No hands are small

I decide-I do-I Reflect
The learning cycle continues every week at the campus
It is not about learning music or reading a book or learning Taekwondo or cooking food or getting engaged with mathematical calculations during the week at the campus – it’s all about “how do I know myself?”

Who is this child? Who is this learner? Do we understand him or her? Do we know what lies inside

A fixed curriculum presumes that all children have similar interests and abilities.Another way is to let the child decide what the child wants to learn. Immediately the child’s interests kick in and motivation becomes intrinsic, excitement comes up as the key flavor, and perhaps more gets done and learned. Children love learning. They are naturally designed to learn. They may not be ready to learn what we want them to learn. But when we let them decide the content, they are more than ready to take challenges of all kinds, their efforts persist, their efforts expand and the joy of doing and learning is the key takeaway..

WE ASKED“What all preparation do I need to do what I am planning to do?” Each one on the group gave their suggestions and that’s all!”
Some suggetsions to each other
Canvas painting – Observing around for designs, first do it on paper as sample, visualise the colours, prepare resources like paints,
Stitching Game Board – type of cloth, make draft of the game on paper, prepare variations other than normal snakes and ladder game, prepare tools like thread, needle, and cloth etc, measure
Creating song – theme for the song, take suggestions of others, prepare rhythm, use different languages, prepare background music, try singing your own song
Playing Basketball – have a list of skills to work on, prepare a practice plan, prepare body with warm up, prepare to shoot a video to improve posture, plan for food time, have a target, get a coach,
Practicing Throw ball – prepare by finding a partner who is stronger than you, warm up body, prepare for daily goal, make arm and shoulders stronger by exercising, observe different throws by watching videos/ matches
Planning with people to conduct Workshop – check about the person, make a list of workshop you want to bring, make a script of what you need to talk with people, when you talk to people help them to recognise their work to convert into a workshop, Google for famous people and call them,
Playing Piano – check if the UPS is on, write down the notations of the song, understand the keyboard, try to sing along, prepare for a new song, listen to keyboard artist, explore features of the keyboard, prepare to know about notations, prepare mentally what is the purpose
Water colurs scenery in paper – observe nature and make your own scenery, prepare colour combination, paint something you know, prepare to make abstract to get the hang of the brush, scroll through 500 paintings in the Google, prepare for your strokes.
Plaa a Story Telling – plan for the story, plan the character, prepare for some music to add in the story, practice different kinds of voices, prepare your props,

and then WE ASKED “HOW ARE WE PREPARING our day for various SENSES – see, smell, hear, taste, touch?”
Set up your workplace- pretend and play Touch the almonds, eat them and describe their taste Hear the humming and guess the music
Draw the day and describe What do we want to SEE in our day today? How do we want to see our work space? What do we want in that space? Who all do we want to see around us? What kind of environment do we want to see? What do you want to HEAR? -talks, sound, words etc What do you want to TASTE today? – spicy crunchy, burnt ,saly, sour etc What do you want to TOUCH – floor, skin, resources, hands etc What do you want to SMELL – aroma, scent, sweat, soap, flower, mud

And then WE ASKED “How do we prepare for the time needed to care, collect, understand resources before we began the working with any resource?”
The need arises from some of the actions – drums used to play but not dusted and left uncovered, D’jambe used and left on top of each other – may be not planned sufficient time to keep back, to dust, to cover or not considering theses are part of preparing too.

And then WE ASKED “what would you like to document?”
How did it help you? What benefit you had How much time did you spent? How much did you improve? Where did you improve What was the outcome? What all did you improve? Which parts did you enjoy and not enjoyed? What did you learn? What did you did wrong? What was the process? What preparations did you did? What all tools, resource you used? What strengths did you use? What skills did you use? What new did you learn?

THEY SHARED
We do not know how to bake, started with let’s bake ninja cookie, chocolate cookie, yummy cookie. We just saw a video on how to bake Ragi cookies, one child wrote ingredients, then we collected all the resources and we needed teaspoons. Teaspoon means for baking only was the explanation given by the child. We measured, we roasted ragi and mixed dough we rolled, we made shapes, and did cookies in our own style. Finally, we got crispy little burnt and some hearts were broken and some round cookies were powdered yet it was yummy and crunchy. The child who made the cookie shared it was tasteless and just had and moved on …