June didn’t need a headline event to be memorable. It filled itself with the smaller stuff instead — a debate that left grown adults stumped, a scientist answering questions she didn’t see coming, a room full of six year olds sitting perfectly still and a batch of three year olds discovering a whole new world, once they walked inside the school gates all by themselves.
Did your child come home racing this month, bursting to tell you something before they had even kicked off their shoes? You are about to find out exactly why because there is actually a lot more to that story.
So here it is, June at Walnut, one happy story at a time. This edition of Nutshell shares that fuller feeling. Grab a cup of chai, coffee or anything else you like and settle in. You are going to enjoy this one!
A day that said “Shake It Off”
Sleeping bags? Check. Loud music? Check. A hall full of teenagers with absolutely no intention of resting even for a moment? Big check! Our Std. 9 and 10 students across all three campuses had their much awaited slumber party this June, with girls and boys each getting their very own turn on campus. And oh, what a day it was!
The music went up and stayed up until their feet got tired. Games rolled from one corner of the hall to the next. Best of all, students who normally just wave at each other between classes spent the whole time laughing in the same circle. Friend groups, divisions, all the usual lines? Gone for the day!
That is the real value of a day like this. It is not just the games. It is what happens between them.
And here’s the thing — a slumber party at Walnut is never a one off treat for a lucky batch. It sits right there in the calendar as a planned event, one grade at a time. So Std. 5, 6, 7 and 8, get ready! You are up next. Has your child been asking when their turn arrives? Now you can tell them, the wait is nearly over.
🎭 Explore our complete extra curricular programme →What history books only describe
Cultural connect: Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj Jayanti
A textbook can tell a child what a king did. It takes a lot more to make them feel and actually understand why it mattered.
This June, our students marked Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj Jayanti with dance performances — weeks of rehearsal poured into a few minutes that didn’t feel like a performance at all. For that short while, the room felt like it was part of history. We remember reading about him in books. What we remember reading, they showed us standing on a stage in their own unique way.
Watch our students carry the legacy forward with pride:
Wakad campus · Watch nowThe conversation that freezes most adults
In-house debates
Quick question: is India’s tax system fair? Take your time. Most of us need a good, long pause before we answer! Well, that is the very question our students took on this June and here is the fun twist. They did not even get to pick the side they argued!
One student argued, in all seriousness, that the government should charge more tax, not less because that’s what pays for the roads, the hospitals and the everyday facilities we all quietly complain about. Std. 9 and 10 went further, into a hijacking negotiation. One student made the case that India should never have negotiated at all: the men who were released went on to cause exactly the harm the deal was meant to prevent, in the later years.
Now for the part that stumps most grown adults. Nobody argued the side they actually thought was right. A coin toss decided who defended what! They had to research both sides, build the case and defend it in front of a live audience, whether they agreed with it or not.
Lawyers do this. Diplomats do this. And now, so do our twelve year olds!
How do they pull this off? Speaking is a weekly class from Nursery to Std. 10. Mental ability and strategic thinking each have their own slot on the timetable. So a child arguing tax policy without notes is not a fluke. It is nine years of practice paying off!
Fair warning: the next time a tricky question pops up at the dinner table, do not be surprised if your child answers first!
Know more about the speaking programme →Ten minutes of stillness
Yoga Day
Ask a six year old to sit perfectly still for ten whole minutes. Sounds impossible, right? Well, on Yoga Day, they did exactly that.
Breathe in. Breathe out. No fidgeting. No distraction. Just a room full of children holding a pose. People think yoga is about flexibility. It is closer to patience and patience taught early enough stops feeling difficult and starts feeling like a habit. Calm does not arrive on its own. Not even in a six year old. It gets built, one steady breath at a time.
And here is what makes us proud. Most of the world does one yoga session a year and calls it International Yoga Day. At Walnut, yoga is one of the sports every single child trains in, every single day! No exceptions, no opt outs, no swapping it for extra revision. For us, Yoga Day was a demonstration, not a one day performance!
When silk meets science
Walnut WISE: Dr. Anuya Nisal
Ever wondered if silk could actually heal a wound? Our students did not just wonder. They went ahead and asked a real scientist!
On 23 June, students at Shivane met Dr. Anuya Nisal, a scientist, a researcher and the founder of Serigen, a Pune startup that uses silk proteins to heal wounds, repair bones and regrow tissue inside the human body. Yes, real silk, doing real medicine!
She spoke about Serigen’s silk based products, many of them already helping patients in hospitals across India. And then the floor opened, and oh, the questions came pouring in! How does silk heal a wound? Does the body treat it differently? What happens to the silk once the tissue grows back, does it simply disappear? One question led to another!
