Category: Unschooling

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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.…

  • Carpentry season

    Advay, my 8 year old, has developed a liking for carpentry off late. His first tryst with carpentry was two years ago when he was frequently visiting Aarohi. Since then he would take up carpentry projects every once a while. One of my close friends, Murali Krishna, has recently renovated his house and dedicated half…

  • Pulling ideas and experiences together to make something new

    This is a story of how Advay (my 7 year old) pulled together random experiences from scrubbing coconut shells, to dismantling an old washing machine, to discovering a motor to making an electric coconut scrubber.

  • Advay learns to flute

    Our family has a lot of music enthusiasts. My sister-in-law (my older brother’s wife) is a trained vocal artist. Their oldest son (Avyay) has taken training in Mrudanga and Advay has sat around him during his practice sessions several times. My cousin brother, Sujith, plays the Guitar. Another one of my cousins, Suhas, plays drums.

  • Elephant as bell for the cycle

    Elephant as bell for the cycle

    Jagriti has been an interesting journey so far. Inspiring, eye-opening; but most of all confusing. On the ground, it is opening new kinds of interactions with my son. Couple of weeks ago, we had a session on creativity. Post that session, I started to pull my-creative side in my conversations with Advay. Here I share…

  • What is man made and what is naturally available?

    My wife (Nandini) and son (Advay) had a unique conversation today. Advay: Amma, is wood made of cloth? Nandini: No Advay: Is floor made of cloth? Nandini: No Advay: Are plants made of cloth? Nandini: No

  • Rock Climbing Session @ Aarohi

    My friend, Kowshik Narayanaswamy is a rock climber. A passionate one at that. He came to Aarohi Life Education and conducted a session on Rock Climbing for all of us (including the kids). We learned something about it and also did some rock climbing ourselves. The video below is a documentary on what we learned and the…