The teacher was a young woman from a village near Thanjavur. She didn't go back to her lesson plan. She smiled and began to sing, very softly, "Sappaani kotti, sappaani kotti..." the way her own grandmother used to. The child clapped harder. Two more children crawled over to join in. For about four minutes nobody was "teaching", and everybody was learning.

A poem shaped like a growing child

Afterwards I asked the teacher whether she knew where that song came from. She said, "Amma used to sing it. That's all I know." So I told her about Pillai Tamil.

Pillai Tamil (பிள்ளைத்தமிழ்) is one of the old forms of Tamil poetry, part of the group of literary forms called the prabandhams. In it, the poet sings to a god, goddess, saint or great person as if they were a small child. Probably the best-loved example is Kumaraguruparar's Meenakshi Ammai Pillaitamil, which pictures the goddess of Madurai as a little girl.

What moves me as a teacher is how the poem is built. It is divided into ten paruvams, or stages, and each one follows something real that a baby or toddler does. The poets were not only praising God. They were watching children, very closely, and writing down what they saw.

The ten paruvams, seen with a teacher's eyes

Different poets and scholars explain the details a little differently. In broad terms, though, the stages go like this:

• Kaappu: a prayer asking for the child to be protected.
• Sengeerai: the baby lifts its head and sways, like a tender keerai plant moving in the wind.
• Thaal: the lullaby, sung while the child is rocked to sleep.
• Sappaani: clapping, the first time two hands work together on purpose.
• Muttham: asking the child for a kiss, the first giving of love.
• Varugai: calling the child to come. The first wobbly steps towards us.
• Ambuli: calling the moon to come and play with the child.

For a boy, the last three are Siruparai (beating a small drum), Sitril (knocking down the little sand houses the girls have built) and Siruther (pulling a small toy chariot). For a girl, they are Kazhangu or Ammanai (playing with pebbles or tossing beads), Neeraadal (bathing and playing in water) and Oosal (swinging).

Look at that list again. Head control, then hand coordination, then love and attachment, then walking, then imagination and wonder (who else would invite the moon to play?), then rhythm, building, pulling, throwing and swinging. Today we would call this a developmental sequence. The poets called it a song.

Long before anyone gave us a checklist, our poets sat on the thinnai and watched a baby clap. That watching is where all good teaching begins.

Why this matters in a kindergarten today

NEP 2020 and the NCF for the Foundational Stage (NCF-FS) 2022 both ask us to follow the child's development, to teach through play, songs and stories, and to keep children connected to their own languages and cultures. Teachers sometimes hear this as one more thing to do.

Pillai Tamil shows us that our tradition already did it, with great tenderness.

Three ideas stay with me.

1. Every small action is a milestone worth celebrating

The poets gave a whole section to clapping, and a whole section to the first wobbly walk. They didn't hurry the child towards writing the alphabet. In many of our KG rooms, a three-year-old who claps is just making noise and is told to sit quietly. Pillai Tamil would sing to that child instead.

2. Development is rhythmic, sung and done with the body

Every paruvam is lived through the body: rocking, clapping, kissing, walking, drumming, swinging. This is very close to what Waldorf teachers mean by rhythm, what Montessori meant by the hand guiding the mind, and what Reggio Emilia means by the hundred languages of children. We didn't need to borrow the idea. It was sitting in a Madurai poem the whole time.

3. The adult's job is to watch and respond

In each stage the adult is watching what the child is doing and answering it with a song. Nobody is giving instructions. This is the same habit I ask teachers to build when I talk about observing children for ten minutes before teaching.

Bringing the paruvams into your classroom

You don't need to be a Tamil scholar for this. You only need to notice and to sing. Here are some simple ways in.

For teachers in Pre-KG and LKG:

• Make a "paruvam corner" in your observation notebook. When a child claps, swings, builds, knocks something down or reaches for the moon, write it down under the stage it brings to mind.
• Bring back the songs. Nila nila odi vaa is the ambuli paruvam in miniature. Sing it on a full-moon evening, or before children go home on the day before Pournami.
• Put out a tray of wet sand or mud with small cups. That is sitril. Watch who builds, who knocks down, who rebuilds and who comes to you to complain. Each one is telling you something.
• Offer pull-along toys: a wooden cart, or a coconut shell on a string. This is a child's siruther, and a lesson in cause and effect.
• Give the children small pebbles or tamarind seeds to toss and catch, like ammanai. This builds the hand-eye coordination they will need later for writing. You will find more ideas by age on our traditional games page.

For parents at home:

• Sing to your child while they are still small enough to be rocked. Any language you love will do. A thaalaattu at bedtime is not old-fashioned. It helps calm the child's nervous system.
• When your toddler claps or walks towards you, stop what you're doing and respond. Put the phone face down. That moment is the paruvam.
• Take your child to see the moon. Point at it, name it and invite it to come down. Children love being part of the game.

For school leaders:

• Before the next annual day, ask whether your KG children really need to dance to a film song. A short Pillai Tamil-inspired programme of clapping songs, a lullaby, a moon song and a swing song would show parents real development, sung in their own language.
• Make time in teacher training for regional children's songs and poetry. Many of your teachers already carry these songs from home. They just need permission to use them.

A gentle caution

Please don't turn the ten paruvams into a new checklist with ticks and marks. Children don't all walk on the same day or clap in the same month, and the poets never expected them to. The paruvams are a way of seeing the child. They are not a scale for measuring the child.

Also remember that the poems were written for gods and great people. Our children are not little gods, but each of them deserves the same attention the poets gave. That is the whole lesson.

Begin with one song this week

The young teacher from Thanjavur now starts each morning with one song from her grandmother's store. She tells me the children ask for "the clapping one" by name. She hadn't seen herself as a carrier of Tamil literature until now. She is one.

If you would like your teachers to learn to watch children this closely, and to bring rhythm, song and our own heritage back into the KG day, our KG Teacher Training blends Waldorf, Montessori and Reggio Emilia with exactly this kind of Indian wisdom. Sarvam Ekam works with a group of schools and trains teachers on their own campuses. Write to me and tell me which songs your grandmother sang. I would love to hear them.

With warmth, Jayanthi

I was sitting on a low stool at the back, the way I like to. The teacher, whom I will call Kavitha, had done our training a year ago. She did not know I would spend most of that morning watching her watch her children. By the end, she was smiling in a way I have rarely seen a teacher smile at eleven in the morning.

Four children, one rainy morning

The plan was simple. Tamarind seeds in a steel plate, a story about a little frog looking for a dry home, and some crayon work. But the rain had other plans, and the children showed us exactly who they were.

