Integrated Learning @Home Batch #1

Its time for us parents to go back to school - not to learn new things, but to unlearn - ​ a whole lot of what we have ​been ​unfortunately conditioned with.   Its time ​to question our beliefs, its time for some de-weeding   ​ - to create a better, more organic, more meaningful and vitalizing ecosystem for our children. We share 2​0 such​ "OH NOs" ​ below.   1.  We are supposed to teach the students according to the syllabus.“Oh,No!” The syllabus is only an excuse to make them think, to develop this core ability. 2.  Knowledge is powerful.  ​  “Oh,No!” Knowledge is a commodity. The real power is each child's ability to apply knowledge. 3.  Children need to know. “Oh,No!” Children need to experience and understand. From understanding will sprout knowledge of all kinds, of all requirements. 4.  That, who has scored high marks has understood. “Oh,No!”.  ​Mere marks do not guarantee understanding or learning. 5.  That who scored low ma...

A boy was sitting on the edge of a lake, looking yonder.  A passer-by asked, "whatcha doing?"  "Nothing" the boy replied. He was lectured to use his time "productively". The boy sighed and waited for the first passer-by to go away. After some time another passer-by asked, "whatcha doing?"  "Thinking" the boy replied.  Satisfied this passer-by moved on. After some time another .passer-by asked, "whatcha doing?"  "Observing" the boy replied.  Satisfied this passer-by moved on too.  Now wiser, the boy continued to give people answers that they liked. Finally, a child of same age came along and asked, "whatcha doing?"  "Nothing" the boy replied.  Nodding in agreement, the child joined the boy, sitting down to do nothing!   Here is our recommended TO DO list for children and for parents to allow them!    1. Fail    2. Make wrong choices    3. Lose interest    4. Not learn    5. Do Nothing 1 Fa...

  ​Many times people call me to see, “Come, look, its soooo beautiful” And an exclamation will go off inside me “Isn’t everything?” Somehow our notion of beauty is that something beautiful should come to us, that in our life beauty would at a unique moment and in a specific way suddenly appear - much to our delight. In many ways, we are always waiting for such beauty or we may go into the garden looking for it - say a beautiful flower. But that is one way of living. The other is to go about seeing beauty in whatever one meets. It is the same as learning.  One way is to think that learning is some big thing we acquire at a majestic moment through a particular method. The other is to realize that learning is there in almost everything we meet - if we care to look for it. An example: People often do science experiments thinking that learning about science will happen via these specific (and often brilliant) procedures. These same people, however, go about rolling a chapati comple...

There is something so salubrious, so profound, so relaxing, so egalitarian, so genuine and simple about sitting under a tree and studying that I wonder why all classes are not under the umbra of Life. Is it then - just plain sad - that we teach children about birds, rivers, machines, forest, people, all sitting inside a room. So this article is not about giving you a rhetorical lecture on taking children out. We all know it, yet we work with commonly known constraints. Since its not so practical to take children out into the nature, this article is about bringing the very essence of nature intelligence into the classroom. And use this intelligence to make learning in any subject / topic more “natural”.   The bird asked to nobody in particular, “So whats in the big box out there?” “Children”, the Tree replied. “Children! Why on the earth will they put children in a big box” the bird was rather surprised. “Its a classroom. They are in it learning. Its part of their schooling, educati...

In today’s world we normally get an overdose of environmental gyan. We have green-everything being offered everywhere. Most of us are actually wary of these exposures, the claims, even the education. So, i am not keen on giving any lessons, but thoughts that i would like to share with children, perspectives that I would like them to neither agree nor disagree, but to ponder upon: 1) Knowing Nature is not the same as understanding nature Nature cannot be understood from books or TV channels. These can only offer information. Getting knowledge about nature does not necessarily mean we understand it. In fact knowledge can by itself be, sometimes, a hindrance to understanding, specially if one starts thinking that one knows. If one has to understand nature, one has to interact with it, participate in many different ways, be with it. I will invite children to sleep under open sky, to wake up with buds and birds, to grow with tomatoes, to soak in sun and water alike, to live their life. 2) T...