Category: Unschooling
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Asking Questions
Recently at the Aarohi Campus, there was a conversation around “learning by asking questions.” Ratnesh was encouraging learners at Aarohi’s Coversity to ask lot of questions to industry experts in their domain as a way of getting to know the industry. No doubt, asking questions is a great way to understand the world around us.…
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Learning Backwards
Watching my son and a several other kids at Aarohi Open Learning community, I have come to notice a new kind of learning – which I would like to call as “backward learning.” However, before I can actually get to describing it, I would like to first talk about something else first … Forward Learning…
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I can afford it, but he chooses to do jugaad!
Highlights: … until, I realise that this is not about swimming at all. It’s about leadership and boy am I impressed! Full Story: In 2019, we buy a year long membership at a newly opened clubhouse near our gated community, primarily to use the swimming pool in it. During the time we had the membership,…
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“You should know this stuff by now!”
I catch myself thinking and sometimes telling to my 10 year old: “Advay, you are supposed to know this stuff by now already!! ?” It comes up when he makes basic spelling mistakes, or when uses gone instead of went or vice-versa in a sentence, or when he takes too long to multiply two numbers,…
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Aarohi Open Learning
My son, and by extension my wife and I, have been exploring the open-learning path. When he was very young and going to a Montessori play school, Nandini would research the various forms of “schooling”. Home Schooling, Unschooling, Road Schooling and so many other forms turned up in her study and research. Whenever Nandini shared…
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Upgrading from “I love you” to “I respect you”
14th June 2011 will be an unforgettable day for me. The mid-wife brought our newly born son outside the labour room, wrapped him in a towel and handed him over to me. As I held him for the first time, I looked at his eyes. He was winking at first. But then he looked straight…
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Webinar on #Unschooling
Nandini, Advay and I were guests on a webinar hosted by Aarohi Life Education about #Unschooling and #OpenLearning. We were asked to share our journey of #Unschooling Advay on the Webinar and be available for open Q&A. Preparing for the Webinar, actually being on it and taking questions was a revealing experience for us. The…
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My son knows how to create his relationships
Yesterday evening, I was working on something. Advay, my 8 year old came by and without giving a damn about the fact that I was occupied with something, he started telling me something and demanded that I pay attention to him. I was super-pissed. In a angry tone I said – “Please give me some…
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Swayam – a chance to meet alt-schoolers
Omnio Parenting is a group of people (adults and children) dedicated to the exploration of new ways of schooling and learning. Many of the people from this group are also part of Temple Of Excellence, a learning centre in Bengaluru where they explore new ideas in the domain of learning and education. Learning here starts…
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From Nandini’s travel diary
My wife Nandini and Advay (our 8yo) had been to Mysore recently along with her Tripster Buddies. There were many moments in the whole trip, but one moment clearly stood out. The following is a note from her travel diary. Today, we went for the light and sound show at the palace. Just before we…
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Is “love” a scalar or vector?
When Chandrayaan-2 launched, my wife Nandini and son Advay (8yo) watched the launch live stream together. Emotions ran high as it took off. Nandini used that moment as an opportunity to explain about launch vehicles. To explain the difference between a rover, lander, and orbiter. Advay was clearly smitten by all that tech. On Sunday…
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Carpentry & Flute aid Advay in learning the Keyboard
Advay (my 8-year-old) has a friend in our gated community who is in his second year of engineering. When he was at home for his semester break, Advay would visit him often and watch him play the keyboard. In roughly a week’s time, Advay would come home and share with excitement about this new tune…
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Letting questions linger without answers
As a child, whenever I got myself to stick around for long in the vicinity of this phenomenon called “question”, it was always followed by something called “answer”. Q&A – Questions and Answers. They never existed in isolation. It was scary to just be with a question. If there was a question that I no…
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Nurturing the habit of reading
One key skill that every self-directed learner must nurture is the ability to read books of interest. I am not saying that reading is a skill that is more important than other skills like making friends, playing, etc. I am saying that reading is a critical skill that one must pick up as a self-directed…
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Multiplication tables
The word “multiplication tables” brings back memories of only one thing from my childhood – “mugging”. As a child I simply had to learn multiplication tables. I couldn’t ask for a reason why. My parents would explain to me the benefits of learning tables by-heart. They would even give me sufficient time to learn it.…