The child at the window

Aditi was up before the story had even begun. "Miss, a frog! Miss, the water is making a river! Miss, can we make paper boats?" She started counting seeds, left them to look at the drain, came back, and started on a drawing. Three beginnings in five minutes. Bright, warm, and everywhere at once.

The child who took charge

Karthik had already decided the seeds must be shared out properly. He was going round the mat, giving each friend exactly ten and telling them where to sit. When someone took eleven, his face went red. He was not being naughty. He simply needed the world to be in order, and he wanted to be the one putting it in order.

The child who felt everything

Nila sat near the wall, holding the paper boat she had brought from home. One corner had got wet in the auto. She was quiet for a long time. Later, when she drew the frog, she gave it tiny toes, a raindrop on its head, and a sad little mouth. She remembered every word of the story. She also remembered that the frog had been lonely.

The child who was simply content

And then there was Imran. He opened his tiffin box early, slowly ate his idli, and watched everyone else with mild, friendly interest. He did not rush. When it was time to pack up, he was the last to finish, and also the only one who put every single seed back in the plate.

Kavitha turned to me and whispered, "Akka, I could watch them all day."

What Waldorf means by the four temperaments

What Kavitha had seen, without naming it, is an idea Waldorf teachers have used for a hundred years. It comes from a very old picture of human nature, going back to the Greeks, which Rudolf Steiner brought into his teaching.

The four temperaments are:

• Sanguine – light, curious, sociable, quick to start and quick to move on. Like air. That was Aditi.
• Choleric – strong-willed, energetic, a born leader, quick to anger and quick to act. Like fire. That was Karthik.
• Melancholic – sensitive, thoughtful, deep feeling, drawn to detail and to sorrow. Like earth. That was Nila.
• Phlegmatic – calm, steady, comfortable, loyal, slow to begin and slow to stop. Like water. That was Imran.

A lens, not a label

I must say this clearly, because I have seen good ideas turn into rubber stamps. The temperaments are not a diagnosis, and they are not a modern scientific test. They are a lens for looking. Most children are a mix of two or more. A temperament also shows up differently on a rainy day, a hungry day, or the day a new baby arrives at home.

So we never write "melancholic" on a child's report card. We never say to a parent, "Your son is choleric." We use the picture quietly, inside ourselves, to help us meet the child more kindly.

A child is not a problem to be fixed. A child is a weather to be understood, and every weather has its own beauty.

How teachers use it: seating, pacing and form drawing

Seating

In many Waldorf classrooms, teachers seat children of a similar temperament near each other. It sounds strange at first. But put two Karthiks together and they rub off each other's sharp corners. Two Adities chatter, and then get a little tired of each other. The quiet Nilas feel less alone. The Imrans are not left behind by the faster children.

Pacing

A good morning breathes in and out. A lively song, then a quiet story. Clapping rhymes, then sorting seeds in silence. The sanguine child needs the change. The phlegmatic child needs the steady rhythm. The choleric child needs something to do with their body. The melancholic child needs a moment to feel. One well-paced morning holds all four.

Form drawing

Form drawing is the practice of drawing flowing lines, curves and patterns, slowly and with care, much like a kolam. Teachers sometimes choose forms with the temperaments in mind:

1. Strong, clear forms with firm turns for the choleric child, who loves effort.
2. Forms that must be finished with care and attention for the sanguine child.
3. Open, flowing forms that move outward for the melancholic child.
4. Rhythmic, repeating forms with small surprises for the phlegmatic child.

Our own kolam tradition already knows this. Watch how different children join the same dots on a festival morning, and you will see four temperaments on one doorstep.

Why observing is itself the joy

Here is what moved me most. Kavitha did nothing dramatic that morning. She did not shout or bribe. She gave Karthik the job of seed-keeper. She let Aditi make one paper boat, and only one. She sat beside Nila and said, "The frog was lonely, no? But look, he found a friend." She gave Imran an extra minute.

Every one of those small choices came from watching first. I have written before about why I ask teachers to observe for ten minutes before they teach. The temperaments give that watching some shape.

Many teachers tell me they are tired. Often the tiredness comes from fighting the children's natures instead of reading them. When a teacher starts to see the four temperaments in children, the classroom stops feeling like noise. It starts to feel like music, with four instruments.

That is why Kavitha was smiling. She was not managing the class. She was enjoying them.

Try this in your classroom this week

You do not need a Waldorf school to begin. You need a notebook and a little patience.

• Watch one free-play time without stepping in. Note who starts, who leads, who notices, who waits.
• Write one line about each child, in plain words, not labels. "Loves to be first." "Remembers sad parts of stories."
• Change one seat and see what happens over a week.
• Plan one morning that breathes: lively, then quiet, then lively again.
• Play an old game like Pallankuzhi or Aadu Puli and watch how each child plays. Our traditional games by age page is a good place to start.

If you want to go deeper, our KG teacher training brings together Waldorf, Montessori and Reggio Emilia, with plenty of time for this kind of observing. Sarvam Ekam works with a group of schools and trains teachers on their own campuses.

Write to me through our contact page. Tell me about the four children in your class. I would love to hear about them.

With warmth, Jayanthi

A four-year-old was crouching there with a dented steel tumbler. He had mixed mud, water and a few crushed neem leaves. He stirred it with a twig, very seriously, and then held it up to me. "Rasam, Aunty. Hot. Blow first." I blew. He watched to see that I did it properly. Then he went back to make more, because his friend wanted some too.

What I saw in that one tumbler

That boy did not know he was learning. But in five minutes he had measured, mixed, waited, named, served and shared.

He knew rasam needs to be thin, so he added more water. He knew hot food must be blown on. He knew guests are served first. All of that came from his own home, his own amma's kitchen, and he was bringing it into school through his hands.

A child who cooks with mud is not making a mess. She is making sense of her world.

Why every kindergarten needs one

We spend a lot of money on plastic toys that do one thing. A mud kitchen does a hundred things, and it costs almost nothing.

Here is some of what happens there, every single day:

• Early maths – full, half, empty, more, less, heavy, light. Three spoons of sand, one cup of water.
• Language – children name what they cook, take orders, argue over recipes, and tell long stories about the wedding feast they are preparing.
• Science – mud that is too wet, sand that will not hold shape, leaves that float, seeds that sink.
• Friendship – one child cooks, one serves, one is the guest. They take turns without being told.
• Strong hands – pouring, scooping and squeezing build the small muscles a child needs before she holds a pencil.
• Calm – the feel of cool mud settles an anxious child faster than any lecture.

NEP 2020 and the NCF for the Foundational Stage both ask us to let children learn through play, through the senses and through their own culture. A mud kitchen does exactly that, without a single worksheet. I have written more on this in play-based learning in kindergarten.

