11 Mar 2022,

Dear Parents,

Let’s welcome Priyal and Rhitvi to our family. Rhitvi is 4.5 years old, never been to a school before and for her age she is quite figured out. She likes chopping vegetables and giving them to everyone. She is still adjusting to everyone and is quite happy being around and watching everyone else.

Now, let’s see the highlights of this week…

Drawing Class

Sheikh Sir is back, so our art sessions have resumed. He taught kids to do water colour painting. Some of the kids were completely out of touch and needed to be brought back on track. The kids sat for more than an hour and did picture composition with him. He is as patient as ever to guide everyone at their levels.

Aaji’s Math class

A grandparent of one of our kids, who was a Math professor at a college in Matunga, is coming to teach our kids. She is not taking regular math from the textbooks, but her sessions are definitely exercises for the brain.

Projects

The next project day is on 31 March, last thursday of the month. This time we are thinking of group projects and there are many takers for it. They are rather interested in making groups than finding a common interesting topic.

Maharashtra Nature Park

Also known as Dharavi Nature Park is actually a man made jungle. It's made over a dump yard, explained our guide, Ujwal who is a chemistry graduate student. There were a ton of butterflies, some of the names that I managed to remember are wanderer, tiger striped, blue mormon, common yellow grass and red pierrot.

We also saw a huge Amla tree fully laden with its fruit. Kids picked fallen amla and ate them. There were so many interesting trees and different birds that you could spot. During the december season Ujwal mentioned we could see a lot of migratory birds near the edge abutting the mithi river. We stood there looking onto the mithi river which someone called as gutter, she explained how it would take 120 years to clean up this man made mess. As I watched her speak with passion, I wondered if our kids would grow up to share her sentiments.

Upkeep of LC

We also called a few contractors, one for fixing the roof and another for painting. We need to get the ball rolling since one can’t trust rains in the coming months. Painting will start once we shut. Roofing work might begin sooner. Fingers crossed!

Dance Day

Dance fever has not settled in yet, though some of the kids were hoping to watch a movie but everyone mutually settled to have a dance hour. This time they did their dance practice with gymnastics and fugdi. Kids were also singing songs that they are going to perform for LSH.

Talk to Mentors

This time the point of discussion was to understand how kids express themselves when people get angry at them. All of them have various ways to cope up. Here are a few responses I received:

I hide.

I run out of the house, so my mother can’t catch me.

I start crying.

I also get angry and start shouting.

I hit the person who gets angry at me.

I hit my younger sister.

These responses are worth pondering over. I don’t think they have an idea that there is also a path of communication. Anyways, there is a lot of work to be done in this area.

Guests

Avinash who is a father of a 13 yr old boy came to visit the centre and understand our philosophy. He might join us from Monday next week for a trial period.

Anjali and Priyanka, who are Poorva’s friends from Rajiv Gandhi Medical college, visited us today. They saw us in action, dancing and prancing.

Food for thought

A friend of mine sent me this link where Sadhguru talks about parenting. Hope you enjoy it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXqjmIIhIrY

That’s all for now…until next time.