Post a training session on 'How to connect with children and clean questions', I was deeply inspired to implement this with my children in class. So when T, a 6 year old was feeling low during one of the classes and isolated herself, it gave me an opportunity to experiment metaphors with her. Following is the documentation of our conversation.
​
Me: Hey T, what happened? are you okay?
T: I'm tired, I have body pain and it's been there since morning.
Me: Oh, is it? Where are you feeling tired in your body?
T(Points out her head and knee): in my head and here.
Me(trying to match her tone): Oh, how does it feel like?
T: It feels nothing.
Me: hmmm, how big is it?
T (showing the size with her hand): this much in my head, but it's gone. I have this much plus this much in my knee
Me: Oh okay, what color is it?
T: dark blue
Me: which is your favorite color?
T: Orange
Me: do you want to take orange and paint it orange?
T: No?
Me(feeling stuck at this point): why? Do you want to keep the pain?
T: Yes
Me: But, why?
T: because I like it.
Me: so, what do you want to do now?
T: I want to sleep

Post this, I let her sleep and she was fine when she woke up.  Later that day, she was playing with one of her friend and suddenly stopped and calls out to me.
T: Ma'am, do you know why I didn't want to paint it orange in the morning (pointing to her knee).
Me: why?
T(referring to her jeans): because, if I paint it, the color won't go.

Our cubs (4 year olds) were sitting on the mats near the doll house and were enjoying looking at other classes practice for Sports Day. The practice was paused for a bit to ensure a water spill was cleaned up. As I looked at the cubs from a distance, I saw them all watching keenly at the cleaning in complete silence. It looked as though something was running in their minds, and I was curious to know more; hence I took a place next to them on the mat.
 
Driti broke the silence looked at me and said, “It looks like we are sitting in an island, full of water”
Saanvi with a sad face said, “Yes we are stuck here forever”
I asked “What can we do now, how can we escape?”
“We can swim and escape”, said Driti casually.
Saanvi exclaimed, “I don’t know how to swim!”
Aliyah who was listening for a while agreed to Saanvi saying, “Me neither. Maybe we can build a
Ship and escape”
Saanvi agreed, “Oh ya! We can build one”
 
Just then Aliyah who was thirsty went to get water for herself from her bag.
Looking at Aliyah going Saanvi cried out, “Oh a big fish has eaten up Aliyah!”
To which I immediately asked to further tickle their imagination, “Should we help her? ”
Driti caught question and carried on, “But she knows how to escape, she can swim and come out of the fish easily, because the fish is big and Aliyah is small inside the fish!”
After a few seconds Aliyah returns not knowing what had happened.
 
Driti then said, “There! Aliyah has escaped”
She then held my hand and continued,  “I know to swim, so you can all hold me and keep swinging your hands pretending to swim, I will swim and take you out of the water”
All of them held hands and pretended to swim, Roshni, Zohar and Sara who were enjoying listening to the story joined us, all sitting in one row held each other’s hands and started swaying.
 
Just then Driti looked at me and said, “Ma’am swing the other hand too”
After a while of pretending, “Ah! Now we are out!” rejoiced Driti.
Everyone sighed with a relief of being escaped from the island.

It is such moments that show us children's vivid imagination, their inner voices in the face of challenges and how they motivate themselves to come out of even the most difficult of situations. The stories are not merely stories, they are maps for how they can swim through the ocean of this uncertain world and maps can be updated, refreshed and new ones can be drawn up. It's upto us to ensure they stay flexible that way.

Every moment of creative imagination is a chance to build a confident, inspired learner. Have you captured one with your child yet?

#sparklingmindzglobalschool
#inspiringconfidentlearners
#youngachieversacademy
​#everychildcanbecreative
​
Contributed by Grace Veronica, Facilitator, Sparkling Mindz Global Preschool

The facilitator at SM preschool noticed that the class of 12 four to five year olds were establishing comfort zones and forming smaller groups within the class. They played with the same group of children and struggled with making new friends. To address this issue, on one of the morning hours, the facilitator set up an invitation to play with lego blocks and animal toys.
 
Children were given the choice to create something together as one team and were given 15 minutes. Even though children began to create something together, towards the end of 15 minutes there were two smaller groups and few children playing individually on their own.
​

At the end of 15 minutes, children were asked to stop, leave whatever they were doing as it is and move to the side. Each of them were asked what their team was doing but they could only recollect and say what they were doing individually.

The facilitator reminded them of the initial goal of the activity and posed a question at the children, "What do you all think we can do now?"
"Maybe we can join everything together", T suggested and everybody agreed.