How to build one this week

You do not need a contractor or a budget meeting. You need a corner and a little courage.

Choose the place

Pick a shaded spot near a tap or a water drum, ideally under a tree. A verandah edge or a strip of open ground works well. Make sure teachers can see it easily.

Collect the vessels

Ask parents. Every home has an old kadai, a dented tumbler, a cracked idli plate or a ladle nobody uses. Add:

1. Steel and aluminium vessels of different sizes
2. Coconut shells, old spoons, a sieve, a funnel
3. A low wooden plank or a few bricks as the "stove" and counter
4. Baskets of tamarind seeds, pebbles, dry leaves, flowers that have fallen
5. A bucket of water and a mug

Avoid glass and sharp edges. Keep it simple; children will invent the rest.

Set a few easy rules

• Mud stays in the kitchen.
• We wash hands after cooking.
• We do not throw.
• Pack up together when the bell rings.

What about the clothes?

This is the first worry every parent and principal raises. It is fair. Keep a set of old shirts or aprons at school. Plan mud kitchen time before lunch or at the end of the day. And gently tell parents why it matters.

When parents see their child come home talking about the sambar she made for her whole class, most of them stop worrying about the stain. Some even start sending vessels.

The teacher's quiet role

Do not cook for them. Do not correct the recipe. Sit nearby, accept the tea when it is offered, and ask, "What did you put in this?" Listen. You will learn more about each child in ten minutes there than in a week of circle time.

If your team would like help with observing children in open play like this, our KG teacher training spends real time on it.

Begin small, begin now

Start with one corner and five vessels this month. Watch what the children do with it. Then come back to it with them, add, change, and let it grow.

When the children are ready to move from pretend cooking to real food, try our kindergarten salads. And if you would like Sarvam Ekam to walk through your campus and help you plan outdoor spaces like this, please write to me. Sarvam Ekam works with a group of schools and trains teachers on their own campuses, and I would be glad to sit with you under your tree too.

With warmth, Jayanthi

Children call it Nondi, Paandi or Paandi-aattam. Most of the world knows it as hopscotch. In Karnataka it is Kunte Bille, in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana it is Tokkudu Billa, and in the north it is Stapu. One game, many names, and almost every Indian adult has played it.

Lately I have been asked a question about it, often with a forwarded message attached: Is it true that Nondi is mentioned in Sangam literature? This letter is my honest answer.

What the name tells us

Nondi (நொண்டி) comes from nondu, to limp or hop on one leg. The game is named after what the body does. The flat stone or tile shard is the sillu (சில்லு), and the drawn grid is the kattam (கட்டம்).

Paandi is harder. Some people link it to the old Tamil word paandil (பாண்டில்), which means something round and flat, like a disc. It is a lovely idea, because the sillu is exactly that. But I have not found a scholar or dictionary that confirms it, so please hold it as a guess, not a fact.

What Sangam poetry does say

Here is the honest part. I have not found a single Sangam poem that names Nondi or Paandi. Some websites say that ancient Tamil literature has several references to the game, but none of them give a poem number. Even Wikipedia's page on Paandi says its origin cannot be established, because it is a folk game.

That does not mean the poets ignored children at play. They wrote about it often, and beautifully.

Girls playing together

The anthologies keep using two words for a group of girls at play: aayam (ஆயம்) and orai (ஓரை). We meet them on the seashore, in the millet fields and on village streets. Play is shown as something children do together, outdoors, without adults running it.

Sand houses on the street

In Kalittokai 51, a young woman reminds her friend of a boy who used to run down their street and kick over the little sand houses (manal sitril) the girls had built. The poem is about love, but the picture inside it is of children playing on a street, building, and being interrupted. Scholars still argue about how to read this poem; you can see one comparison of its commentaries here (in Tamil).

A seed pressed into the sand

In Natrinai 172, a girl remembers playing with her friends on the white sand and pressing a punnai seed into it, then forgetting it. The seed grew into a tree, and her mother told her the tree was her sister. You can read this poem with a word-by-word translation on Vaidehi Herbert's Natrinai translations.

Other games we do find

The poems also mention ball play (pandu), games with kazhangu seeds, swings (oosal) and water play (punal aadal). Two thousand years ago, Tamil children were throwing, catching, counting, swinging and splashing, much as they do now.

So where does Nondi come from?

Nondi belongs to a different kind of history. It was not written down. It was taught by one child to another, on a street, in a courtyard, after school. The detailed rules and the many grid shapes mostly appear in folklore collections from the last two centuries, and in our own memories.

You may also have read that hopscotch was invented to train Roman soldiers. There is no good evidence for that story either. Games like this seem to grow wherever there is flat ground, a stone and a group of children.

I find this more moving than a single line in an old poem would be. The Sangam poets show us children who already played in groups, in the open, on sand and street. Nondi is part of that same living tradition. It survived because children kept choosing it.

Why it still belongs in school

One round of Nondi asks a lot of a child:

1. Balance and body sense. Standing and hopping on one leg, bending to pick up the stone without putting a foot down.
2. Planning. Skipping the square where your own stone lies, and working out your path before you hop.
3. Number. Counting squares, saying the sequence, knowing which number comes next.
4. Aim. Throwing the sillu so it lands inside a square and not on the line.
5. Fairness. Waiting your turn, and arguing honestly about whether a foot touched the line.

That is body, mind, number, self-control and language in a few minutes, for the cost of a piece of chalk. I wrote more about why games like this work in Traditional Games in Schools, and you can see where Nondi sits among other games, by age, on our traditional games page.

A small request

If you share Nondi with children or teachers, share it truthfully. We do not need to borrow authority from the Sangam poets for it. Nondi is old, it is ours, and it is still being played. That is enough.

And if you know a poem, a folk song or a grandmother's rhyme that mentions Nondi, please write to me. I would love to add it to this letter.

With warmth, Jayanthi

Most teachers smile politely and look at the clock. There is a syllabus to finish. There are worksheets to send home. Ten minutes feels like a lot to give away. So let me tell you why I keep asking, and why I think it may be the most useful ten minutes of the school day.

The morning the flashcards waited

Some time ago I sat in a KG classroom in a small town in Tamil Nadu. The teacher was young, sincere and very well prepared. She had a neat stack of flashcards for the number five, a chart and a song ready. The children were still coming in, steel tiffin boxes clinking, chappals being lined up at the verandah.

I asked her to wait. Ten minutes, I said. Just sit on the low bench and watch.

This is what she saw.

A boy had found a handful of tamarind seeds in his pocket. He was lining them up along the crack in the floor, one by one, counting under his breath in Tamil. When he reached five he stopped, looked at them, pushed one away and counted again.

