The Five Questions That Guide Everything We Do

We've been conditioned to think of schools as places where authority figures have all the answers. The teacher knows, the student doesn't. The curriculum prescribes, the child follows. It's a framework built on certainty and hierarchy rather than curiosity and discovery.

At Comini, we start with questions, not answers. This wasn't our initial approach. In our early days, we too had those anxious moments—a child struggling with reading, a group seemingly unable to focus, conflicts erupting repeatedly in a particular corner. Like most adults trained in conventional education, our instinct was to jump straight to solutions: new materials, different groupings, clearer rules.

What we missed in those rushed responses was the crucial step of genuinely understanding what was happening. We were substituting quick judgment ("This child isn't ready," "That activity isn't working") for thoughtful inquiry. We categorized behaviors as problems rather than messages or opportunities.

Our greatest growth as educators came when we learned to pause, step back, and ask deeper questions. Rather than "How do I fix this?" we began asking "What's really happening here?" and "What does this child or situation need right now?" This shift from reactive problem-solving to reflective questioning has been transformative.

Over time, we distilled this approach into five essential questions that now guide every decision we make. They are practical tools we use daily to create meaningful learning experiences. While traditional education often starts with a fixed curriculum and predetermined outcomes, we begin with these questions that honor children's natural development and create authentic learning.

Why Are We Learning This? (Purpose and Meaning)

Learning needs a heartbeat. Without a clear and compelling "why," education becomes an empty exercise, disconnected from life and drained of its natural joy.

Take how we start kids with concepts like measurement in math. Conventionally, children learn measurement through worksheets where they calculate the length of drawn lines or convert inches to centimeters. These are abstract exercises divorced from any real purpose. But the fact is, we measure things because it's deeply practical and helps us navigate the real world. Think about it: carpenters measure wood to build furniture that actually fits, cooks measure ingredients to make food that tastes right, architects measure spaces to design homes people can actually live in.

But simply talking about this isn't enough. Children need to experience it. So we introduce building projects where they create houses for their toys. It's something that's naturally engrossing. Kids love building homes for the things they care about. It becomes social as they work together, debating where windows should go, how tall doorways need to be. Then introducing measurement happens organically because suddenly it matters: if the door is too small, their favorite action figure won't fit through. If the windows aren't placed right, the house looks wrong. They need to measure, cut, and calculate to make something that works. The concept becomes concrete, in service of something they genuinely care about creating.

Children pour extraordinary energy into activities that matter to them. This kind of purposeful learning taps into something fundamental about how children are wired. Watch a child building that toy house, figuring out exactly where to cut the windows, measuring and remeasuring until the proportions feel right. The same child who might rush through a measurement worksheet will spend an hour perfecting the placement of a tiny door. They'll persist through failed attempts, readjust their calculations, and try again. Why? Because it matters to them. The purpose is immediate and real, not some abstract skill for future use.

In conventional education, the "why" often boils down to external requirements: "You need this for the test" or "It's required for the next grade." These reasons rarely engage children's intrinsic motivation. They learn to perform for external validation rather than from genuine curiosity or purpose.

We look for whys that are:

Authentic: Connected to real questions, interests, or challenges

Immediate: Offering purpose now, not just someday

Personally meaningful: Resonating with what children value

Diverse: Recognizing that different children find meaning in different things

Sometimes the why emerges directly from children's questions: "How does water change into clouds?" "Can we design a machine that sorts different seeds?" These natural curiosities become gateways to exploration across domains.

Other times, we introduce whys that connect to children's worlds: "Let's learn to measure so we can build furniture for our playhouse." "Understanding the water cycle will help us figure out why our garden floods during monsoon season." "Writing clear instructions will help others play the game you've created."

We also honor the why of pure wonder: "Isn't it amazing how these watercolors blend?" "Listen to how these words create a rhythm." Beauty, fascination, and awe are powerful drivers that conventional education often overlooks in the rush toward measurable outcomes.

By starting with why, we ensure learning isn't arbitrary but purposeful. When children connect with the reason behind an activity, they bring their full energy and creativity to the process.

Make Math about building and creating and it takes on a whole new meaning

What Is Worth Learning? (Content and Skills)

While the "why" gives learning its heartbeat, the "what" gives it substance. We're intentional about the concepts, skills, and dispositions we hope children develop, even as we remain flexible about how they get there.

