Exploring Connections

We are essentially a network of connections. And nature has used its brush strokes to create stunning patterns which are always there to remind us of these connections – connections waiting to be discovered by each of us.
– The Summer Blossoms

As a part of the workshop, the children explored these connections through thread art , and created this 7 – piece – Art Installation.

Each of these seven pieces represents one of the seven elements we are trying to connect – You / neighbor, I, Bees and Butterflies, other Animals, Trees, Flowers and Birds. We explore if and how these 7 elements are connected to/through these seven threads – Earth, Sun, Water, Air, Freedom, Respect, Love.

The final product is this set of beautiful paintings done using thread art . Each color
represents one of the connections, and each thread runs through all those elements it connects.

Good going children , enjoyed working with you and learnt a lot . Thank you !

Art and Life

RP had asked me to pen down my thoughts on ‘sensitivity’ and ‘insecurity’ , and since our discussions with M are still fresh in my mind, I thought I would do that.
There are some people I identify as sensitive, and some as insecure. The difference is quite obvious to me, but I realized that not too many people see it, so I will try to break down my observations and try and explain them one by one.

Sensitivity is the ability to ‘sense’ things. It is based on an unbiased and deep understanding of the things being sensed, and it requires a pure intelligence – pure here referring to untouched by any opinion. Hence you will find most young children to be sensitive. As the noise from the outside world increases, this inner pure intelligence has to become louder, else it can drown in outside opinions. Since the sensitivity in children is high, they also sense things that are not directly happening to them – they are sensitive to all that goes on in their surroundings. They are able to sense intentions and energies. Since in our existing societal structure, we believe that the adults know more than children, we do not hesitate in letting the children know that they know nothing. We say it day in and day out, and soon the child starts believing it. The consequence of this is heartbreaking – sensitivity, the precious and rare gift that the child possesses, the thing that guides his / her intelligence, is now made to look redundant in the child’s eyes. He / she loses trust in his own judgment / intelligence, his / her own thinking. There creeps in a sense of being wrong, and then the noise takes over – “The brain tells me I am wrong. And makes fun of me, tells me that others will make fun of me”, said a 6 – year old student. There develops within the child, a voice that is constantly working against him / her. This leads to a lot of confusion, and furthers the self-doubt. With time the voice grows meaner and louder, and you will start observing behavioral changes – the sensitive child, who would never make fun of anyone, starts developing a mean tongue. These will be moments of pure non-thought, when the child’s intuitive intelligence is unable to see through the fog of noise – noise from the society, the surroundings ,the harsh opinions, the dominating and judgmental voices, the mocking and malicious tones telling the child he / she is not tall enough / too tall, too fair / too dark, too chubby, too thin, too smart, not smart..mostly never ever right the way he / she is.

And then, the child never allows him / herself to just be – to see oneself truly. Only when you learn to see yourself truly, without any judgment of good / bad, just look, and observe, only then will you begin to understand yourself and begin to truly learn and grow. And only when you practice non-judgment with yourself, can you practice it with others.
Non judgment does not mean no understanding of the thing, in fact, it is only with a level of understanding that you can be non judgmental. Sometimes, unknowingly, parents pass on their insecurities, fears and judgments to the children. It takes just one instance / incident to leave a mark on the child – good and bad. That is why children are capable of so much joy, as well as sorrow. The sorrow bit will generally surface in a behavioral change, or might lay buried in childhood and surface at a later stage in life. Either way, there is a high chance of an imprint – of both a good and bad experience.

The children from highly abusive backgrounds seem to be struggling, really struggling to stay happy. “Today was a good day” said one child, after a long extended class. It seemed to be an exception; I did not probe and instead let him enjoy it. Another child, when I asked him “You are really sad inside, isn’t it?” looked at me with the saddest eyes of not a 9 – year old, but those of a man tired and deflated with life. “Yes, Ma’m”, he said.

Sensibility – is intuition, intelligence. It requires an alertness, a clear channel of communication with our purest self, and a spotless mind (thought process). It is based on immense clarity and wisdom in discerning between things that are happening inside and around us – for example one of my students is constantly worried that if he paints the way he wants (a pink deer, a purple dolphin, orange water, brown snow), then everyone will make fun of him. Here he is extending his understanding of society’s reactions, to himself. This is a 10-year old kid who said the same thing when I announced “Ok, class over, we are going to play in the rain”. A 9-year old with him was starting to get excited but this guy was nervous. I ran ahead, hoping they would start enjoying the rain. Then the kid heard some of my neighbors making fun of me and said “Aunty, they are laughing at you”; which was true, they were. I knew somewhere inside he was making a note of this for future reference – a note which would probably make him think someone is always making fun of him, and worse yet, a note that will never let him enjoy in the rain. So I asked him, “Who is enjoying the rain? Me or them?” “You, Aunty.” “Do you think I am doing something wrong to someone?” “No, Aunty.” “Am I trying to hurt anyone?” “No, Aunty.” “Should I stop enjoying myself in the rain?” He was quiet.
I continued running around, as the kids stood under the tree watching me. I started to feel a little conscious and demotivated, and told them to head back to the class. Two minutes into the class, a remarkable thing happened. “Aunty, now I feel like playing in the rain”. I heard laughter all the way till the end of the street.