Two girls had opened their tiffin lids and were "cooking" with them, serving each other imaginary idlis. One was firmly in charge. The other waited for her turn, and when it did not come, she quietly went and sat alone.

And by the window, a little girl was holding the side of her head. She was not being naughty or dreamy. She had an earache, and she had not told anyone.

When the ten minutes were over, the teacher turned to me and said, "The boy already knows five. And I would have scolded that girl for not listening."

The flashcards stayed on the table that day.

What ten minutes shows you

Children tell us everything, but rarely in words. They tell us with their hands, their bodies, the corner they choose, the friend they look for, the toy they keep going back to.

When we walk in and start teaching straight away, we teach the lesson we planned. When we observe first, we can teach the children who are actually in front of us.

In ten quiet minutes, you will begin to notice:

• Who comes in happy, and who comes in carrying something heavy from home
• What a child already knows, without being tested
• Which friendships are forming, and who is being left out
• Who needs to move, who needs to be quiet, who needs to be held
• What the children are curious about this week, which may not be in your plan at all

I have come to believe that a teacher who watches well will always teach better than a teacher who only plans well.

Why this is not wasted time

I understand the worry. The day is short, and the pressure from parents and management is real. But observation is not a pause in teaching. It is where good teaching begins.

All three traditions we draw on in our KG teacher training put watching the child at the centre. Montessori teachers are trained to step back and observe before they present a material. Reggio Emilia educators study what children do and say, and let that shape what happens next. Waldorf kindergartens hold a gentle daily rhythm in which the teacher watches each child with real warmth. They differ in many ways, but they agree on this.

Closer home, NEP 2020 and the NCF for the Foundational Stage (NCF-FS) 2022 both speak of understanding each child, of play and of assessment that is ongoing and observation-based rather than only tests and worksheets. Ten minutes of watching every morning is a simple, honest way to begin doing what our own national documents are asking of us.

How to begin: a simple way to observe

You do not need a special format or an app. You need a notebook, a pencil and a little patience.

Where to sit

Sit low, at the children's height, a little to one side. If you stand in front of the class like a teacher, the children will behave like students. If you sit quietly at the edge, they will simply be children.

What to write

Write only what you see and hear, not what you think it means. Not "Karthik is lazy," but "Karthik sat near the door, did not open his bag, watched the others." Not "Meena is clever," but "Meena sorted the blocks by colour, then by size, without being asked."

The meaning will come later. First, the seeing.

What to watch for

Pick just one or two things each day. On Monday, watch hands: who grips the crayon well, who struggles with buttons. On Tuesday, watch friendships. On Wednesday, watch language: which words, which language, how much. You will be surprised at how much you have been missing.

What not to do

• Do not interrupt to correct or praise
• Do not ask the children to "show" you anything
• Do not turn it into a test
• Do not worry if nothing seems to happen. Something always does.

What changes after a few weeks

Teachers who try this for a month tell me the same few things.

They shout less, because they have understood why a child is restless. They plan differently, because they now know the boy with the tamarind seeds is ready for more than five, and the girl by the window needs a word with her mother. Their parent meetings become richer, because they have real stories to share instead of only marks.

Most of all, they say they feel closer to the children. That is the heart of it. The future begins with truly connecting with the child, and you cannot connect with someone you have not taken the time to see.

If you would like to bring this into everyday play, our letter on play-based learning in kindergarten has ideas that fit very naturally with a morning of quiet watching.

For parents and school leaders

Parents, you can do this at home too. Before you ask "What did you learn today?", sit for a few minutes while your child plays with vessels in the kitchen, or with pebbles in the yard. You will learn more than any answer can tell you.

School leaders, please protect these ten minutes. Do not fill them with announcements or assembly practice. When Sarvam Ekam does a Kindergarten Audit, one of the things we look for is whether teachers have the time and space to really see the children. It is one of the clearest signs of a healthy classroom.

Begin tomorrow morning

Tomorrow, when the children come in, keep your lesson on the table for ten minutes. Sit low. Keep your notebook open. Watch one child, then another. Write down what you see.

Do it for two weeks, and then tell me what you noticed. I would truly love to hear.

If your school would like help building observation into teacher training and daily routines, Sarvam Ekam works with a group of schools and trains teachers on their own campuses. You can write to us here.

With warmth, Jayanthi

This letter is about what those hands carry. I want to talk about how knowledge travels from one generation to the next through ordinary, everyday play. And I want to talk about why these games keep working when the child is no longer a child: at 21, at 45, at 80.

A grandmother, a chalk board and fifteen goats

It was a grandparents' morning at one of the schools we work with. Sarvam Ekam works with a group of schools and trains teachers on their own campuses, so I am often there for days like this.

One paati had come in a cotton saree, carrying a small cloth bundle. She sat down on the verandah floor, untied it, and took out tamarind seeds and three smooth pebbles. With a piece of chalk she drew the Aadu Puli board, the triangle with its lines, quickly and without measuring. She had clearly drawn it hundreds of times.

Four children from the senior KG class squatted around her. She did not explain the rules first. She just said, "I am the tiger. You are the goats. Don't let me eat you."

Within a few minutes, a boy called Karthik stopped moving. He held a seed above the board and did not put it down. "If I go here, she will jump," he said, mostly to himself. Then he moved a different goat to block the gap instead.

Paati smiled and said nothing. She did not praise him. She simply made her next move, a harder one.

The young teacher standing next to me whispered, "I played this with my thatha in the summer holidays. I had forgotten." By the end of the morning she was sitting on the floor too, playing tiger against two of her own students, and losing.

How knowledge travels without a textbook

Nobody wrote a lesson plan for that morning. Still, a great deal was taught.

When a grandmother plays with a grandchild, she passes on much more than the rules:

• How to wait. Your turn comes, and then it passes.
• How to look ahead. You learn to say "if I do this, then she will do that."
• How to count without being asked to count. Seeds in pits, goats left on the board, steps to the next ladder.
• How to lose and sit down again. No sulking, because the next round is starting.
• How to talk while thinking. Most of these games are played with someone close by, so there is always talk and teasing and a bit of a story.

This is how it worked in our homes for a very long time. Afternoons after lunch, festival holidays, rainy days when nobody could go out. An athai taught Pallankuzhi. An older cousin taught goli and pambaram on the street. Nobody called it education, but it was.

NEP 2020 and the NCF for the Foundational Stage both talk about play and about learning that is rooted in the child's own culture and surroundings. Our traditional games are exactly that, and they were already sitting in the cloth bundle.

What thinking actually happens inside a game

"Critical thinking" can sound like a big word for a five-year-old. But look closely at what a child does during a game.

