The best toy,” Arvind Gupta says, “is one that has a bit of child in it.”
In a packed auditorium of school children, Gupta picks up an ordinary plastic straw. He cuts it while blowing into it, producing a medley of notes — a makeshift flute that sounds like magic. Moments later, he folds a piece of paper into a “flying fish” that glides through the air and lands on the floor, eliciting a collective ooohhh. These aren’t just tricks. They are, as Gupta puts it, “tools for learning, made from trash — from the world that children already inhabit.”
Arvind Gupta, a science educator and a toy-maker, delivered the talk, ‘Simple Science Toys’, as part of the Great Ideas Seminar 2025— an on-campus engagement organised by the Lodha Genius Programme (LGP). LGP is a joint initiative between the Lodha Foundation and Ashoka University. This fully funded, multi-year educational programme nurtures India’s brightest young minds from Grade 9 to Grade 12. The LGP team is a part of the Ashoka Global Research Alliances (AGRA).
From a childhood without toys to a life of tinkering
Gupta’s journey into science education didn’t begin in a lab — it began in a home without toys. Growing up in a modest household, he made do with what he found around him: bits of paper, bottle caps, plastic straws. “Play came from imagination,” he recalls. “And science, I soon realised, was everywhere.”
The pivotal moment came in the 1970s, when Gupta met Anil Sadgopal, the visionary behind the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme (HSTP), a programme designed to transform how science was taught in rural government schools. The HSTP aimed to improve science education for students in grades 6 to 8 in government schools across Hoshangabad district, Madhya Pradesh.
This encounter changed the course of Gupta’s life. He set out to reform science education for children, not by importing costly equipment, but by promoting observation, questioning, and hands-on exploration. At the time, most Indian schools lacked science laboratories. Rote learning dominated classrooms, and the education system often stifled curiosity in favour of memorisation.
Leaving a corporate career after graduating from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur), he took a year off to live in a village. There, at the weekly bazaar, he was captivated by the ingenuity embedded in ordinary objects.
All my life I’ve been making toys,” he reflected in the talk. “It’s a fun job.”
Rethinking education: Toys that teach
To the untrained eye, Gupta’s creations might look like junk: matchboxes, straws, rubber bands, old newspapers. But in his hands, they become instruments of inquiry.
Combine two matchsticks and you have a line; add a third, a triangle; four, a square — and so on, until geometry is no longer a concept trapped in textbooks but something you can build and hold. He reminds us that science and mathematics are about patterns. “It’s not about money. It’s about the joy of doing it.”
He demonstrated how to build a simple toy hand pump using only straws and bottle caps, materials that are easily available around the house. He explained that when children make it themselves, it helps them understand the concepts of valves and pressure better than most textbooks. “That’s what models do,” he said. “They bring a gleam to your eyes. When you play with them, the concepts fall into place.”
Science of inclusion
Gupta’s work is underpinned by a deep belief: science is democratic. It should be accessible to all, not just those who can afford labs or English-medium instruction.
His website is filled with hundreds of short, multilingual videos demonstrating how to build toys and has over 110 million views. His book, published by the National Book Trust, offers step-by-step instructions to make 40 such toys, almost entirely from waste.
He speaks with pride about his work with the National Association for the Blind, where he helped design tactile toys to teach science to the visually impaired children. One model had shapes cut into slippers; another used wool on velcro — making science not just visible, but touchable
Every child is a scientist,” Gupta says. “White coats have nothing to do with it.”
The most important trait, he insists, is curiosity. “The best thing a child can do with a toy is break it. That means they’re learning.”
Rote to hands-on
Gupta returns to this idea often — that science is about doing, tinkering, testing. He said the true definition of science is, “Believe nothing because your grandfather said so. Test everything against reality. If it’s true, find evidence. Authority alone is not proof.”
This spirit was echoed by the Community Science Centre in Ahmedabad, set up by Vikram Sarabhai and inaugurated by C.V. Raman. These were not elite spaces but community efforts to bring science into every home and school.
Gupta is part of this long lineage of educators who believe that doing is learning. His influences include Anil Sadgopal, the mathematician P.K. Srinivasan, and toy designer Sudarshan Khanna — all of whom saw play and learning as intertwined.
Can classrooms embrace play?
For educators and institutions, Gupta’s work serves as both an inspiration and a challenge. Can we bring curiosity and play into classrooms constrained by rigid curricula? Can hands-on, low-cost learning become the norm rather than the exception? His approach aligns closely with the vision of India’s National Education Policy, which promotes experiential and inquiry-based learning.
More importantly, Gupta invites us to rethink who gets to do science and how it is done. He places the child, the community, the street, and the home at the center as legitimate spaces for learning.
Toward the end of his session, Gupta narrates the story of Captain Gopishankar by folding a newspaper into different shapes. First, four different hats. Then a boat. And finally, a life jacket. Like all his toys, this story does more than entertain. It teaches — about imagination, intellect, design, and the power of narrative.
As he waves the boat through the air one last time, you realise: the best toy really does have a bit of child in it.
indiabioscience.org (Article Sourced Website)
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