These two kids still remember that day. “Aunty, that was such a great class”.

The child was not paranoid. There were people mocking me. He sensed first that one was probably not supposed to be playing in the rain because it was uncommon. But he did not sense his own desire to do the same. There is noise bombarded on us all the time: TV, ads, hoardings, radio, people, so much noise that we are hardly able to hear ourselves – we lose sensitivity to ourselves, and start to believe that rain is to be avoided – How can you enjoy yourself so easily? YOU, without the best car, the best clothes, most beautiful face, most gorgeous body, the biggest house, how can YOU be so happy? And the child slowly loses that hop in his walk, the song in his talk, the curiosity in his eyes, the volume in the laughter, the pain in the tears, the energy in his /her being. He / she slowly becomes insensitive to him / herself. How can we expect this child, now a so called ‘adult’, to be sensitive to others when we as a society have step-by-step made him numb to everything?

Art helps the kid stay connected to his / her raw self. By art, I do not mean just applying of colors or drawing of an object. By art I mean, applying oneself completely and drawing one’s freedom. You are the color, you are the brush, life is your painting. Once you understand how infinite you are, you will be unable to limit yourself, and then you have ART.

There are a few things I would like the children to learn when they come over to the art class. In that one hour, I want them to learn how to learn, how to think, and build confidence in their thinking, how to be responsible and free at the same time, how to be inclusive of every being, to learn about themselves – discover their infinite self; and most importantly – to look at the big picture and always, always remember that joy is simple – we just need to be joyful and that’s that.

I often wonder if these classes will stay with these children when I leave or when they start higher studies. I want these kids to never betray their joy and intelligence under societal pressure. I try to do this by giving them intense experiences of joy and freedom. I try to do it by baring myself to them – to show them the possibilities of life and the joy of it. I want to give them memories and experiences strong enough for a lifetime, memories that boost their confidence for the life ahead, not memories that get them stuck in the past – The Summer Blossoms should not stop at possibilities, the possibilities should become realities.

“In the daily lives of most men and women, fear plays a greater part than hope; they are more filled with the thought of the possessions that others may take from them, than of the joy that they might create in their own lives and in the lives with which they come in contact. This is not how life should be lived.” – Bertrand Russel.

The Summer Blossoms’ Painting Marathon

And the second painting marathon begins – experiments with Madhubani art by the children 🙂

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhubani_art)

Ink on paper, A4 size, Gel pen.

The artist and his art in the making 🙂

John Cena and his cool, dancing peacock

Simply Santosh and his cute Ganesh filled with wonder 🙂

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. —Picasso.

Experience of the flower

Apologies for the disappearing act, too much has been happening which has left little time for updating this page – some INCREDIBLE work by the children , will bring you to speed. This post has been long pending, lets start here.

Nature is magical . Magic is all around is, we just have to open our eyes.

Here is a flower I recently became aware off , while I was travelling in a bus near Domlur. Restless to see it again, I urged Rp to come along and see this magnificent creation in the quiet, early hours of the morning, as the sunlight slowly poured into the flower.

Nagalinga Pushpa , as it is called here, slowly unveiled its magic. Naga, refers to ‘a sacred snake’ , linga refers to ‘Shiva-Lingam’ , and pushpam means ‘flower’. Each of its elements – the petals, the fruit, the hood, the core, the fragrance, just keep filling wonder in me. You breathe-in the flower, and it flows in you like pure life.

The first time I took this flower to my class, excited to show it to all the children, I was pleasantly surprised to know that they were very familiar with the tree already. In fact , it is one of the kids who told me that there is a shiv ling at the center. That time I had only picked up the fallen seeds, buds, and petals. It was much later, when a lady gifted me these flowers, that I saw the Shivalingam for my self. The lady also told me yet another magical fact about the tree – the flowers blossom around Shivaratri.

This flower has been a spiritual experience, and continues to be so for me as well as for the kids.

I feel blessed to have experienced it.

