As children we are natural Kinesthetic learners. As adults too, we may not realize it but many of us feel drained and are unable to think of ideas unless we move our bodies around. Our mind-body is a connected system and for many of us restricting our body movements can lead to an inefficient learning experience. So, then, why are classrooms, conference rooms, training rooms designed the way they are? Well...that's an interesting question best answered through an interesting design that we used for our classrooms. Keeping in mind that children needed multiple kinds of learning experiences and not merely "Auditory or Visual" lectures we chose minimal furniture and a design that let children move around, dance, huddle in groups and achieve maximum learning through movement. We chose to use stories, role plays, drama, experiential and hands-on activities to engage students through multiple modalities of learning outcomes. Most importantly, we chose learning outcomes that would engage their whole being in the learning experience - developing a positive attitude, perseverance, focus, deep engagement and multiple connects with prior knowledge, a thirst to learn more, perspective to look at problems as challenges and more...

A child who can connect with learning outcomes higher than mere knowledge, use their entire mind-body to experience learning and work with others confidently to achieve desired results is going to be successful in any economy, any crisis, any situation that you put her in. In fact, she might be the one that chooses the toughest situations to spend her energy on because she can, because it is worth her while and because nothing LESS will do!

Seriously, as parents it is time for us to collectively decide, NOTHING LESS will do for your child. It is important that they experience learning in enriched visual-kinesthetic spaces with facilitators who understand the importance of visual-kinesthetic learning. It's upto you, you can choose to give them an EDGE today.

I often crave for new experiences. I do take out time to explore and experience new things. Whether it is trying my hands at a new instrument (I have no prior knowledge of music), a new cuisine, meeting new people or a genre of book I have never experienced. There is a myriad of emotions that one feels over new experiences. One feels a tinge of fear, a tinge of anticipation, a lot of excitement and so many unnamed emotions that gives you a feeling in your tummy. When we are born, everything is new for us. The excitement to explore and tinker is visible in the sparkle of our eyes.

Over time we start losing our ability of being so open to the new experiences and soon we start shunning them. The fear of messing things up and making a fool of ourselves overrides the sheer pleasure of doing and feeling something new. Having said that, what is so great about the new experiences anyway?

New experiences positively correlate to both creativity and enhancing learning skills. Having a diversified array of experiencing things forms a big pool of knowledge and experiences which can then be connected to make progress in Creativity and Innovation.

At Sparkling Mindz, we see new experiences as a culture. We ensure children get to experience new things and so do we. New experiences are not a luxury, they are a necessity. It is all around us, the world is full of them, we just need to see it with the curious eyes of a toddler!

When was the last time you experienced something new? How can you bring novelty as a part of your daily life?

Quest for a personality development programs for my child

 A year ago, I was the distraught parent of a shy and timid child groping for answers to my questions. My five year old was not the exuberant, confident and outgoing child that I wanted her to be.  My quest for a sound personality development programme in the neighborhood was unfruitful. The prospect of sending my child to an activity center where children are herded in droves did not appeal to me.  About eight months ago I saw an ad for Sparkling Minds and it changed everything. Here was a fresh and innovative approach to a child’s development using an activity based approach centred around NLP and MI. It was very evident from their website and brochures that a lot of sound research had gone into the design of these programmes. Working in groups of ten meant individual attention to each child. Finally, the impressive credentials of the founders reassured me that my child would be in safe hands.

First exposure to 21st Century Skills - becoming greedier!

The first interaction with the coordinator opened a world of possibilities beyond personality development. They were offering to groom my child to become a 21st century citizen with attributes like interpersonal skills, independent thinking, sound decisions making, leadership etc. This was more comprehensive than any generic personality development program. The holistic feedback system would ensure that I would know the best way to work with my daughter. From being confused and worried, I became optimistic and maybe even a little greedy about this whole new world of possibilities.

New Learning Experiences & Lovin’ It!

