26 Aug 2022

Dear Parents,

The biggest news of this week is Samyak and Vihaan’s (Dhoni) homecoming. We welcome them and their parents Vaidehi and Uday; Swati and Santosh. With them Cricket and Business (board game) is also back.

There were a few absentees this week, because of cold/cough. It's in the air, we suppose, because one of the facilitators too is down.

Now here are the highlights of this week…

Judiciary/Circle Time

1. There is discrimination against girls for playing digital monopoly. There were arguments and the accused were refuting the charges. To be impartial, from now on a resource allocation chart is put up and interested kids will block their time and partners.
2. Personal devices are not allowed in LC but sometimes if an exception is made then it should be used only for the purpose it is brought for. The moment a misuse is seen the device will be asked to put inside their locker.
3. We discussed the birthday celebration policy. Many kids are very gung ho about it, some want to keep it very simple. There is no trend or style that others have to follow. Everyone can celebrate the way they want but they have to be aware that eatables have to be brought in eco-friendly packages and have to be healthy. Not implying that in the past the eatables were unhealthy, but a question was raised whether creamy cakes are healthy? Hence the discussion.
4. There has been a lot of classification in the things we eat here. Questions asked frequently are, is this food “Jain or non Jain”? Even when an apple was offered, it needed to be verified. Some kids are also choosing to sit besides those who belong to the same choices and avoid sitting with those who don’t. Can belief systems turn into prejudices, we were asking ourselves. These are the last things we want our kids to fall into the trap of. So we discussed this in our circle time and all of us have agreed that we will be responsible for our food choices. Person who shares the tiffin and the person who wants to eat others’ tiffin will be aware of their choices. But words of classification should not be used.
5. At the end of this term we will have fair and games instead of a show of dance and drama. Details will be finalised in the future meetings.

Blossoms

If you were to put a RFID tag on our blossoms and monitor their motion throughout the LC space, then we can learn what brownian motion is. If you are up for a challenge any day, you can come and run behind them, your step counter will go off the charts.

Besides running here and there, they did english and hindi stories, counted 1-20, played red-letter, did puzzles and drawing.

Project Day

The interest in the project preparation was as usual. Though some of the presentations were nice and seemed complete. The topics included, My trip to Goa, Lakes, Microwave Oven, Journey of Music Players, Hindi Story recital, Light and Colours, Banyan tree, GIFs and how to create it?, Lego, Story of hungry Neelu, History of Starbucks, Paper Quilling, Curse of Kohinoor, Dance Performances of Hindi, Gujarati and Marathi songs.

We had Arhant and Tejas as guests this time. After our circle time on feedback, they initiated a discussion about responsibility and freedom. Some of our adolescents questioned whether it is necessary to be responsible and why? Where is freedom if we operate from the standpoint of responsibility? All excellent questions and both of them answered patiently. Out of this discussion arose the importance of habit formation and we have created a group of those present and those who want to change or develop new habits.

Project Discussion

Every Thursday we have a time slot for project discussion. This is the time where kids can think about new topics and ponder about various ideas. Last thursday, almost all pups narrowed down on their topics, all staying away from ppt presentations and thinking of using props and doing hands-on activities.

Gandhi Movie

We had only seen half of it two weeks ago. Not all came to watch but the big ones and they were glued to their seats. One of them asked after watching the hindu-muslim riots in Noakhali, is their a religion which is not like any religion that is present? Can we not follow that? Someone answered yes it's called इंसानियत.

We also had dance today, since they wanted to dance and voted for it.

Coding Module

One of the 8 yr old is taking a coding module on Khan academy. Only two have joined so far. This module will go on for 3 fridays.

Friday Food

Our old hit recipe, भेल, it's always a success. Kids were eating to their hearts' satisfaction. In case their lunch boxes have come back intact then you know why.

Reminder for coming week

31 Aug is a holiday on account of Ganapati and primarily because of traffic congestion on roads.

On Friday, gymnastics is going to begin at 08:30 am.

Next Project Day is on 29th September.

Next Let’s Samjhte He is on 18th September 3 - 5 pm.

That’s all for this week…until next time,