For my Bangalore friends, lots of trees in the DRDO area near CV Raman nagar. And 2 trees in Domlur near the shantisagar bus stop. And some in Lal Bagh.

 

May the Sun shine bright . Forever.

‘The Ojibwe people have an ancient legend about the origin of the dreamcatcher. Storytellers speak of the Spider Woman, known as Asibikaashi; she took care of the children and the people on the land. Eventually, the Ojibwe Nation spread to the corners of North America and it became difficult for Asibikaashi to reach all the children. So the mothers and grandmothers would weave magical webs for the children, using willow hoops and sinew, or cordage made from plants. The dreamcatchers would filter out all bad dreams and only allow good thoughts to enter our mind. Once the sun rises, all bad dreams just disappear.’

Last week Mr. Sun was mercilessly beaten up by a stranger – a vegetable vendor , for resting his back on the kart for a few seconds…..

We came to know about it a few days later. We prayed silently for his scars to heal…

I wept inside. And then made him his own dream – catcher…

Mr. Sun, THE SUN NEVER STOPS SHINING . Remember that. ALWAYS.

And THANK YOU for shining bright for all of us !

– Love and best wishes always,
All of us at Summer blossoms

Drawing Kolams in our lives

As we explore connections, I suddenly became aware of a brilliant tool around us, something that is essentially about realizing the infinite beautiful patterns that can be created

through connections – The Kolam .

Here are some kolams by our Mr. Sun as he shines bright ! I really appreciate the effort his mother has put in , in helping and encouraging him. A big hug of appreciation to her !

I think Kolam is a very intelligent activity – it revolves around logic and creativity. It’s like a mathematical equation to me , personally, with infinite solutions.

I also find it to be a stunning representation of life – life draws the dots, you draw the patterns around it – the more well-thought of and creative the pattern, and the more aware we are while drawing them; the more beautiful our life is 🙂

It started with a conversation – a child painted a scene of what he sees around him. I urged him to do a simple activity – go around his neighborhood, just walk, and observe . I then remembered the Kolam , and I asked all the kids to go watch this lady do it – she does it beautifully. ‘In fact, why don’t you also make a Kolam ?’, I asked.The kids are generally excited about the activities in the class. But one child said something disturbing – ‘Aunty, No !

people will scold me . They will say what ! ? You are a girl or what ?’

Art is art. Seeing is seeing. Beauty is beauty. Nature is Nature. There are no gender biases here. Masculinity and Femininity have important roles in each of us. Let’s remember this in our hearts 🙂 And let us all draw beautiful Kolams in our lives.

From Wikipedia – ‘Kolam (Tamil-கோலம்) is a form of drawing that is drawn by using rice flour/chalk/chalk powder/white rock powder often using naturally/synthetically colored powders in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradhesh,Kerala and some parts of Goa, Maharashtra, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and a few other Asian countries. A Kolam is a geometrical line drawing composed of curved loops, drawn around a grid pattern of dots. In South India, it is widely practised by female Hindu family members in front of their houses. Kolams are regionally known by different names i India, Raangolee in Maharashtra, Aripan in Mithila , Hase and Raongoli in Kannada in Karnataka, Muggulu in Andhra Pradhesh,Golam in Kerala etc.’

‘A teacher has to create a life long autonomous learner.’ – Abdul Kalam

As I started describing NASA , in line with its initiative to help observe the Bees in the U.S. of A through its online initiative http://honeybeenet.gsfc.nasa.gov/ , I mentioned space-scientists, and the kids in a chorus shouted one name – ‘Abdul Kalam’.

This is not the first time the name has come up in my classes. Sir, if you are seeing this, I am sure you are smiling.

Today is a tribute to a timeless source of energy , learning, and love.

‘Look at the sky. We are not alone. The whole universe is friendly to us and conspires only to give the best to those who dream and work.’ 

What a beautiful connection each of us has with the universe .

And below I share some of his thoughts on teaching .

1) Creativity is the key to success in the future, and primary education is where teachers can bring creativity in children at that level.

2) Excellence is a continuous process and not an accident.

3) One of the very important characteristics of a student is to question. Let the students ask questions.

4) Educationists should build the capacities of the spirit of inquiry, creativity, entrepreneurial and moral leadership among students and become their role model.

5) If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother and the teacher.

6) If you want to shine like a sun, first burn like a sun.

7) You have to dream before your dreams can come true.

8) When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had. And it is only when we are faced with failure do we realize that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives.

9) Don’t take rest after your first victory because if you fail in the second, more lips are waiting to say that your first victory was just luck.

10) Be more dedicated to making solid achievements than in running after swift but synthetic happiness. Without your involvement you can’t succeed. With your involvement you can’t fail.

