Young SoulTales Winter Retreat - Kamshet | Ages 7-11
Your child has probably never been given a job that mattered.Not a chore where the outcome was really yours. A job - where an adult was depending on them, and nobody stepped in to finish it.Three nights in Kamshet. Twenty-four children, ages seven to eleven.No phones. No parents. Nothing done for them.What actually happensEvery day they make something, and every day it gets harder. Thursday is small and quick - everyone finishes something within twenty minutes, so everyone starts from "I made a thing." Friday the work turns large and physical: clay worked on the ground, bamboo, rope, knots that hold or don't - and then it's tested. Does it stand? Does it carry? Does it take the weight? Most of it fails the first time. That's not a bad afternoon, that's the whole design.By Saturday they're working in groups of eight, building something together and testing it in shallow water. Each child also spends twenty minutes on their own that day - in sight of an adult, out of sight of each other. For most, a first.One group cooks dinner for the whole camp, every night. Not helping the cook - responsible for it. If they're slow, everybody eats late, including the adults.Sunday morningYou drive up from Pune. There's no slideshow, and I won't stand in front of you and tell you how your child did. They show you. What they built is standing there. Each child shows you one thing they couldn't do on Thursday.Why it's built this waySomewhere around seven or eight, children stop believing praise. They've worked out that "well done" is free - that adults say it regardless. What they haven't stopped believing is evidence. So nothing here is judged. Nobody's work is held up as the best. A raft either holds or it sinks, and that verdict comes from the raft, not from me.Who's running itI am Preeti Toraskar. I hold a Master's in Expressive Movement Therapy, trained under Dr Daniel Siegel, and was part of the Transform Trauma cohort at Oxford 2025 and 2026 with Bessel van der Kolk, Esther Perel and Richard Schwartz. Before this, I spent eighteen years as a spatial designer.There are adults living with the children throughout, plus a photographer. One adult sleeps close to each group, and someone is awake and reachable all night.I take every enquiry call myself. Not a coordinator, not an office.What's includedThree nights' stay, all meals, return transport from Pune, all materials, facilitation, water safety equipment, first aid and insurance.
