17 July 2021

Dear Parents,

All’s not well all the time. That’s right, all were not well in LC this week. It seemed like a case of viral flu which infected almost half of us. We all got out of it alright. Still a few were missing from action. Plus rains would have added to the woe. Anyhow, here are some of the highlights for this week:

कर के सिखो

After a long wait the team from KKS came this wednesday. They gifted us keychains with our names etched on them. Kids were so happy, that they were jumping all over the place. This week’s task was to make name tags for our lockers. What we have observed is that not all are interested in carpentry, so we have tried to consolidate a few things we can collaborate with them. Ex. coding, learning of CAD softwares, electronics, experiments in chemistry and physics. We will now have planned activities in these areas with them. 

Sessions

This week onwards sessions were taken. We also discussed rules for engagement. Usually we observe kids roll on the floor and fiddle with stationeries, etc. This disrupts the harmony and spoils the learning. So we set out few rules. Either way kids are voluntarily signing up for these sessions so we requested them to maintain some decorum. 

The time tables were set out with 3 and 2 sessions on alternate days from monday through thursday. There are no “planned” sessions on fridays. The whole group is divided into three groups: adolescents (10+), pups (7+) and blossoms (4+). These sessions are not meant for blossoms. They have a different program, which we are currently working on and will share soon. 

This semester we are taking a new approach to addressing the needs of academics. It's basically two pronged. First is we have given everyone a set of workbooks, mainly for english, grammar, science and math. This is primarily for self study, which children can do it according to their pace. The second is through sessions which are not from the textbooks. These sessions were curated according to their interests.

Friday Food

On the menu was Chinese Bhel. But then during planning a few dropped out, the main cook didn’t turn up, few key ingredients were forgotten and zero wasters also tried to influence the food manager. There was a last moment shuffling of responsibilities and red basmati rice with spotted cabbage turned up on our plates….:) We thought the kids would have turned their faces away because of the level of spices. But they were eating with both hands and licking them too. Now I was imagining the animated reruns of step-motherly treatments our kids give to ghar ka subzi... now we know what to do, put in some schezwan sauce. 

Movie Club

The movie for this week was Crush, a short Oscar nominated film of 20 mins. Everyone liked the movie but to gather around for a short discussion about the movie became a challenge afterwards. Few kids didn’t join the discussion while a majority participated in them.

That's all for now,

Until next week...stay away from the flu!