Friday, February 17, 2012

The wonder of curiosity- the real beauty of HSing

Today we experienced the real beauty of HSing..the fact that it can allow the brain to think and seek answers in the moment rather than having to wait till a certain " period" comes or till the syllabus for the particular class is over.
While playing a game of BrainQuest with the girls the much awaited LPG cylinder arrived at our house. Chellu watched what was being done and when the guy left she asked as to why he took away one cylinder. To which I replied that it will be refilled with LPG gas and then given to another house which requires it. She then asked what is LPG ? which then lead to a trail of knowledge seeking from the Children's Encyclopedia about fossil fuels,conservation of energy, diffn forms of energy, dinosaurs, archeologists, earth's crust & its movement,IVC, why are earthquakes & volcanoes formed? , how are mountains formed?, what is space?, what do astronauts do?, gravity & on on...we must have read and talked for almost 2 hours or so...it was simply awesome! The girls were fully absorbed in what they were hearing & seeing!
This I think is true learning..when a Q comes to one's mind from observation or simply living life & the answers are sought then & there. When I think about it we learned about history, geography,science..without segregating it into subjects !!!!
So many people ask me as to how the children will learn from being at home? for me the Q is the other way around? How will kids learn at school ( "real learning") in such an artificial environment when nothing REAL & pertinent to their lives is happening? But at home we "live"& learn so much from it. The simple yet gravely necessary LPG cylinder provoked the mind so much...And this happens very often in our HSing lives. People are very surprised at the GK of the girls especially Chellu. She knows many concepts like hibernation, camouflage, poaching, preservation, etc etc..I can't truly list it..Its as vast as the experiences she undergoes in her life. I remember a time when visiting a friend's village ..she looked at a particular type of grass & immediately identified it as Congress Grass!! much to the shock of all of us..Shankar later told me that he had shown her the same during our trip to Jim Corbettt National Park last year!!! The other day when I was wondering aloud as to why Flamoingoes are pink she immediately replied that its due to them eating pink prawns!! I laughed it off first to which she got her "proof"- A BCL story book on what animals feed their babies!! She had remembered it ....
When visiting Chennai Chellu asked as to how the designs on a kanjeevaram sari appear when she looked at weaving in Dakshinachitra, why Kamadhenu is a special cow ..Why even Kunju has started asking meaningful Qs.." Why is there night & day?" was her latest Q!! This happens all the time..there are Qs asked persistently & answers sought with the same fervor..Ofcourse Im deeply thankful to "google" for making my life easier in this sense!
So many of our mornings go in browsing endlessly through the Children's Encyclopedia when I need some rest from the morning rush! And I cherish this interaction when one Q or picture leads the mind to unravel so many other mysteries that this world has for us to solve.

So how will our children learn at home? Well I guess they do very well by living life & do so all the time...

No comments:

Post a Comment