Dear Parents,

Apologies for the late newsletter. We were busy celebrating the festivals…:) Onam greetings and happy rakshabandhan to all! Let me take this opportunity to tell a story today about Onam. It is a unique festival, as it is celebrated across all religions and divisions with equal fervour and enthusiasm. A hindu mythological story goes like this where a great Asura king was defeated by God. This asura king was called Mahabali and was a great king, he kept his junta happy and his kingdom was prosperous. Mahabali fulfilled all the wishes of his people and no one would return empty handed from his court. Slowly the people forgot to worship the gods and stopped invoking the almighty. All the gods were in distress and called Vishnu to do something about this. He himself descended, disguised himself as a teen boy who went to the King to ask for 3 footsteps of land. The young boy turned into a giant and took all the land in one step and all the skies in another and asked the king where should I keep my third step? The king willingly showed his head and was put to rest. There can be many interpretations of this in our modern day society which I leave it upto to you…Now lets see the highlights of this week:

Music Session

We had a very interesting session with Limangi. We learnt to sing a song from the movie kal ho na ho. Even though we knew the song and some were familiar it, singing how it actually need to be sung needs a different awareness. We also heard different songs and learnt to analyse the song in terms of how many singers were singing and how many instruments were being played in the background. Creation of music is a highly complex process and we realised how complex the process is. There is so much more to music there can ever be found I guess. Meanwhile we are thoroughly enjoying these sessions. This is also an open invitation for any parent to join these sessions, so fyi these are held every week fridays around 11.30 am. 

कर के सिखो

This time kids tried to hone their skills in software. We introduced the following web based applications TinkerCAD, Powerpoint, Canva and Scratch. TinkerCAD is a very user friendly CAD software with very basic things like making objects and extruding them to create 3D shapes, etc. With keeping in mind their upcoming monthly project, powerpoint presentations were introduced so that they could use these skills to show their projects. Canva is one of the most widely used poster making app. All of us would have seen it in our whatsapp forwards for event announcements, etc. Scratch has caught the imagination of young kids. It is an online animation/gaming application. The beauty of it is that it is so simple and intuitive and anyone could get a hang of it. We hope to continue this after a few weeks. 

Judiciary

We observed that a few older ones had stepped out of the gate and soon the younger ones followed in toto. Getting out of the gate is strictly not allowed. Never had these aspects come into the forefront, but having younger ones has made adhering to these rules a necessity. All present understood the concern and now no one will again step out of the gate and if there is a case for it then it will be brought to the attention of the facilitators immediately. 

All the ministers will personally take responsibility to inform everybody else about the rules and latest decisions taken in the judiciary. Simply writing in on the board was not helping convey the message. This way everyone will be duly informed.

Rakhi Making

One of the kids had made a crotchet rakhi which caught the attention of few others and soon some of them learnt to weave some amazing crotchet rakhis for their brothers. Such group activities are pretty interesting to sit around since there is always quite different conversations going on parallely. Topics like what is appropriate to wear, what to do when there is family pressure, what is good parenting, zero waste lifestyle, etc. 

Birthday Celebrations

Two of our learners celebrated their birthdays this week. One turned 7 and the other 39..:) We had samosas, dhokla and cakes. Pictures will be sent in the WA group.

Sessions

For the adolescents’ session for geography, they were taken to the nearby marble/stone warehouse. There are many marble and tile stores on Kurla LBS marg. The topic for discussion was rocks. What are their different kinds and how are they used? They were asked to talk to the shop managers themselves and figure out the names of all the stones and their prices. We went to 3 to 4 shops to see different kinds of them.

During finance session, kids had to do their presentations on their business ideas. Some of them put in a lot of hard work, they made posters, etc. Few of the ideas were, a play gym for kids, plant nursery, waste recycling plant, cricket bat manufacturing company and to open a restaurant. They had to start with a small idea and present the income, expenses and resources needed. In the 2nd phase then slowly then scale it upto five years. Some of them had grand ideas to make it 5 star and take it to international levels.

Gymnastics

You already have seen some of the stunts kids are learning during this session. Some of them have become a PRO at cartwheel. And there are a quite a few who have learnt to do back arch in standing position. Few of them get into a handstand in a jiffy. But the latest sensation is doing a back walker which is getting into a chakrasana and then do a complete 180 degrees. My words fail me trying to explain how they do these stunts. 

Thats all for now. Enjoy your day and stay safe!