P, a 4 year old, came to me to open her water bottle. It's usually a little tight for her to open by herself, so she asks for help. Yesterday, Ak, another 4 year old, helped her voluntarily. He considers himself strong and he was excited to help the moment he saw her struggling. 

Today when the same scenario happened, S got to P first. Ak also ran to her, causing a tiff. Now S and Ak were at it, wanting to open the bottle. Eventually S opened it and Ak was visibly upset. I called him to ask what had happened,

F (Facilitator): What happened?
Ak, with teary eyes: S opened the bottle. But ma'am, yesterday S opened Ad's bottle also. 
F: Okay, but yesterday you also opened P's bottle all by yourself too. 
Ak: But ma'am, he opened so many bottles. 
F:How do you feel when you saw him opening bottles?
Ak: Sad. 
F: Why? 
Ak: Because he opened Ad's bottle and so many bottles. 

I figured he was upset because he considers himself quite strong but he was failing to see that his strength could be used anywhere he wanted to and not just opening the bottle. After acknowledging what he felt was okay to be felt when he did not get a turn, we continued our conversation.

F: Hmm, Ak, you know you are super strong right?
Ak: Yes. 
F: And that helps you open bottles for others. Right? 
Ak: Yes ma'am. (Slightly smiling)
F: Are bottles the only things that you can do with your strength?
Ak seems to be thinking. 
F: What else can you do with your super strength?
Ak: Climb ladder, draw...

His options went on and on, and so did his mind. The more options he came up with, the more calm and content he seemed. 

F: Ah, see you can do so many things with your hands and strength. So next time you get upset about not being to open somebody's bottle, what can you do? 
Ak: Find something else. 
F: Awesome!

We finished out conversation with a hi five and off he went to sip water. 

When children feel stuck one way, building the skill of creative decision making could help them shift their emotional states into productive states that can help them bring in the flexibility to handle situations differently, just like how Ak started seeing how he could use his strength in multiple other areas too himself, and not just use it in opening bottles. Flexibility is a muscle that can be built overtime which can enable decision making in creative ways, also helping one to see multiple pathways when one feels stuck. 

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

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In tough times like these, how can one learn to remain inspired and committed to the greater vision, mission and purpose? As the saying goes, 'Tough times don't last, tough teams do...!' 

This is how we choose to stay together, our SM community. We hold the fort down, we got each other. And we invite you to explore your life and share with us how you stay inspired and joyful.

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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!"

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