That was the best bit of the whole hour. Not just the talk but our students digging in to know more and more. This was never meant to be a one way session. And it did not stay one.
“It told us how important a small silkworm is,” one said afterwards, “It is so inspiring that something so small can save hundreds of lives and heal bones and big wounds.”
That is curiosity. Given room to grow. Exactly as it should be.
Students at Shivane were in the room for it. Every other Walnut student got the next best thing. A full recording. Shared across all campuses.
Watch the session highlights🎙️ About Walnut WISE Talks
Dr. Nisal’s session was the first of a new series we’re calling Walnut WISE Talks and the idea behind it is a simple one.
Our parents are doctors, founders, researchers, artists, engineers and educators — people who have built things, led teams and solved hard problems for a living. Rather than have our students read about work like that in a textbook, we’d rather bring the people who actually do it into the room and let the students ask them anything.
For Std. 1 to 7, the talks are stories: someone interesting, talking about something they love. From Std. 8 onwards, we angle them towards careers, because that’s the age at which students start wondering, quietly, what they might do with their own lives.
If you have a story worth telling, or you know someone who does, we’d like to hear from you. The next Walnut WISE talk could well be at your child’s campus — and it could be you at the front of the room.
Our own scoreline this season
Athletic highlights
While everyone was glued to the FIFA World Cup, our students were busy building a winning streak of their own!
June turned into a genuinely proud month on the athletics front, with a wave of wins rolling in across badminton, karate and roller skating, from district events all the way up to international level championships. A few of our students are now in the running for national and international selection later this year!
And none of it happened by chance. Behind every single medal are early mornings, missed weekends and a whole lot of quiet, patient effort.
So cheer for whichever team you love this World Cup season. Just know that Walnut has been building a brilliant scoreline all along, with plenty more still to come!
- 👉 Individual Sports Championships 2026–27
- 👉 Individual Sports Achievements Over the Years
- 👉 Team Sports Achievements Over the Years
And this is just the beginning. With many more sports events and tournaments scheduled across all campuses, parents can look forward to seeing even more Walnut sports highlights in the coming days.
To explore Walnut’s comprehensive sports programme, check out: 🔗 Walnut School Daily Sports
A report card you can actually feel
Fun Time: An Electric Saturday
Most schools tell you how your child is doing. Walnut would rather let you feel it and that is the entire idea behind an Electric Saturday.
This time, families spent a morning together doing something a report card simply cannot capture. In the library, parents and children shared one sheet of paper and a box of crayons, building a garden together as a teacher told its story in pieces, working out where the tree and the pond should go before a single crayon touched the page. Then came a game built entirely on trust. One parent, blindfolded, stepped onto a track of tiles, guided only by their own child’s voice. Left. Right. Stop. For once, the child gave the instructions, and the parent had no choice but to follow, no peeking, no taking it back.
That role reversal is the whole point. It is not a score or a grade. It is a parent walking blind across a room and realising, step by step, just how much their child has actually grown.
🎭 Explore our complete extra curricular programme →Small shoes, big steps
Baby Walnut: First Steps
June also welcomed a brand new batch of three and four year olds walking through Walnut’s gates for the very first time.
If your child started at Baby Walnut this year, we do not need to tell you about those first two weeks. You lived every minute of it! You probably hovered near the gate a little longer than you meant to, just waiting to hear that the tears had stopped.
And they did, mostly, though it was not always when you wanted! Some mornings began with a few tears and ended with a peaceful nap on a teacher’s shoulder. A few smiles were clearly forced and simply for show. By day ten, those same smiles were 100% real!
Somewhere in those two weeks, our littlest students simply settled in. No big dramatic moments, no magic switch. Just gentle, patient care from people who have welcomed this exact batch of nerves, every single June, for many years now.
Settling in usually gets treated as something that happens to a child rather than something a school actively designs for. But at Walnut we run a dedicated 7 to 10 day settling in period for every new child, built into the calendar rather than left to chance. That’s how most children are smiling by the end of it.
Here is to a whole year of many more first steps. Small, nervous, excited and wonderfully real!
Watch their journey of settling inUntil next month
And that was June! Loud, emotional and full of moments we will not forget. A child guiding a blindfolded parent with nothing but their voice. A coin toss deciding which side of a debate to defend. A three year old waving goodbye at the gate and for the very first time, truly meaning it!
None of this shows up on a report card. None of it turns into a number. But this, right here, is the real work of a school year. Not just finishing a syllabus but building the everyday confidence that lets a child own a stage, spend a full day away from home and walk into class without holding anyone’s hand.
That is what we hope this edition gave you. A little peek into Walnut this month and a little of what it felt like to be right here with us.
See you in the next one.
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Stay connected
— Team Walnut