A guide for life. You continue to inspire these children and me , and you will stay with us forever.  I just want to say , THANK YOU.

Busy Bees :-)

The children learnt how to make their first bee-bath yesterday !
Did not need much – a coconut shell, sandpaper, some marbles , and some paint.

We also learnt about the waggle dance , what a wonder !

There’s a really disturbing observation made by the kids, of the bees in our neighbourhood –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih_W-TXSXKg

The last few classes, we have spent time watching documentaries on bees .
Interpreting the Language of Bees http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOC-N07sSQQ
Giant honey bees – Life in the Undergrowth – BBC Attenborough – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vll_2xH_SQY
The Honey hunters of India – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOC-N07sSQQ
The Death Of Bees Explained – Parasites, Poison and Humans https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqA42M4RtxE

The kids get restless very easily. Their attention span is low. But give them a good nature documentary, and their eyes are fixed with wonder. Give them paint and brushes, and they will sit almost in meditation.

Imagine how hard just one bee works in a single day.
Bees tend to at least 2,000 flowers daily, with tiny wings beating 10,000 times per minute, carrying pollen, and dramatically assisting our food supply.
Bees get thirsty, and they need safe water sources. The problem is water is not always readily available.
Bees need very shallow water to drink from. However, shallow water evaporates quickly. Birdbaths are not the best option as bees tend to drown if the water isn’t shallow enough. As for river and lakes, bees risk their lives
trying to get water in the presence of fishes, frogs, and other wildlife, not to mention the risk of being swept away in water currents.

To help hydrate our little pollinators, set up a bee bath by filling a pan with marbles and then water. The marbles give the bees a spot to land so that they don’t drown when they come to drink.

(Credits – http://thirdmonk.net/universe/animals/make-bee-bath-help-hydrate-pollinators.html )

The first two weeks of Summer Blossoms

(The photographs are best viewed in full screen mode. )

We are essentially a network of connections. And nature has used its brush strokes to create stunning patterns which are always there to remind us of these connections – connections waiting to be discovered by each of us.
We started with a question – can you read leaves ? The reply was a ‘No’ from the kids. There began our explorations , 5 hours every week.

‘Color is visual fragrance.’- Sadhguru

To observe anything deeply is meditation to me. And I find colors in nature to be beautiful creations to observe. One of the first activities was to observe our surroundings in colors – one color one day. We then discussed the same color , and where it is found in nature. We studied and experimented with colors, what happens when you mix 2 colors. We used our fingers, sometimes brushes, and sometimes threads. It is quite incredible how 5 colors create most of the colors around us. We  continue to do this activity once every week.

yellow brush, pen, a house, no parking sign, 3rd Cross Board, Yellow cutting board 🙂

experiments with colors

colors in nature

Patterns and shapes

One of their assignments was also to draw using only 3 shapes – triangle, circle , and a square. These kids came up with such brilliant things !

Come observe

I gifted each of the students a personal diary, for them to pen down their thoughts, anything interesting they might come across, experiences, poems, quick sketches etc.

🙂

This is what Messi learnt from his aunt the day he picked up a broken butterfly wing – how a mother butterfly attends to the broken wing of her young one – she sticks it back , or tears off her own and gives it away. The lesson was to leave the broken wing where it is, for the mother butterfly might be searching for it.

Once upon a time….
I find stories a great way to explore connections. We started our story telling sessions with a question to the children – what is your story? One of the children said, aunty , I don’t have one. And so it started …what is a story ?

This is a beautiful game I picked up from Prague, I absolutely love the design , and the kids LOVE playing this – the same kids who did not have a story to tell , excitedly jumping all over , impatient for their turn to tell a story.

The idea is to create a story using the images on the dice ( you can throw all six , or lesser , depending on how comfortable you are with creating a story)

Story- telling through painting – Each kid was given 8 words to paint a story with . ( In progress. )

We explored different ways of story – telling in books as well as movies  .

The kids particularly enjoyed the Fleischer animations.

In The song of the birds (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FDdIMti2U0), we explored how music conveys emotions. We had a very good discussion about whether the birds should be afraid of flying . This discussion was particularly important , because just the day before, I had handed Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull to one of the kids. After about half an hour, I asked if she was getting bored. She said yes, not to my surprise. Then I asked her to imagine herself as the seagull. Her reply was both disturbing , as well as bolstering – I realised how important it was for them to get rid of their fears – ” No aunty, I don’t want to be a bird. Someone will cut my wings and kill me.” I did not ask her why she was afraid, I already knew why. So instead I asked her ” Aren’t you forgetting something very important ? That if you are a bird, you can fly anywhere. you don’t need money, or a passport, or an airplane ticket. You said you wanted to see the world, you could do that so easily. Wouldn’t you like to dream about that ?” She nodded a little excitedly, a little apprehensively. 

