Children Want to Learn
I spent the last few days editing a book which Paula has written for us (watch this space for the release date!). It’s about teaching maths. It’s a wonderful and practical manual, full of simple ways to teach very difficult concepts, but its real beauty is the attitude which pervades it: an attitude which was […]
Getting Serious About Play
Here’s a boy I admire. Every time I see him, he’s got a new game going. The last one involved a marble in a little hole he had made in the ground and a ball which he aimed carefully at it for reasons known best to himself. He has a brother and two sisters and […]
Day Care for Cute Kids
Fridays are workshop days at KV School. The staff enjoy the new ideas and discussions, but the kids could think of better ways to spend an afternoon. So we’ve started a creche for staff kids in which some of the kids are as helpful as staff themselves. Here’s Miss Diya entertaining the little ones, and […]
Lessons from Vina’s Garden
I went to visit my friend Vina’s garden because she is away in Dubai and everything is coming into bloom and I didn’t want her flowers to be lonely and unappreciated. She has an amazing array of things happening there – a camellia tree which is dazzling and heavy with beautiful, rose-like flowers, pansies […]
The Wheels on the Bus
Wheeee! We were all over the moon when we got our new bus, courtesy of the Sir J R D Tata Trust. It arrived on Children’s Day and we decorated it with balloons and streamers, packed all the kids in and took them for a picnic at the Forest Research Institute up the road. […]
Family Matters
How can you work well if you are worried about your children? We don’t think it’s possible. As an organisation, we have a family-friendly philosophy. We encourage young parents to bring their children to work and have them attend sessions at the project which is appropriate for their age and development. We have had many […]
Hard Work
I spent the morning at KV Junior today and got a little glimpse of the creative approaches the staff has developed for a group of very young children not quite sure they want to be in school yet. Most of them have come straight from the EIC where the day is much shorter and […]
Why?
A student, filled with emotion and crying, implored,”Why is there so much suffering?” Suzuki Roshi replied with a smile, “No reason.”
Numbers
Yesterday in our Core Group meeting we had a reckoning: we considered all the work we have done over the past year and measured it against the money we had spent. We didn’t come out looking good. We had worked like little beavers – in addition to all the services which we provide on a […]
Montessori!
The woman our Foundation is named for – Latika Roy – started the first Montessori school in India, right here in Dehradun. She was trained by Maria Montessori herself, whose then-revolutionary, now-mainstream approach to education was developed for children with mental handicaps! When parents of typical children saw how well it worked, they demanded […]