Reading the board

Before moving, the child has to notice where everything is. Which pit has the most seeds? Which goat is unguarded? Every turn starts with this kind of looking.

Holding a rule in the mind

In Aadu Puli the tiger can jump but the goats cannot. In Paramapadham the snake always takes you down, even when it isn't fair. The child keeps the rule in mind and makes their moves inside it. That is reasoning.

Predicting

"If I sow from this pit, my last seed lands there." This is the start of planning. Karthik with his seed in the air was doing exactly this.

Changing the plan

The other player does something unexpected. The child has to drop the plan and make a new one. That kind of flexible thinking is hard to teach on a worksheet.

Questioning the rule itself

Older children start asking, "What if the tiger can only jump twice?" When a child invents a fairer rule, they are thinking about the system as well as the move.

A game is a small world with clear rules. Inside it, a child is free to think as hard as she likes, and nobody tells her she is wrong. The board does that.

The same game, from three to eighty

This is the part I find most beautiful. These games grow with the player. Nothing has to be redesigned. The board stays the same while the thinking gets deeper.

Take Pallankuzhi or Aadu Puli:

1. Ages 3 to 5. The child handles the seeds, drops one into each pit, counts aloud and enjoys the sound. Taking turns is the whole lesson.
2. Ages 6 to 9. Rules are followed properly. The child starts to notice patterns, like "this pit always gives me a lot."
3. Ages 10 to 14. Strategy starts. The child plans two or three moves ahead and begins to read the opponent.
4. Ages 15 to 21. Players argue about the best opening, try out variations and teach younger ones. Teaching a game is a test of whether you really understand it.
5. Beyond 21. Adults play for the pleasure of a good opponent. Elders play to keep the mind sharp and for company. I have watched grandfathers bent over a Thaayam board during the Pongal holidays, as fierce as any ten-year-old.

We have put together a list of traditional games by age, from 0 to 21 for teachers and parents who want a place to start. Please treat 21 as a door that stays open, though.

Why adults should play too

When I speak to teachers, I often hear, "These are for the children." I gently disagree.

When a teacher plays, three things happen. The children see an adult who is willing to think, lose and try again. The teacher remembers her own childhood, and that memory changes how she talks to children. And the teacher gets to watch thinking happen in real time, which no test paper will ever show her.

It is the same for parents. A father who sits down for one round of Aadu Puli after dinner, with the phone kept away, is passing something on. It isn't only the game. He is showing the child that thinking together is a good way to spend an evening.

You can try Aadu Puli online to remember the rules. Then I hope you will draw it with chalk on the floor, because that is where it belongs.

What you can do this week

You don't need a budget, a new room or a training programme to begin.

• Invite one elder. Ask a grandparent, a school ayah or the watchman to teach one game they played as a child. Let them teach it their own way.
• Keep a game corner. Put a cloth bag of tamarind seeds, a Pallankuzhi board, chalk and a few pebbles in one place where children can reach them.
• Watch before you teach. Spend ten minutes observing children play and write down one moment where you see them thinking.
• Play at home. Parents, choose one evening a week for a board game on the floor with the whole family. Mix the ages.
• Let older students teach. Class 8 can teach UKG. Both groups will learn something.
• Ask, "What if?" Once children know a game well, invite them to change one rule and see what happens.

If you want a fuller picture of how to bring these games into a school timetable, my earlier letter on traditional games in schools goes into that.

Pass it on

That paati went home with her cloth bundle, but the game stayed behind. The young teacher now plays Aadu Puli with her class every Friday. Last month Karthik taught it to his little sister.

That is how it has always worked, one person sitting down beside another on a floor.

If you would like help building traditional play into your school, for children and teachers alike, please write to me. And if you have a game your grandmother taught you, I would love to hear about it.

With warmth, Jayanthi

India's PM POSHAN scheme wants to change that. Its guidelines give a whole chapter to the School Nutrition Garden, a small kitchen garden that the children grow themselves and that feeds into their own midday meal. I have spent the last week reading that chapter closely, and in this letter I want to tell you what it asks, why I think it is one of the most hopeful things in Indian school policy, and where most schools will need help to make it work.

What the PM POSHAN guidelines ask of schools

PM POSHAN (Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman) feeds about 12 crore children in Balvatika and Classes 1 to 8 in government and government-aided schools. When the Ministry of Education comprehensively revised the scheme guidelines in December 2022, School Nutrition Gardens became one of its named focus areas. Chapter 7 is worth reading in full. These are the points that matter most for a school leader:

• Every school, rural and urban. The Ministry has asked all schools to develop and maintain a School Nutrition Garden, with teachers, students, parents and even local residents involved.
• No land is not an excuse. Three or four small beds (kyaries) make a model garden. Pots, grow bags, old buckets, crates and terraces all count, and climbers like snake gourd can grow up a wall.
• Organic, with no chemicals. Composting and vermicomposting from kitchen peels are written in, and so is watering with the water used to wash rice and dal.
• Children do the work. Each class gives one to two hours a week. Teams care for their own beds. Children inspect their crops every morning, younger ones report aloud, and older ones keep measurements in a Garden File. There are even job titles: Tool Manager, Pump Engineer, Compost King.
• It is meant to be a classroom. The guidelines call the garden "one of the finest examples of experiential learning" and name the lessons in it: care for living things, teamwork, healthy food, and numeracy, including measurement, areas and volumes, data gathering and presentation.
• There is money and help. Up to an average of ₹5,000 per garden can come from the scheme's flexi fund for seeds, tools and compost. Krishi Vigyan Kendras, the agriculture and horticulture departments and the forest department can give seeds, saplings, manure and training. Fencing and land levelling can go under MGNREGA. A district committee under the Collector is meant to tie it all together.

Why this matters to me

The guidelines say something I have been saying for years: wonder, rather than books, words, or learning all the facts, provides the direction for environmental education in early childhood. That sentence could sit on the first page of our own work at Sarvam Ekam.

A child who sows the keerai, waters it, watches the caterpillar and then eats it in her lunch has learnt biology, patience and nutrition in one loop. She has also learnt that food is something people make, not something that appears. Multiply that by the 11 lakh schools the scheme covers, and it is a quiet revolution.

Where school gardens usually fail

I have seen many school gardens. The ones that fail tend to fail in the same few ways, and none of them is about seeds or soil.

1. It becomes the gardener's job. The beds look lovely for the inspection, and the children are not in them.
2. It sits outside the timetable. No subject owns it, so it is the first thing dropped when exams come.
3. Teachers have never been shown how. Most of us grew up without a garden at school. A teacher who is unsure of compost will not hand a trowel to thirty children.
4. The calendar works against it. Crops sown in the wrong month dry up over the summer holidays, and the garden starts from zero every June.
5. Nothing is recorded. Without the Garden File, nobody can show the parents, the SMC or the district what the children learnt.