We do pay attention to curriculum requirements, but we don't allow them to dictate what we do. We broadly map the IGCSE and Common Core curriculum to age and grade levels. We know what's required. But then we do two things: First, we map what we're already doing with our theme-based activities and projects to these concepts. Often, we find that our organic approach naturally covers most requirements. Second, we consciously stay away from overly prescriptive elements. Take grammar, for instance. Traditional curricula might require second graders to identify proper nouns in isolation or complete worksheets on subject-verb agreement. We skip these artificial exercises, knowing that children who write stories, create plays, and engage in meaningful communication will naturally absorb these conventions when they're developmentally ready. A child writing letters to the government about the importance of patience and talking it out doesn't need a worksheet on formal letter structure. They're learning it through authentic use.

We also recognize that standard curricula are often too cognitive, focusing only on mental skills while ignoring the emotional, physical, and social dimensions of learning. It's our job to make learning whole and connected. When the curriculum calls for understanding states of matter in early science, we don't just show diagrams of solids, liquids, and gases. We cook together, watching butter melt, water boil into steam, and steam condense back on a pot lid. The scientific concept becomes embedded in real experiences that engage all senses. Similarly, when geography expects young children to understand cardinal directions, we navigate our neighborhood using the sun's position, create treasure maps, and discover that the market is north of school while the park is south.

In choosing what to focus on, we ask:

What builds on children's current questions and interests? Children's natural curiosities often align with important concepts. A fascination with dinosaurs opens doors to biology, geology, classification, and historical thinking.

What offers rich possibilities for connecting different areas of learning? Water as a theme touches on science (states of matter, the water cycle), geography (rivers, oceans), mathematics (measurement, volume), literature (water stories and poetry), and social studies (water access, conservation). We’ll discuss the immense value of themes in a later chapter.

What serves life beyond school? We prioritize learning that matters in the real world—communication skills, problem-solving strategies, research abilities, creative thinking, emotional intelligence.

What allows for depth rather than just coverage? We'd rather explore fewer concepts deeply than many superficially. Deep understanding builds stronger foundations than shallow familiarity with many topics.

Our "what" includes both specific knowledge domains (understanding how plants grow or learning to decode written words) and broader competencies (asking good questions or expressing ideas clearly). We recognize that different areas have their important foundations—mathematics has key concepts like number sense, literacy has essential skills like phonological awareness, social development includes crucial capacities like perspective-taking.

We're guided partly by established understanding of developmental progressions, but we hold these lightly, adapting to each child's unique path. We also recognize that traditional curriculum often overemphasizes some aspects (like memorization of facts) while undervaluing others (like creativity or collaboration).

By being thoughtful about the "what" while remaining flexible about the "how," "where," and "when," we create learning with clear direction without rigid prescription.

Kids voted a month of Art. Here parent and budding artist V shows them her world

How Do We Learn Best? (Methods That Work)

The "how" question invites us to consider the approaches that will most effectively engage children with whatever we're exploring. Different concepts call for different methods, and different children respond to different approaches.

We've discovered that learning flourishes through many different pathways, not just the narrow channel of direct instruction that dominates conventional classrooms. Our children learn through:

Direct experience: Children manipulate materials, conduct experiments, build structures, grow plants—engaging directly with the physical world. A child learns about volume by pouring water between different containers, or about fractions by cutting a pizza into equal slices.

Play and games: Both unstructured play and designed games create natural contexts for learning. Card games practice number recognition while blending fun with focused skill-building. Board games develop strategic thinking, planning, and social negotiation. Dramatic play allows children to explore social roles and narrative thinking in ways worksheets never could.

Stories and literature: Books, oral storytelling, and poetry engage imagination while building vocabulary and comprehension. Stories make abstract concepts concrete and help children connect emotionally with distant times and places.

Discussion and dialogue: Conversations—both with adults and among children—build language and critical thinking. Questions like "What do you think would happen if...?" or "Why do you think they did that?" prompt deeper engagement. Traditional classrooms do children a great disservice by silencing the natural cross-currents of conversation, allowing only the teacher to speak and children to respond when called upon. We've seen how rich learning becomes when children can build on each other's ideas, challenge assumptions together, and collectively refine their understanding through genuine dialogue.

Observation and documentation: Children learn by watching closely and recording what they notice—through drawing, writing, or photography. This builds observation skills and vocabulary for describing experiences.

Teaching others: When children share knowledge with peers or younger children, they solidify their own understanding. A child who's mastered a concept might create a book explaining it or demonstrate a skill they've learned.

Artistic expression: Drawing, painting, music, dance, and drama offer ways to explore and express understanding beyond words. Art integrates emotional and cognitive engagement, often revealing aspects of thinking not apparent through verbal expression alone.