The children were given another 15 minutes to complete their task. At the end of that 15 minutes and a lot of mini conflicts, they had together built a gigantic animal carrier.

​

When asked what they liked and disliked about working together as a team, the few things that emerged were:

Sh: We made so many different things and we attached it, I didn’t like it when J destroyed it.
T: I learn’t to do a big building with so many blocks with the team, I didn’t like when Ar destroyed what I made.
Ad: I liked to put the animals together with the team, I didn’t like J destroying it.
Ar: My team helped me make the big building, I didn’t like that there are a lot of items that are not used. I felt very bad when my team was not listening, only V was listening.
An: I learn’t how to build animal home with the team. I didn’t like everybody screaming and I was not able to hear others. Everyone was very loud screaming “I want to put it”.
Av: I liked building the animal carrier truck. I didn’t like that everyone was shouting.
Ad: I like about my team when they were doing a great building work.

So it is with anytime children work together, there is bound to be conflict, lack of feeling listened to, screaming and a lot of me-me-me. Even if at the end of it what they produce looks amazing the feeling of how the experience was stays with them and they continue to avoid collaboration.

As children listened to how they all felt at the end of the activity it started to create bridges between one heart to another and slowly mend fences from one child to another. At the heart of good team work and collaboration lies trust and at the heart of that lies empathy and listening with an open, non-judgmental mind is a good start!

Collaboration and team work are two of the most essential life skills. By learning to make new friends and collaborating with them at an early age, children become more tolerant and appreciative of others' ideas and develop a sense of social adeptness which they are going to carry with them through adulthood.

#sparklingmindzglobalschool
#inspiringconfidentlearners
#youngachieversacademy
#everychildcan

​Contributed by Yashika CG, Asst. Learning Facilitator at Sparkling Mindz.

The 5 year olds classroom had a problem: Take homes were not being brought back regularly. As we gave them work that could help them connect with their learning and tried to make it as interesting as it could be. We figured the motivation levels with self-work at home seemed to be low and how might we increase it?

So, one day, the facilitator explored the option of giving points for take-homes that was done promptly, for better participation in class discussions, and for following the ground rules in the class. The idea was to motivate the children to complete their homework regularly, concentrate during class to ensure better learning and to maintain positive discipline.

After a while it was noticed that some children who usually followed all the ground rules started accumulating points very easily. Over a period of time, these children started getting obsessed over getting more and more points, though they did work towards it. Whereas, the others started giving up on their efforts to become better since the goal seemed very far away to achieve.

Obviously, the system was not working. A change was needed. While discussing with the team we figured that like we give them victory claps from their baseline and view their growth from their baseline​, what if there can be individual goals set for each child to work towards so that goals can seem more motivating.

To initiate this process, children were shown a video, ”We’re different, but we’re the same”.
This video talked about how our looks, appearances and nature may be different but still we all
belong to the same group. Based on the video, a discussion was held in class where we discussed
about how each of us have different strengths and challenges.  Children were
encouraged to think about how they can aim to become better by comparing themselves with
their our own previous performances rather than comparing themselves with others. This set the stage for children to work on setting goals for making themselves better.

​​Children started identifying areas where they need to improve and came up with their individual goals. 

Children who were just learning to read, or usually showed reluctance to participate in reading activities, came up with the goal , “I will learn to read”.
Avner identified that he gets easily distracted during discussions and came up with the goal, “I will not play in the class (during discussions)".
Ananya decided to challenge herself by coming up with goals to learn new words and share new
ideas.
Children who were not very regular in doing their take-homes decided to do their take-
homes regularly.
Naitik and Vineet identified specific topics or worksheets which they found to
be challenging and came up with goals like, “I will learn to do clock worksheet well", "I will
do syllabication worksheet well".

Daniel who was yet to learn to write in cursive, made his goal as, "I will learn to write in
cursive." 
Vineet who tends to cry and shout when he gets upset decided, “I will not cry and
shout”. 
Some children who seek their parents’ help for their take-homes, instead of attempting
to do on their own, came up with the goal to do their take-homes on their own.
Chirag identified that other children in the class get hurt because he tends to jump about in class and decided,” I will not hurt”. Children who usually prefer to sit, talk and play with only their friends, decided to make new friends...

​​The goals have been put up in the class and children have embarked on their journey in
MAKING THEMSELVES BETTER! Here all the children are equally challenged as they were
working on their individual shortcomings. And also, the goals seemed achievable to them. For example, the facilitator helps Avner by putting tally marks on the board every time he gets distracted, and every day he is now working towards gradually reducing the number of distractions. Rithanya, Nithin and Eden have started saving time for reading practice every day during the snack break. Mishka and Vineet have started working on doing their take-homes regularly. Mohammed is trying to make new friends by sitting with different children during activities and circle time.