In the Ants in the Plants ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3Qyn7apy0I ) , the kids had so much fun observing the tiny details – the corn gun, the way the ants communicated, the ant shops and bakery, the army costume, the snails , the SOS signal, the Emergency Aid,  the spices as a weapon …. The kids filled up their diaries that day , filled them with these tiny details that they found so very interesting. We  ended the session with a few questions – Do you think you can be happy if you have hurt an innocent bird? The ant-eater’s food is ants. What do you think about it ?Did you see similarities in how the ants and humans function? How were they similar ? Do you think it is possible that the ants have a world like this? Can you understand the language Ants speak? Could it be that they have a language for communication, just like we do ?

Reading patterns to understand connections

Coming back to the question, can you read leaves ?

We first tried to observe various leaves – observe them by looking, touching, drawing, taking impressions.

We discussed what these lines in the leaves were, and drew analogies from the veins in our body. We discussed how the heart pumps blood and transports it by understanding how the water reaches the taps in our house – through plumbing pipes , a pump , and a tank. We observed our own hands, and the patterns there.

In the next class, I asked the kids to identify some patterns –

The idea is to help the kids make their own connections with nature. The next time Messi plays football, somewhere he will be able to (hopefully) link it to other things around him. The next time T-Rex imagines a dinosaur, he might imagine the shape of the leaf its footprint resembled ( refer the last photograph)

We have now started studying bees and their connections with us .

How are bees connected with us ? “We eat their honey” said the kids. And ? how else?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vll_2xH_SQY – Giant honey bees – Life in the Undergrowth – BBC Attenborough , a beautiful documentary to get the kids interested. We discussed the pulley system that helped David get to the bee hive , what pheromones were. We discussed how the bees make the honey in their mouths. One of the kids asked me if I knew how a cow takes the grass from the ground. I said – with its tongue. He said ‘ Correct aunty.’ , and then told us how exactly it curls its tongue and grabs the grass.

This was followed by a video – The Death Of Bees Explained – Parasites, Poison and Humans , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqA42M4RtxE . In the part where the bees are shown falling upturned, one of the kids yelled ” Aunty stop ! I saw the exact same thing a few days back. I was going to play and there were a lot of bees falling exactly like this, I saw them lying dead on the floor. A man had sprayed insecticide on the bee hive. Then an old uncle told him – what was the point of poisoning and killing these bees ? You have killed them , and poisoned the very honey you were after.

I had thought that the kids might not have the patience or the interest to even sit through the video, but they truly surprised me with their involvement – constantly asking questions, rewinding the video to understand something, pausing for a discussion. It was also wonderful to see that the topic lingered in their minds for a while, when I saw a kid drew a bee-hive for an assignment on spring 🙂

The whole of next month, we will be exploring the world of our wonderful friends through various forms – making bee baths, puppet shows, paintings, writing poems and stories.

These last 2 weeks have been extremely rewarding. Sometimes these kids come over randomly just to talk, or read a book , and I will end up learning about something just like that – how the flower that I photographed has a Shivaling at the center, how a pigeon gives very few eggs at a time, how the sand used in construction is full of sea-shells which these kids collected. As I was compiling this post, I realized how much these kids have taught me already, how I have grown as a person, as a partner,as an aspiring artist, as an aspiring teacher. I also hope that these kids have something to take away , a different perspective or a new thought, a new connection.

( Not all the work from the last 2 weeks has been uploaded. Also, ‘Aunty’ here is not to address a family relation, but refers to a a middle-aged or older female. )

 

The unlimited seagull

The first thing that I wanted to do was to help children be themselves in the classes, and to help them explore THEIR worlds. I did not want the kids to come with all the definitions and identifications that the outer world imposes, I needed them to question and understand . I needed them to leave their sources of fear, their pain and sadness outside, address these things through joyful activities.

I experimented a little. I asked the kids to come up with what they want to be referred to as. They gave it some thought, and the day after, came up with these – Mr. Sun, Donald Duck ( the friends selected this one for her, she agreed) , Messi – the football player, Prabhas – King Bahubali , Shizuka Doraemon, T-Rex . This was a very small exercise I had tried with the kids at W.A.R.D.S – it had worked wonderfully then, but I wasn’t sure about how it would go with the these kids. It worked really well here as well. I saw the changes within a week – a personal connection and a freedom in the class, as well as more willingness to listen , try things , and open.

It is incredible how fast children jump at opportunities to be true and joyful.

Priyasha Sharma