his subsequent expeditions to the Western Ghats and to Sikkim. He told us the nitty gritty of cycling- how…

Last week we explored our music genie objective of Rhythms & Instruments. Children’s experiences and expressions were reflecting their own journey into the world of Rhythms & Instruments. So they shared with each other… What is Rhythm? it is a pattern it is repetitive when heard it sounds like a song rhythm makes music music…

As I was waiting for the children to get ready to go to the ground on Wednesday morning, I saw one Aarohi child in a car which slowed down at the building gate…but did not stop and no body alighted. The car went further and turned. After 2-3 minutes, mother and the child were seen…

In OPEN HOUSE – we explored – Monarchy, Autocracy, Dictatorship and Democracy. We reflected and worked on “coming and going out” process at Aarohi. This all began with “can a child by birth inherit faculty role like in Monarchy ?”. COMING IN Criteria – All to understand Aarohi. FACULTY – If you are joining as…

How does one make a zero budget, eco friendly toilet. Simple: Dig a deep hole for the pot, hoist four sticks, wrap some old old curtains around it for toilet walls, collect some ash / saw dust for flushing (rather covering the poop) and you are ready to meditate below the clouds with soothing breeze…

I came back from my lunch and expected a usual noise around computer terminals. In free-time, Aarohi children spend their time at terminals playing various games. Their euphoria is something that is heard and felt by the whole building and neighbours too. Today there were soundsof excitement, discussions, demand and instructions. Aarohi team was busy…