The guidelines tell schools what to do. What most schools are missing is how to make a garden part of an ordinary school week.

How Sarvam Ekam can help your school garden

This is the work we already do. Sarvam Ekam works with a group of schools to strengthen their academics, and trains teachers on their own campuses. With our partners at Karu, we run a classroom growing programme built on biodynamic practice, which is organic and chemical-free, just as the guidelines ask. For a school setting up its School Nutrition Garden, we offer:

• A garden plan for your campus. We walk the site with you. Do you have open ground, a terrace, or only a corridor? Then we plan beds or containers, compost, water and a crop list that fits your school term and your kitchen.
• On-campus teacher orientation. Your teachers learn to make the growing medium, to compost, and to lead a class in the garden. They mix it in front of the children first, and in the second week the children mix it themselves.
• A calendar that keeps the garden alive. Our Sowing Booklet 2026 gives every day of the year one of four colours (root, leaf, flower or fruit) that even a three-year-old can read. That is the "calendar of activities" the guidelines ask for, along with a four-minute morning routine that matches their daily crop inspection.
• Garden-to-classroom lesson maps. Measuring a bean plant, finding the area of a bed, counting seeds, graphing the harvest, and writing a garden diary. We map garden work to maths, EVS and language from Balvatika to Grade 5, so the garden earns its place in the timetable.
• Garden File templates. Simple observation sheets for young children and data sheets for older ones, so you can show what the children did and learnt.

Private schools are not part of PM POSHAN, but none of this depends on the scheme. The National Curriculum Framework for the Foundational Stage recommends a small kitchen garden for every early-years setting too.

Begin this term

You do not have to wait for the district committee. Pick one class and four containers. Choose seeds that come up fast, like radish, keerai and vendhayam. Give one child the watering every morning, and start a Garden File with one drawing a week. By the end of the term you will have a harvest for the kitchen and children who know where their lunch comes from.

If you would like us to help you plan your school's garden, train your teachers or link it to your curriculum, write to us or email jay@sarvamekam.com. You can read eight pages of the Sowing Booklet free at sarvamekam.in/sowing-booklet.

Let every school kitchen have a garden at its door, and let the children be its gardeners.

With warmth, Jayanthi

India's National Education Policy 2020 asks schools to teach through play and to draw on Indian knowledge traditions. Most teachers agree. What they ask me is: why these games, and where do we start? This letter answers both questions.

Why these games, and not just any play

Any good play helps children grow. But the case for traditional games in schools is stronger, because these games have five features that make them unusually efficient for Indian schools.

1. They cost almost nothing

Chalk, seeds, stones, a few sticks and open ground. That is the whole equipment list. A Pallankuzhi board can be an egg tray. A Pandi court is a few chalk lines on the verandah. A school with no budget for toys can still run a full games programme. A rural school and a city school can play the same games on the same day.

2. They work on several areas of development at once

The National Curriculum Framework for the Foundational Stage (NCF-FS) 2022 asks for integrated learning, not separate subjects. Traditional games already work this way. One round of Pandi asks a child to hop and balance, count the squares, aim the stone, wait for a turn and argue fairly about whether a foot touched the line. That is body, number, self-control, language and values, all together.

3. They grow with the child

The same game can be played simply at three and strategically at twelve. Pallankuzhi, for example, can be taught as four graded games on one board. A three-year-old sows one seed in each pit and counts. A six-year-old plans captures several moves ahead. I wrote about this progression in The Maths Was Already on the Board. Few bought toys stretch this far.

4. Children govern them themselves

There is no referee in Goli or Kannamoochi. Children agree the rules, notice when someone breaks them, and settle the argument. Piaget saw this kind of rule-making as the root of moral reasoning. It is also excellent practice in speaking, listening and persuading.

5. They arrive already rooted in the child's family and language

A child who learns Paramapadham from a grandmother brings her voice, her stories and her language into the game. That gives learning meaning. It also makes parents allies, because they recognise what their children are playing.

How to bring traditional games into your school

Here are six practical steps that make traditional games in schools part of everyday life, not a festival event. You do not need to do them all at once. Start with one, and add another each term.

Protect a daily free-play period of 30 to 40 minutes

Put it on the timetable, outdoors where possible, and treat it as part of the school day, not a reward for finishing work. Children who earn play by being "good" learn that play is a treat. Children who get it every day learn that it matters.

Daily outdoor time also protects eyesight. A large trial in China found that one extra 40-minute outdoor class each school day reduced new cases of short sight over three years. It also helps children meet the activity levels the World Health Organization recommends.

Sequence the games by age

Not every game suits every child. At Sarvam Ekam we use three stages, set out in our traditional games framework from birth to 21:

• Play to Grow (0 to 7): movement, counting and turn-taking. Kannamoochi, Pandi, simple Pallankuzhi, Paramapadham and clapping songs. The adult plays alongside the child.
• Play to Think (7 to 14): strategy, teams and scientific noticing. Aadu Puli, Thaayam, full Pallankuzhi, Goli, Pambaram, Kho-Kho and Kabaddi. Teachers link the games to maths and science lessons.
• Play to Master and Share (14 to 21): skill and leadership. Silambam, Kolattam and advanced strategy games. Older students teach younger ones and record local rule variants before they are lost.

The journey runs from player to practitioner, to team leader, to teacher, and finally to keeper of the tradition.

Keep a games corner

Set aside one shelf or one corner with boards and natural materials: tamarind seeds, cowrie shells, smooth stones, coconut-shell tops, sticks and chalk. Label the boxes with pictures so the youngest children can tidy up by themselves. An egg tray with fourteen cups makes a Pallankuzhi board. Children can draw a Paramapadham board on chart paper and make their own snakes and ladders.

Invite grandparents to teach a game each term

Grandparents are the real experts. Invite one or two each term to teach a game from their own childhood. Children learn the game. Grandparents feel valued. And teachers often discover games, rhymes and local rules they had never heard of. Ask an older student to write down the rules and draw the board, and your school slowly builds its own games library.

Observe play with checklists, not tests

The NCF-FS asks schools not to test young children formally. Observation is the alternative, and games are the perfect place to observe. Give teachers a short checklist for each game, with each item marked not yet, with help or independently. For Pallankuzhi, it might read:

• Sows one seed per pit without skipping.
• Counts on from the starting pit instead of starting again from one.
• Waits for a turn and accepts a loss calmly.
• Chooses a pit for a reason, and can say the reason.

A teacher who watches one round of a game with care learns more about a child than a worksheet can show. Our kindergarten audit and teacher training both use observation like this.