Project work: Extended projects allow for in-depth exploration of complex questions, integrating multiple strategies toward meaningful outcomes. Creating a field guide to local birds might involve research, writing, drawing, data collection, and design work.

Rather than privileging one approach, we match methods to purposes, content, and children's needs. Sometimes direct instruction is exactly right—a clear demonstration of how to sound out the phonemes in a new word, or a precise explanation of how to use a tool safely. Other times, open exploration works better—discovering the properties of magnets through hands-on play.

We often layer methods within a single experience: a visit to the shoreline includes direct observation (recording what children notice), sensory exploration (feeling water temperature at different depths), documentation (drawing discoveries), and reflective discussion (connecting observations to previous knowledge).

This flexibility doesn't mean we're scattered. It means we're responsive to the specific learning at hand and to the needs of specific children. We're guided not by allegiance to any particular teaching method but by the question, "What approach will most effectively engage these children with this content right now?"

Hands on, sensorial science activities trump a textbook any day

Where Does Learning Happen? (Environments That Nurture)

Farmschool days are universally beloved at Comini, despite everything that might suggest otherwise. Children wake up at what they consider an ungodly hour, endure a three-hour bumpy drive to reach a dusty farm far from city comforts, and spend hours engaged in physically demanding work under the sun.

Yet they look forward to each visit with extraordinary enthusiasm. What makes these days so magical? It's the authenticity of the experience: caring for chickens that provide eggs for the community, harvesting vegetables that will actually become their lunch, solving real problems like how to irrigate a field or protect seedlings from birds. The learning is immediate, necessary, and embedded in the place itself.

Exploring our farmschool Vrindavan farms at her prettiest time of year

This is the power of environment in learning. Physical spaces, materials, social settings, all these aspects of "where" influence how children engage and what they take from an experience. Learning isn't confined to classrooms; it happens everywhere in the world, often most powerfully in settings designed for purposes other than education.

Traditional schooling typically confines learning to classrooms with occasional trips to special rooms. This unnecessarily limits what and how children learn, disconnecting education from the richness of the broader world.

We expand the "where" of learning:

Thoughtfully designed spaces: Our core environment includes areas for different types of engagement—quiet reading corners, spaces for messy exploration, open areas for movement, tables for focused work. These spaces change with projects and interests and are filled with open-ended materials that invite exploration.

Beyond our walls: We regularly extend learning into the community and natural world. Parks become biology laboratories for studying insects and plants. Neighborhood walks turn into social studies explorations as children observe different types of homes and businesses. Field trips connect children with resources and expertise we couldn't provide in-house.

Home connections: We see homes as extensions of our learning community. We support families in creating learning-rich environments and suggest ways to extend explorations from our space into family life.

Emotional environments: Perhaps most fundamentally, learning happens in an emotional "where"—an atmosphere of trust, curiosity, and support or one of anxiety and judgment. We prioritize creating emotional spaces where children feel safe to take risks, make mistakes, and express themselves authentically.

By considering "where" thoughtfully, we create experiences that are more engaging and effective. Learning is often more powerful when it happens in the context where the knowledge or skill will actually be used—learning about plants in a garden, about cooking in a kitchen, about social norms through real community interactions.

Exploring the beautiful botanical gardens at Lalbaug in our month about gardens and gardening

Each Child's Unique Timetable (Readiness and Rhythm)

About two years ago, we found ourselves growing increasingly concerned about a seven-year-old. Bright and articulate, he excelled in nearly everything from complex building projects to sophisticated scientific questions. But when it came to reading, even simple three-letter words would trip him up. What came effortlessly to many children his age—stringing three sounds together to make a word—seemed completely beyond his reach.

Our first instinct was intervention: extra phonics practice, specialized materials, perhaps even assessment for learning disabilities. But we paused to ask deeper questions instead. Was he actually ready for reading? What other strengths was he developing while this particular skill waited? How might forcing the issue affect his confidence and love of learning?

We chose to trust his developmental timeline, maintaining a literacy-rich environment without pressure. We read to him and the full group constantly, involved him in writing projects as the "idea person," and waited. Roughly a year later, something clicked. The same child who struggled with three-letter words began devouring chapter books practically overnight.

Timing profoundly affects learning. Yet it's often one of the most rigid aspects of conventional education, with standardized curriculum sequences, fixed schedules, and age-based expectations that ignore children's actual readiness and natural rhythms.