It has been four months since I started this relationship with SM and I have loved every minute of it! My daughter loved going to Sparkling Mindz right from the word go. The facilitators, the activities and the carefully designed rooms made her very happy. In the first few days itself, I saw a never before eagerness in her to be a part of everything.  Even at home and at school, her social interactions and confidence improved.  She became enthusiastic to participate and perform without any inhibitions.

There is way more, if you look carefully…

While these changes were noticeable in the initial couple of months, imbibing attributes like self-confidence, not buckling to peer pressure, learning smartly, listening and observation, structured thinking etc. happened later.  About three or four months into the program, my daughter started displaying the above attributes in her own small ways. 

• She started becoming curious about learning the process behind any activity or product
  
• She subconsciously breaks down any given task into steps for better execution
  
• She figured out on her own that if 5+5=10, diving 10 by 2 would be 5 without any prior exposure to the principles of division
  
• She started using rhyming words to remember spellings better
  

This morning she stumped me again. We were watching a show called Mr.Maker on Discovery Kids, which was previously aired on CeeBeeBees. The final credits alluded to ceebeebees.com. Pat came the question as to why should ceebeebees be a part of the credits if the programme has already transitioned to Discovery Kids, why are they still referring to CeeBeeBees. That was a home run for listening and observation!

My child will stand out from the crowd – thanks to Sparkling Mindz!

My daughter has embarked on a journey of self-discovery and loves it. She is acquiring critical life skills which are essential to survive and succeed in today’s dynamic environment.  The children of today are all smart and intelligent. But the Sparkling Mindz programme will help to differentiate her from the rest.

The right program at the right age

I too have attended sessions on team play, structured thinking and interpersonal skills at work. However I have observed that these initiatives do not always generate the desired results because adult personalities are pretty much set and transformation is difficult and time consuming. By starting early, my daughter will have these traits and would not have to be tutored as an adult.  I am glad that she is developing an edge without even realizing it! 

Contributed by Roopa Balakrishna (Dhriti's mother), she is an equity analyst by profession and currently a full time doting mother,

You can imagine your child hunched up over his math sums. He seems to be stuck. I think you will agree with me that most often than not, he knows the operation but is unable to apply it in the word problem. Somehow, the connect is missing.

Recent research shows that your hunch as a parent is right. There are three reasons why a child may not be able to crack a math problem:

1. Does not know/makes a mistake in the arithmetic

2. Is unable to comprehend the word problem

3. Unable to interpret the word problem numerically

Majority of the cases it was #3 - inability to interpret the word problem numerically -that was identified as the problem. However we spend enormous amount of time & effort on getting them to be really fast and accurate at arithmetic calculations!

How will all the speed and accuracy in the world save your child if she can't interpret which operation to use or worse still understand that math is a language that enables her to interpret the world around her numerically and not the other way round!

For the past few years our team at Sparkling Mindz has been engaged in creating activities for children to enable them to think and communicate their thinking process. At the very outset we began an uphill battle with this simple thing called the "eraser". What we observed was that it was simple sure, but could severely limit the thinking process. How? You might ask and rightly so. We have all grown up using the eraser and loved its elegance, right?

As part of our activities there always comes a time that children record their ideas, thoughts, capture their imagination in pictures/words and time and again, we saw children looking up from their work because they had made a mistake and wanted an eraser urgently to erase it. Sometimes, they would go rushing about the room in the hope that they would find one that allowed them to erase their "so called mistakes". In fact the next class some of them even bought an eraser from home! Most of the times when we looked at the so called "mistake" they wanted to erase in their work, it was a very tiny little mistake – a wrong line here or a curve gone haywire there, a letter a bit shaky or a word out of place – nothing much compared to the quantum of thinking they just disrupted to go look for the eraser! (Sometimes, it was a clear indication of the fact that no real thinking was probably happening)

We did a nice little trick at our centers, we banished the eraser! We told the children the erasers had gone for a walk and would come back when they were ready to tidy up their work.

