The encyclopaedia seems to be doing wonders for the children. It offers a place where children can flip through the pages and ask about something that interests them. While the internet does the same, oftentimes it can be daunting and limitless. The encyclopaedia serves as a good scaffolding where there are some boundaries for the children to explore without being overwhelmed. Today I was trying to talk to one learner about what he was interested in and he seemed quite shy to open up. When I brought him the encyclopaedia and asked him to flip through the pages to find something he liked, he found a picture of an astronaut and wanted to talk about it.  We read about the space walk and how it happened in 1961. To give him perspective I tried to explain how long ago it was. For this we decided to work it out using subtraction. I had been trying to work with this same learner on subtraction problems and it had been quite pointless. But somehow when we were working on the problem then he was more inclined to participate and try to see how we arrived at a result. This really felt like an “Aha” moment for me. I’ve been thinking a lot about building on the learners’ own interest while still having meaningful learning and this felt like a great case where we were exploring a topic the learner was interested in while still picking up useful skills along the way.  This felt even more right when I asked the learner if he’d like to read something else. This learner who’s typically quite eager to get away and run around flipped over to another page. To make sure he wasn’t feeling any pressure I asked him if he’d like to read about it tomorrow but he insisted that we do it today. We read about the earth and we talked about our planet and solar system. Tomorrow I’m hoping to bring a model of the solar system and discuss how day and night works along with how seasons happen. I’m starting to feel much more strongly about building on the learners’ own interests. Until now there was a barrier for learners to discover what they were curious about but the encyclopaedia has been very valuable in that regard and I find a lot of learners looking at pictures and wanting to know more about those things.