Adapt for every child

Every child can play. Use larger counters and wider pits for children who find small objects hard. Offer seated versions of running games. Pair a child who needs support with a patient partner. Seeds and shells are small, so always supervise children under three, and any child who still puts things in the mouth. Bottle caps make safe counters.

Starting traditional games in schools: a first week

If you want to start on Monday, try this:

1. Monday: chalk a Pandi court in the play area and teach it at free-play time.
2. Tuesday: play Pallankuzhi in pairs with egg trays and seeds.
3. Wednesday: play Kannamoochi (hide-and-seek) outdoors.
4. Thursday: play Paramapadham and talk about the virtues on the ladders.
5. Friday: ask the children which game they want to play again, and why.

Then keep going. The games do the teaching. Your job is to give them time, space and attention.

Curriculum that happens to be old

We often call these games heritage, something to display at a festival and remember fondly. I would put it differently. Traditional games are curriculum that happens to be old. Generations of children refined them long before anyone wrote a lesson plan, and they have lasted because they work.

When we make room for traditional games in schools, we are not looking backwards. We are using some of the best learning tools we have, and they are already in our courtyards. You can read more about play-based learning in kindergarten, or write to us if you would like help starting a games programme in your school.

At Sarvam Ekam our training brings together three of the world's best-known approaches to early childhood: Waldorf, Montessori and Reggio Emilia. We do not ask schools to choose one and copy it. We take what is strongest in each and shape it into one practical way of working that fits Indian classrooms.

Why not just pick one method?

Each approach was born in a particular place and time. Montessori in Rome, Waldorf in Stuttgart, Reggio Emilia in a small Italian town after the war. Each has deep wisdom. Each also assumes things that may not match a classroom of 30 children in Chennai or Hyderabad.

Teachers in India need ideas that work with their class sizes, their families, their languages and their festivals. Blending the three gives them more tools, and the judgement to choose between them.

What each approach gives a teacher

Montessori: a prepared environment

Montessori education teaches us to prepare the room so that children can work independently. Materials are real, ordered and within reach. The teacher steps back, and children build focus and self-reliance.

In practice: low open shelves, practical-life activities like pouring and sweeping, and letting a child finish a task without interruption.

Waldorf: rhythm, story and the senses

Waldorf education gives the day a gentle rhythm and places stories, songs, movement and natural materials at its heart. Imagination is protected and screens wait.

In practice: a predictable daily and weekly rhythm, oral storytelling, seasonal tables, and handwork.

Reggio Emilia: the child as a researcher

The Reggio Emilia approach sees the child as capable and curious. Teachers listen, document children's ideas and grow projects from their questions.

In practice: long projects that follow a question, walls that show children's thinking, and many "languages" of expression: drawing, clay, building, drama.

What our kindergarten teacher training looks like

Most of our training happens in the school's own classrooms, with its own children. Teachers try an idea, we observe together, and we reflect and adjust. It is a cycle, not a one-off course.

• Observing children and writing useful notes.
• Setting up classrooms and learning corners.
• Planning the daily rhythm and circle time.
• Using stories, songs and traditional Indian games.
• Talking with parents about how children learn.

Many schools begin with a kindergarten audit, so that training starts from a clear picture of what is already working.

The Indian thread

Alongside the three approaches, we weave in what Indian childhoods have always had: kolam, folk songs, traditional games, festivals and grandparents' stories. Children learn best when school feels connected to home.

Bring training to your school

If you lead a kindergarten or a group of schools, we would love to hear from you. Read what teachers say on our Voices page, then contact us to plan training for your team.

At Sarvam Ekam we use pallankuzhi in kindergarten classrooms and teacher training because it does quietly what worksheets struggle to do: it makes numbers something you can hold in your hand.

What is pallankuzhi?

Pallankuzhi (பல்லாங்குழி) is a traditional mancala game played across Tamil Nadu and neighbouring states. The board has two rows of seven pits. Players pick up all the seeds from one pit and sow them, one by one, into the pits that follow. Where the last seed lands decides what happens next: keep sowing, capture seeds, or stop.

Rules change from family to family and village to village. That is part of its charm. You can read more about its history on Wikipedia's Pallanguzhi page.

How the pallankuzhi game for kids builds early maths

Every turn is a small maths problem, solved with the hands first and the head later.

• One-to-one counting. Dropping exactly one seed in each pit is the foundation of counting. Children feel the rhythm: one seed, one pit.
• Number sense. After a few games, children start to see that a pit holds "about six" without counting. This is called subitising, and it grows with play.
• Prediction. "If I pick up five seeds from here, where will the last one land?" This is early addition, done in the mind.
• Planning and strategy. Older children compare two or three possible moves before choosing. That is the beginning of logical thinking.
• Patience and turn-taking. Waiting while a friend sows, and accepting a capture with grace, builds self-control.

Start simple: four steps from sowing to strategy

We do not hand a three-year-old the full traditional game. In our Pallankuzhi book we build up in four stages:

1. Sowing Seeds (ages 3+): only sowing, no capturing. The joy is in the dropping.
2. Catch the Pasu: a pit that reaches four seeds becomes a "pasu" (cow) and is captured.
3. Jump the Empty Pit: children learn that an empty pit changes what happens next.
4. The full game: relay sowing, captures and rounds, as grandparents played it.

Each stage adds one new rule, so children stay successful while the thinking gets deeper.

Bringing pallankuzhi into the classroom

You do not need a carved wooden board. Chalk circles on the floor and a basket of seeds work beautifully, and a whole group can gather round. A few ideas teachers use:

• Play the sowing stage as a whole class, with one child walking and dropping seeds into chalk pits.
• Ask "Where will it land?" before every move, and let children check by sowing.
• Count each pit together at the end and compare: more, fewer, the same.
• Link it to a story about the family or village where the game came from.

When children play pallankuzhi, the numbers are never on a page. They are in their palms.

Play it online, then on the floor

If you do not have a board yet, children can try all four games on our free online Pallankuzhi game, against the computer or a friend. We still recommend the real board as soon as possible: the weight and sound of the seeds matter.

For more games like this, see our guide to traditional games by age, or try Aadu Puli, the goats-and-tigers strategy game.

Want this in your school?

Traditional games are part of our kindergarten teacher training. We show teachers how to run them, what to observe, and how to link them to the maths goals of the foundational stage. Get in touch to bring it to your classrooms.

Many Indian schools agree with this in principle, but find it hard in practice. Parents ask for worksheets. Timetables are full. Classrooms are crowded. This guide is for teachers and school leaders who want to make the shift, one step at a time.