What we realized was that in our education system, it was easy for the teachers to focus on neatness, it was not a process it was an outcome. Easy to see, easy to grade, easy to appreciate. Hence, all attention was diverted to a neat outcome vs. a thoughtful one (which was of course process oriented). In fact, this amount of focus on a single dimension (neatness) cultivates an underlying assumption in a novice learner that ‘learning cannot be messy’

To me, it has greater implications in terms of stifling the very process of creative thinking itself – where mistakes are not only permissible, they are essential part of the thinking process. In fact there is no concept of something being ‘wrong’ or a ‘mistake’, else how will one generate lots of ideas? how will one think out of the box? if you are constantly self-censoring yourself and correcting what you ‘assume’ to be mistakes!

Additionally, it also shows a larger inability for the learner to let go of a small error and focus on the larger goal at hand of generating ideas, thinking and owning the learning process itself. After all in life, we cannot erase mistakes, we have to learn to live with them right?

Obsession with neatness is killing the learning process and the learner in our children. The eraser needs to be banished from classrooms until children have learnt to think for themselves – let them be messy!

As one of my professors in college used to say, "I know how much thinking you have done by how messy your book is!"

Teaching is a very personal job and is all about hope. My close interaction with teachers from a non-student point of view and having taught myself, over the past few years has brought me to this conclusion. Why, you may ask?

A teacher has to overcome their own personal prejudices to teach a student in the way he/she learns best. It is very easy to spot weaknesses but guiding a child along its areas of strength is one of the most critical and crucial part of teaching.

When a child shows negative behavior, being able to separate the child's behavior from the child and adopt a positive approach to prevent recurrence of the behavior is not easy.

So, lets celebrate all the teachers who opened their hearts and minds so that we could learn. Thank you!!!

It was a cold Sunday morning and I was finding it difficult to get up and prepare my mind to get ready to go for work. I had to go to another center and it would take quite some time for me reach there. I somehow got out of the refuge of my blanket and got ready to leave.

I go upstairs (I live as a paying guest) and find out that Aunty hasn't prepared breakfast till now. She seems to have just got up. I must have forgotten to tell her that I am leaving early. I say it is alright. I will manage

I put the ear plugs and switch on the radio and start walking. For people who don’t listen to Radio on Sunday morning. Here is a fun fact. They always play old Hindi songs, mostly the early 90’s period. And for me that was not the best period of Indian Cinema and they are really not my taste. I flip the channels then switch to my own playlist. I am feeling hungry and a few biscuits I had in the bag, didn't fill my tummy.

I went and had breakfast and enter the place. All the children were standing for some activity that they were doing. The moment I got inside the bunch of little kids looked and called out my name. They had charming smiles on their face and any other feeling of my lazy Sunday was lost. The thrill and excitement made me forget about everything else, the warm blanket, the empty stomach, the bad music, everything!

I realized yet again, why am I really here and why I love what I do. 

Contributed by Nikita Kayal, Designer Experiential Products with Sparkling Mindz. She is an NIFT alumnus and loves designing products for children.

With a lot of festivals coming up till year end, its holiday season!

While some take this situation with a smile on the face and peace in the mind, for many it seems to be a question of - What do we do now? So much free time!!!!

If one ponders over why such reactions to holidays, it raises more questions. Are we too busy being busy to be able to enjoy the free time we get? Do we get "bored" with the free time because we are habituated to our lives being run by a schedule?Are we unable to enjoy the holiday time unless there is a to-do list?


Lets leave the adults aside for a minute. Have any of us tried asking our children how do they feel about holidays? What is it that they want to do with the free time?
 
If their response is anywhere close to the points listed above, we know where its coming from and need to do some serious thinking.
 
If not, its a great opportunity to help them/guide them/lead them to manage their free time to make the most of life! 

• Try a new game/class together that you have never attempted before
• Try to reverse roles at home - you can make your day's calendar together and take their 2 cents in terms of managing time
  
• Have them read you a story book before you go to sleep

We have a lot more creative and whacky ideas to share in terms of engaging the children during holidays and quite a few engaging games to offer. Contact us at +91 8095267849 if you are interested to find out :)

By Anubha Jain - a Learning Facilitator with Sparkling Mindz