Learning Community Monthly update June 2025

I always feel reflecting and writing about my work adds new ways of looking at it. Here I am sharing the update for June 2025.

“Exploration is really the essence of the Human Spirit”.

Students engage in creative learning activities on a bright day in an open-air classroom, surrounded by educational materials and a scenic view in the background.

We began our journey from 2^nd June as a community. It’s been an exciting month as we were looking forward for our first building to get completed, we decided to begin our exploration in the farm with the available hut. Every day and week came with new surprises and new challenges, yet the journey was beautiful with all of us together.

While I was thinking about the space, time and work in the learning community, I wanted to keep the day rhythmic - self designed mornings and exploring afternoons. Every day begins with a circle/planning session and ends with a sports time.

We wanted to provide children and teens with continuous 3 hour in the morning where they can plan and execute their work schedule. In this 1 month, children designed their morning based on their needs and interest.

Planning and Reflection

For me as an educator, planning and reflection are the key milestones in a week. Each day we begin our day with a short circle time of activities, language practice, singing, movements and planning. This month the circle times focus to bring the focus to self and the inner voice. The circle time begins with a breathing exercise, followed by an English verse with movements and a Tamil poem of Bharathiar which says “we are all one with the nature”.

The second part of circle time we are focusing on Tamil vocabulary using a beautiful material from a street vendor. The circle contains letters in 3 levels and says it contains 500 words. We are on a journey to find the 500 words. Each day each one of us find a word within a minute and one person writes down the word for all of us. Each week one of us volunteer to be the writer.

The 3^rd part has announcements about presentations, story sessions or any sharing of knowledge by students where we need other members presence. Then finally we all do the day planning using the planning sheet.

Work

In the first week, there was an interesting from a student, “Is skipping/playing an instrument a work we can do in the morning?” When I said “Everything is work if you are present in the moment and completely involved in it”. This brought different kinds of work to our day like catching a butterfly, watching a spider and even arranging the slippers. Each child was interested in different aspects of everyday life. Each day brought new ideas and new kinds of work beyond the materials we had, sessions we planned and the concepts we learned.

Art and Music

Each month we are planning to explore an open-ended art and make it available to children in the space. This way I felt it would give them an opportunity to share our skills/knowledge so that all of us know how to carry it forward when we want to. We explored Quilling as a group on each Mondays. Though there was a resistance in the beginning, we learned different shapes and made a piece of work every week. Still students had the choice of not to participate and just observe the process.

This months’ inclusion was Kalimba. I introduce the instrument using small booklets which has an introduction about the instrument, how to play, notes and few songs for beginners.

Farm work

Every week we are doing 1 hour of maintenance work in the farm with all age groups. This month, students participated in watering the food forest, covering the hut with green cloth and laying a new pipeline for waterline.

Study Cycle

The first study cycle of the year turned out to be “Architecture” as the earthen building construction is going on in the farm. The mind map was more of a list of practical elements like natural lighting, doors, windows, plastering. The introduction was done as a discussion about “what is architecture?” especially about Laurie Baker, the man who brought a new face to architecture. We are exploring measurement and role of elements in buildings as the core concepts.

Reflections

Reflections brought a great closure to our week as we think and share our experiences at the end of the week. This month we used Rose, thorn, Leaf journalling process which was a simply way to reflect. Though I felt we have a long way to go, the sessions gave a great start to take the first step towards the journey.