Full Circle with Home Schooling

It seems like during the Covid-19 phase, Joanne has actually come full circle with Home schooling.

What I mean by that ?

1. She starts with home learning before starting a few months of nursery in NIBM rd, Pune
2. Then starts off with a private school for 4 years - pre-k3, pre-k4, kg, 1st grade @Queen of Apostles, San Jose, CA
Then she starts public school for 2 years - 2nd grade in 2 schools - @Easter Brook Elementary, San Jose, CA and @Will Rogers elementary, Edmond, OK
3. Then during 3rd grade (Will Rogers), she is forced to do home schooling with Mom due to the shutdown of schools.

Isn't that a full circle.

I'd love to share some pictures as she has progressed during each phase. 

Math Village

Changing lives one equation at a time in a village ... here

Kids doing chores | without resenting it

An interesting interview by NPR from a small town in South America that discusses how kids can become more part of the family by owning chores here.



Yesterday (Sunday) Joanne and I went shopping for groceries and she was excited by her ability to execute a plan to buy the required items on the shopping list. She was pretty determined from sticking to the list, picking up the items and finally scanning/bagging all the groceries.

Let your kid own the chore that they like to participate in. They may need help to overcome the bumps, which could be your temper itself. They need a framework/rule-set, love/patience & constant guidance (like a machine learning system) :).

Reference:
How to get your kids to do chores link.

College Degree

Possibility of a free education abroad... German, Finland, France, Sweden, Brazil ... take your pick. Traveling to another country is an amazing learning experience.

Now when you reduce the burden of student loans while getting a good education makes it a very interesting option for higher education. Its obvious that some of these options would require you to step out of your comfort zone ..

Ref: Get a Free College Degree by Studying Abroad
'via Blog this'

Joanne's First Day at Pre-school

Today was Joe's first day at pre-school !! A day to remember. It seems she was crying a lot initially but slowly picked up that she was not the only one who was all alone.

Jenny received a lot of kisses after reaching home ... Away and missing the excitement of experiencing Joe's first step of classroom learning.

Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the Cloud

Sugata Mitra discusses his concept of a school in the cloud at TED.
He has been awarded the 2013 TED Prize Winner of 1 million USD.

Here are Sugata's 5 favorite talks at TED.

School Re-formed

Looking at this blog titled - "School Re-formed" and particularly at the article that describes a unique learning program - "Shikhantar and Swaraj", it seems to ring a bell on alternative education very loudly for learners today.

If you want pure learning without worrying about - exams, peer pressure, learning disabilities, high expectations, this seems to be a real-life example of how its done.

Read through the entire article, to understand how some of life lessons are learnt through experiences as a khoji !

Introduction text from the article :

What does “school” look like when we throw out the grades, the classes, the teachers (the competition, the tests, the authority from above)? 

This one-of-a-kind organization in India offers a compelling picture for what learning could be.

Kudos to the founders & visionaries, for having started  Swaraj and Shikshantar. Do check out the blog which documents the learnings & doings of  Khojis/Students online.

If you are contemplating a Gap year and want to do something you are passionate about, there is nothing like trying something with such organizations !


Can we have more such organizations like these in 2013 please ?