Why play-based learning matters now

India's National Education Policy 2020 treats the years from three to eight as one "foundational stage", and asks that learning in these years be play-based and activity-based. The National Curriculum Framework for the Foundational Stage, published by NCERT in 2022, builds on the same idea.

So play is no longer only a philosophy. It is the direction the whole system is moving in.

What play-based learning in kindergarten looks like

Play-based does not mean unplanned. A good play-based classroom is carefully prepared. You might see:

• Learning corners for blocks, pretend play, reading, art and sand or water.
• Open-ended materials: wooden blocks, seeds, shells, cloth, clay, leaves. Things that can become anything.
• Traditional games such as pallankuzhi, paandi and clapping songs, which carry maths, rhythm and language.
• A teacher who observes, asks questions, and adds a new challenge at the right moment.
• Rhythm in the day: circle time, free play, outdoor play, story, rest. Children feel safe when they know what comes next.

Guided play and free play

It helps to think of two kinds of play.

Free play

Children choose what to do and how. The teacher watches and notes what each child is drawn to, who they play with, and where they struggle. These notes become the plan for the next week.

Guided play

The teacher sets up an activity with a goal in mind, like sorting leaves by size, but lets the children lead the way. The learning is intended. The path is theirs.

A healthy kindergarten day has both.

Five ways to start this week

You do not need a new building or a big budget. Try one of these:

1. Replace one worksheet a day with a hands-on version of the same skill. Counting beads instead of counting pictures.
2. Set up one corner with simple loose parts, and keep it for a month.
3. Add a traditional game to circle time. Our online Pallankuzhi and Paramapadham are a good way to introduce them.
4. Take learning outside for 20 minutes. Collect, count, compare and draw what you find.
5. Write one observation per child per week. Short and specific: what they did, what they said.

Talking to parents about play

Parents worry that play means children are "not learning". Show them the learning. Share a photo of a block tower with a note on the maths inside it. Invite them to a play morning. When parents see their child explaining a game or counting seeds, the worry usually fades.

How we can help

At Sarvam Ekam we help schools move towards play-based learning in a way that fits Indian classrooms. A kindergarten audit shows where you are today. Teacher training then brings Waldorf, Montessori and Reggio Emilia ideas into your own rooms, with your own children. Read what schools say on our Voices page, or contact us to begin.

That small moment is why we made our new Sowing Booklet 2026, with our friends at Karu. It is a garden calendar and a storybook in one, and in this letter I want to tell you why I think every child, in every school and every home, should sow something this year.

Children are losing the soil

Many of our children now grow up in flats, travel in vans and spend their evenings on screens. They know that vegetables come from a shop. Fewer of them have pushed a finger into wet soil, waited for a shoot, or found a worm and wondered what it does down there.

The World Health Organization asks that children aged three and four move for at least 180 minutes a day, with no more than one hour of screen time, and less is better. A garden is one of the easiest ways I know to get there. Digging, carrying water, squatting to look closely and running to check the seeds: none of it feels like exercise.

What gardening with children gives them

On the first page of the booklet we wrote one sentence for parents and teachers: farming gives children a chance to care, observe, feel and create. It connects them with the rhythm of nature, supports sensory integration, nurtures patience and responsibility, and brings the joy of creating life with their own hands.

The research points the same way. It is honest research, mostly from other countries and often small, so I will not overclaim it. But it is worth knowing:

• They taste what they grow. In one study of 115 second-graders, children who had a school garden as well as nutrition lessons were more likely to choose and eat vegetables at lunch than children who had lessons alone. A review of 14 gardening studies found that 10 reported children eating more fruit or vegetables afterwards.
• They learn science they remember. In a study of 647 children aged eight to eleven, those who gardened as part of science scored higher on a science test than children taught only in the classroom.
• They move more and sit less. In a trial across twelve schools, children were more active during garden lessons than classroom lessons.
• They learn to work together. Children in a year-long school garden programme improved in working with groups and in self-understanding.
• The children who struggle often shine. A review of 40 studies found teachers and children describing wellbeing benefits from school gardens, especially for pupils who find the classroom hard.
• It lasts. Adults who gardened as children were more likely to care for trees and plants as grown-ups.

India is already asking for this

This is not only a Sarvam Ekam idea. India's curriculum framework for the foundational stage, ages three to eight, recommends a small kitchen garden for hands-on, sensory work, and sets the goal that children develop a positive regard for the natural environment. The PM POSHAN guidelines ask every school, rural and urban, to grow a School Nutrition Garden with teachers, children and parents, even in pots and containers.

So the question is not whether gardening with children belongs in school. It is how to make it part of an ordinary school morning.

Four minutes every morning

That is what the Sowing Booklet is for. It takes the 2026 biodynamic sowing calendar and turns it into four colours a three-year-old can read. Every day of the year is a root day, a leaf day, a flower day or a fruit and seed day:

1. Find today's colour. A child points to today's square on the wall chart and names the colour.
2. Say the plant part, and show it. "Today is a leaf day!" Hands flat for leaf, fists low for root, open palms for flower, round arms for fruit.
3. Open only that seed tin. Four tins, four colours. The children run the choice and sow.
4. Draw what you did. One line and one drawing a day. Over a term, the garden book becomes the record.

I want to be clear about one thing. We do not ask children to believe that the moon makes the radish grow. The calendar gives the class a rhythm to notice: the colours change, the moon is round and then shy and then round again, the seeds wake up at their own pace. Noticing is where science begins.

The Little Garden

The second half of the booklet is The Little Garden: eight themes for the year, each with a song, a short story and things to do, draw and notice. What is a seed? What is soil? What does a plant need? Who are the little helpers in the soil? Where do leaves go? How do we care for a tree? Why does the moon change? What can we hear, smell and touch in the garden?

Nothing is taught as a concept. The child meets the thing, touches it, cares for it, and slowly builds a relationship with it. Story, song, garden, art, observation. That is the whole method.

Start gardening with children this week

You do not need land. For a home or a classroom, this is enough:

• Two pots or grow bags and a spot that gets the sun.
• Fast seeds for the first try: mullangi (radish) shows in about three days, and keerai or vendhayam in three to five. Your kitchen already has vendhayam.
• One child in charge of the watering, every morning.
• One drawing a week of what grew.

Then open the booklet together and find today's colour.

You can read eight pages free at sarvamekam.in/sowing-booklet, including the morning routine, the four kinds of day, the whole of January and the first song and story. The full booklet is ₹499 for a year, read on your phone, tablet or computer. Schools that want a full growing programme, with teacher orientation from Karu and a plant of their own for every child, can write to us.

Let us give our children a seed to hold this year, and the patience to watch it wake up.

With warmth, Jayanthi