Serendipity and Learning

She took the sketch pen and asked for a notebook.  Then opening the page, what do you want me to draw?,  she asked.  I smiled.  I asked her to draw an elephant, a cat, a fish, moon, star, sun, dot, monster and she drew all of them in no time, one after the other asking, what next?  And, she drew all of them nonchalantly, asking for more things to draw.  All of 2.5 years old, every drawing was same as the other.  The dot was indistinguishable from the fish or the monster or the elephant.  But she did not care.  She was doing something very serious - she was drawing for me - and there was no fear of failure.  Most of all I loved her self confidence in trying.  And I wonder where we lose it in the fear of failure.

Meanwhile we are getting bigger and smaller on Clash Royale. There are good days when we win a ton of trophies. There are bad days when we get thrashed. We spend time discussing various battle strategies (and this is where I love how games make children think). There is a cheapo strategy - that seemed to work well, until we lost a few times. And then tweaked it. Then there is a attack from both sides strategy. Then there is a 'Prince' strategy. Then there is a 'Defense' strategy - worked beautifully once and then never thereafter. Then there is an 'All out offense' strategy - ditto. Then just for kicks, we tried out an aerial route only strategy - this one was an out and out disaster. Now the best part of it is that - there is very little that is useless in the battle deck. And that makes us all think (adult brain, child brain alike) about how we are going to do it. There is discussions on options, choices, priorities, limited gold or gems (both alw...

The little one was talking with passion about the Lego bricks that he has. He has a ton of them - and enjoys playing with them. The things he makes cannot be imagined by anyone - like it is for any other child. Every child goes into his or her own world when they play with these blocks. No other toy ever has sustained his (or any other childs) enthusiasm for such a long time. Lego knows - after all it has been in business for nearly a hundred years. There are new toys, fads, gimmicks, extensions, but Lego rules the roost. Yes, Lego is a consummate marketeer - they create new bricks, new themes, new ideas and they are as consumerist as they come - after all, kids WANT Lego. And Lego is a premium brand. But think about it, what makes them tick? For one, it is a premium brand - their products do not fail. They deliver what they promise - often much more than that. So, customer delight is almost a given. Second, their customer service is exemplary and I have experienced it myself - it is ...

Why is only a water melon a water melon? What is an orange not a water orange? It also has the same amount of juice. Or sweet lime. Or Lemon. Or passion fruit. Or pineapple. Why is a coconut not a water coconut - it has real water inside. I don't know. I give up.

One of the latest apps to have caught the little ones fancy is ‘Tiny Troopers’ where a triad of soldiers have to keep plodding through combat missions.  As they complete each mission, they make money and collect medals which they can use only for the very next mission – the coins and the resources are consumed - and the missions are built in a way that you will generally end up spending what you earned.  And if the mission fails, they have to ‘buy’ the resources again. The only way to do that is (especially if your stingy dad refuses to buy medals and equipment and what not random virtual items) – is to play in the lower levels, make money and use it in the mission you want it for. Recently, I saw him plod diligently through yet another mission. I asked him what is he upto playing on it since in the last mission, he was beaten black and blue. He replied, “I am working in the lower level to make money and then I will buy a flame thrower and win the next mis...

Most of us who have smart phones would know of a game known as 'Subway Surfers'. And most of us would agree that it is a practically useless game. There is a random person running along the railway tracks collecting random stuff and paraphernalia. And to help the addiction thing continue, they helpfully change the 'city' and some associated graphics and 'stuff' and 'characters' every few weeks - just so. And that was my thought as well. Until I heard this conversation between the kids. "Don't waste money" said one to the other. My ears perked - did they figure out how to buy an app? Did they crack my password? And then I figured that they were talking about how to use the gold coins that they had collected in the game. "Dont buy the skateboard now. It is a waste of your money. Use a skateboard when you get the skateboard free. Use the coins for other things that will help you more." The conversation continued until one c...

Most of us would have faced this question at some point of time or other while we were growing up. What will you become when you grow up? And by and large, have inflicted this torture on many a child we would have met - including our own children. In his speech yesterday, Narendra Modi gave a different spin to it. I loved this riff. He said (not exactly verbatim), "You ask your child what you want to become? Doctor or Engineer?" (Implication is that we put this baggage on the childs heads right from childhood). "This is drilled into the child from 5th standard and somewhere along the way, the child does not clear 12th standard and ends up being a teacher" "The person is not satisfied because all along in his mind, the dream of becoming a doctor or an engineer, is now dissatisfied with being a teacher" "Instead of asking a child what will you become, ask the child what you will do?" ("Kya Karoge instead of Kya Banoge) Ultimately,...

Our activities together involves a lot of imagination - sometimes it is storytelling, sometimes it is sports, sometimes both of us will be poring over a screen learning about seaplanes or “the worlds largest car” or “satellites” or something else. But the biggest joy we derive comes from creation. We have made paper airplanes off the net, made random things that show up in childrens shows (MAD used to be a favourite and we made quite a few things out of that) and made other even more random things – like cutting out a cardboard phone or a gun or creating a "scene" using cardboard. And more often than not the idea comes to the little one when he looks at the raw material. So, he holds up a soap box and then he will say “let us make something with this” or at other times, it is a shoebox “make me a guitar out of this” and sometimes we succeed and at other times we do not.  So much so that he now has a box in which he fills all this raw material with which ...

and they gave me an office person! said the little one. He was playing Scribblenauts Remix on the iPad. If you have an iPad please download Scribblenauts Remix and read the rest of the post. If not read it anyway. The game has a simple premise. You are given a situation to solve – pretty simple ones – like giving someone a haircut or painting a car. And how do you solve it? By asking for tools that help you resolve the issue at hand. How do you ask for tools? You spell it out and the game provides it. That’s it. Simple as the premise is, the little one (and his dad) has gone crazy over playing it and in the process both his spellings and his imagination have gone up. Take a scenario – where the character of the game has to reach something in the sky. You could ask for a hot-air balloon, a winged horse, a magic carpet or an aeroplane! If he is hungry, you can ask for a idli, a burger or anything. We once asked for a nuclear bomb and as you might imagine, it killed everyone in ...

After we have acquired the iPad, it has proved to be a boon in the education space for the little ones. There are so many interesting apps on the iPad - like Science360, Ascent (space shuttle), Galaxy walk, Colour uncovered, Morris Lessmore and the flying books. There is of course a good and bad side to it. Good, obviously, because the best way for learning to happen is like osmosis - while you are doing something the learning is a byproduct. And if it happens while doing something you are keen to do, that you find interesting (which is stating the obvious), nothing like it. Thus it is that the iPad and the internet have opened the curiosities of the little one like no other. That being said, there is a downside. There is a significant chance that school will relegate itself to be "uninteresting" and a "chore". This is something we will have to guard or better still, work around, I guess. More later!

When I was in school - about 10 years old - I used to go to shloka classes to learn the Rudram and the Chamakam among other things. OK. That's a lie. My father used to send me to those classes and I used to go because I had no choice. Here is where I learnt, by experience, that you can take the horse to the water, but cannot make it drink. The prime reason I did not like those classes was because they clashed with those stupid DD soaps of those times. Come of think of it, those miserable soaps. Luckily my father won - and thankfully I realized it about 15 years later. As you might have guessed, I went to those classes, but did not learn. For 5 long years, I went and did not learn. These classes were taught in the traditional gurukul system - with the guru leading and the students repeating it twice. Pure auditory learning. No books given or encouraged - books were allowed at your own risk. Books make you focus more on the text and less on the diction and comprehension the gu...