We approach timing with greater flexibility:

Developmental readiness: We watch for signs that a child is ready for a particular concept or challenge—showing interest, asking relevant questions, demonstrating prerequisite understandings. Rather than pushing toward standardized benchmarks, we recognize windows of readiness and provide appropriate support.

Natural learning sequences: We respect how understanding typically develops. Children generally move from concrete to abstract thinking, from sensory exploration to conceptual understanding, from personal experience to broader perspectives. We sequence learning to honor these natural progressions while recognizing that different children may move through them at different rates.

Daily rhythms: We pay attention to energy and attention patterns throughout the day. More focused activities might happen during morning hours when many children are fresh, while more open-ended explorations might suit afternoon energy. We balance active and quiet times, individual and group activities throughout the day.

Seasonal cycles: Our planning follows seasonal rhythms that provide meaningful contexts. Spring invites exploration of growing things, monsoon season brings opportunities to observe water patterns, festival times offer natural connections to cultural learning.

Individual needs: We recognize that children vary tremendously in how long they need with concepts or activities. Some grasp ideas quickly but need time to apply them; others process more slowly but with deep understanding. We allow for this variation rather than enforcing uniform pacing.

Responsive flexibility: Perhaps most importantly, we stay responsive to the emergent interests and needs of the children. While we plan intentionally, we hold those plans lightly, willing to extend an activity that has captured deep engagement or shift direction when we notice an unexpected learning opportunity.

This attentiveness operates across different time scales. In a single day, we might notice a child's fascination with shadows and extend that exploration. Over weeks, we might observe growing interest in storytelling and gradually introduce more complex narrative structures as children show readiness.

Allowing for time to fix things when you want to instead of when you are asked to

Putting It All Together: Questions in Action

These five questions don't operate in isolation. They work together as an integrated framework for creating meaningful learning experiences. A single project or exploration touches on all five dimensions:

When 6-year-old Aaria became interested in "running a business" and soon many other kids expressed interest in stalls or hosting experiences, we decided to create what would become FleaPlay, our community event. The why was clear: to understand commerce, to showcase a skill. The what expanded naturally: kids interested in commerce set up stalls, others became part of the entertainment and helped host art workshops. The how included prep for the stalls, guided sessions to figure out pricing and marketing material. The where included going door-to-door to the local shops, libraries to put up posters.

When a child became fascinated with birds nesting outside our window, we helped her group pursue this interest. The why was clear: immediate curiosity about these creatures sharing our space. The what expanded naturally through bird identification, habitat needs, life cycles, even physics as children considered how birds fly. The how included observation journals, research in field guides, nest-building with natural materials, and movement games exploring how birds use different body parts. The where extended from our observation window to nearby parks and a bird sanctuary visit. And the when followed both the nesting cycle we were observing and the children's expanding questions, lasting several weeks as their investigation deepened.

By working with these five questions, we create learning that is purposeful, substantive, engaging, contextual, and well-timed. Learning that sticks because it resonates on multiple levels.

Your Questions, Your Learning Journey

Whether you're a parent supporting learning at home or an educator designing experiences for a group, these five questions can transform your approach:

Start with Why: Before introducing any activity or topic, clarify its purpose and meaning. How does it connect to children's interests or real-world relevance?

Be Intentional About What: Identify the key concepts, skills, or dispositions you hope children will develop, while remaining flexible about the path.

Expand Your How: Experiment with diverse methods beyond direct instruction. Match approaches to children's learning styles and the nature of what you're exploring.

Rethink Where: Look beyond traditional learning spaces. How might the kitchen, garden, neighborhood, or natural world enhance learning?

Honor When: Pay attention to readiness, energy patterns, and natural timing. Be willing to extend activities that engage deeply or postpone those meeting resistance.

Document Your Journey: Keep simple notes about what works and what doesn't as you apply these questions. Look for patterns in what engages particular children.

Start Small: Apply this framework to one learning area initially rather than trying to transform everything at once. Even small shifts toward more purposeful, well-timed learning make a difference.

In the next chapter, we'll explore how we create physical environments that support this approach. Spaces designed to inspire curiosity, invite exploration, and nurture development across all domains.

The Five Questions That Guide Everything We Do Why Are We Learning This? (Purpose and Meaning)What Is Worth Learning? (Content and Skills)How Do We Learn Best? (Methods That Work)Where Does Learning Happen? (Environments That Nurture)Each Child's Unique Timetable (Readiness and Rhythm)Putting It All Together: Questions in Action Your Questions, Your Learning Journey