Learning/Unlearning with Child

Learning/unlearning with child

An interesting conversation that happened between Aarav,  Urvi and myself. It made me learn, rather unlearn. The process of exploration is wonderful. I owe this knowledge to ISP (Infant Siddha Program- The art of Parenting) and my current pursuit of school psychology ❤

We envision to implement similar processes of exploration as a part of our learning maxim (Purposefully, I am not calling it as teaching maxim)..

So, the incidence of exploration goes like this...

One day, when I shared with Urvi and Aarav that we used to buy xxxx brand biscuit packet at Rs. 2 when I was of your age, now the same packet comes for Rs 10 or even more.

Urvi's curiosity made her immediately ask- Prices keep on increasing like that? I said, yes..She again asked- but why do prices keep on increasing?

I said they may decrease also. She again asked- why do they increase or decrease anyway?

I was thrilled with this curiosity, which I did not have at that age. Instead of answering anything in general to make her keep quiet, I thought for a while. Then our next conversation was much fantastic and enriching. With every question I asked, it made her and Aarav think and they could find their answers themselves without me telling them directly.

So, the conversation went further like this..

Actually, leading this conversation to why price goes up and down was challenging. Exploring it through a process of  near to far ('Starting from something that they know and going to something that they do not know') helped. So, taking example of our own Healthy bake operations helped to explore since Aarav and Urvi by now are closely familiar with terms like price, discount and profit (near- something that they know)☺

Aarav, Urvi and myself became three consumers of Healthy Bake. We said, if we three are consumers and there is ONLY ONE packet of biscuit available for consumption. So, buying this ONLY packet will be easy or will it be a competition amongst three consumers?...Aarav said, it will be a competition and one can pay more than the actual price to grab that packet. Thus the price will go up because of less supply and more demand.

I said, in another situation, if there are 6 packets of biscuits available amongst three of us (Aarav said, it is more supply than demand?). Meanwhile, Urvi did arithmetic, each one of us will get 2 packets. She actually did division, which was not the original purpose of exploring, it just came up, I now believe in unplanned exploration process, it may explore more than planned. Well, coming back to the point, 6 packets available for 3 of us and we may not want to buy more than one packet. I asked them, what will the seller do sell? Aarav said, he has to reduce the price or give discount for us to MAKE them buy. Urvi also understood it the way she perceives these terms. Thus they explored, price reduces, when supply is more than the demand..

I just mentioned this- As the population of people consuming biscuits increase (more demand) over supply, prices will keep on increasing year over year (concept of inflation explored without naming it..it need not be named yet to keep it simple for their age).

I purposefully again asked, what will happen if there is heavy rain, flood or drought. They said, supply reduces and prices of vegetables will increase..and some year, if there is too much of crop, they themselves said prices will fall down..

Last question I asked, if seller hides the pulses, medicines, etc., what will happen? They again said- less supply, prices will shoot up..but, I asked, is this shortage natural? Aarav thought for a while and said, no..This is artificial shortage. Heavy, untimely rains, flood, drought create natural shortages.

They themselves concluded, people should not hide things to create artificial shortage and thus snatch more prices from consumers....

Thus, we could explore this concept (far- something that they do not know) of Demand-supply law in economics (which I studies in MBA) in a conversation of 30 mins..plus we did mental math, which was a bonus.

You can explore anything and everything with your child through this method. They can understand what you and I learned in graduation or PG. Only thing is, keep it simple and sweet..no jargons to the child. It does not work :-)

CREATED Learning Space

Explore | Learn | Create