​When given the opportunity, these 5-7 year olds proved that they were capable of self-
introspection, leading to self-awareness of their strengths and challenges, and setting goals for
self-improvement! How amazing?!

Contributed by Jennifer Christy, Learning Facilitator at Sparkling Mindz Global Preschool. 

Thursdays at SM are always exciting!
Every Thursday we pick a book and read it with our 4- 5 year olds. Another reason why children look forward to Thursdays is because they get to take home a new book from their library. And this Thursday we chose to read a book called “Not a Box”. To help children connect better with the book, the class was set with empty cardboard boxes of different sizes for them to imagine and play with. 
 
As children came in, some were confused, some amused and some curious. Sh came inquiring about the boxes in the class,
Sh: Ma’am, why are these boxes in our class? Did you put them here?
F: Yes, I put them here. You can do whatever you want with them.
 
After this conversation, it was amusing to see the things children could imagine with mere empty boxes!
 
In the image below, all that can be seen at the first glance is probably just a bunch of children standing inside an empty box. But if looked a little deeper, a whole new world of theirs is what we will see.

For E, they are on a bus traveling to school where V is the conductor of the bus. For Ash, it's an aeroplane ship, an aeroplane that turns into a ship when it falls into the water and for Av, it's a submarine.

J pulled out a long strip used for compartmentalizing from inside one of the boxes, wrapped it around himself and said “Ma’am, this is my seat belt”.
​

Ad and An playing ‘Peek a boo’.  And on and on they went with their wonder, excitement and endless bouts of imagination!
​

Often as adults, we are so clouded by our understanding of how things work, that we forget to understand what it means to play. It then gets easier to teach children what things do before letting them tinker, experience and learn by themselves first. If we step back and observe with an intention to know them rather than teach them, we will see that everything that comes across as ambiguous about our children will begin to inspire us. They are exploring the new world around them, constantly making connections, learning from everything they see or do and reproduce it in different ways.

​And we can contribute in their journey by learning to explore with them. 


Contributed by Yashika CG, Asst. Learning Facilitator at Sparkling Mindz.

An interesting conversation that took place with a 4 year old today during their usual library hour where I was issuing each of them books:

Me: K, come on up with your book. 
K (screaming with excitement): Ma'am I got 'Princesses are not just pretty' book this time!!
Me (surprised): WOW! How did you know the name of this book?
K (smirking, without a pause): That's because I am a clever clock!

K and I were having a moment of the witty comeback when H came up beside him and said, "Ma'am I only told him the name of this book".

To me, the witty comeback was a sign of K's growing confidence and his ability to make a good connection with what his friend.

​ What kind of wit or humour have you heard from your child recently? Do they make you laugh or cringe in pain knowing that they are shining a mirror onto your behaviour sometimes?

Contributed by Sruthy Krishna, Learning Facilitator at Sparkling Mindz Global Preschool.

It is the Poetic Soiree season and like you rightly can guess, Poetry is in the air. Unlike, other times, we have inspired poetry and children's own poetry being shared. As children express themselves, some of their innermost thoughts and struggles resonate. They are all learning to love themselves and not get influenced by other's opinion of themselves. 

Children very easily get influenced by what their friends think or say about them. They easily internalize negative messages about themselves  and make it their own. 

We have been talking to children about their internal voice and keeping it positive. Sharing a poem I wrote based on the inspiration.  This has been an ongoing process for us, so this poem was written in Aug 2017.

-When I love myself--

When I'm harsh on myself
I can't see anything good
When I love myself
I'm okay even if they're rude

When I judge myself
Every finger points at me
When I love myself
They are just being free

When I criticise myself
I lose the will to fight
When I love myself
I gather all my might

When I look for flaws in myself
I stare down a deep, dark hole
When I love myself
I find ways to make myself whole

When I don't trust myself
I get angry at all my mistakes
When I love myself
I'll learn and up my stakes

When I care too much
About what others will think
I lose sight of what I hold dear
And what I value in the fear

When I live in fear
Of being found
For the fraud I'm
I cry, I run, I hide

When I live in joy
Of discovering
Who I'm
I stay, I learn, I grow

--Sreeja Iyer
CEO, Sparkling Mindz 

#sparklingmindzglobalschool
#inspiringconfidentlearners
#youngachieversacademy
#poemforthesoul
​#growthmindset