Part 1 of Summer 2012 - The London Olympics

 

Niño has been dreaming big and imagining even bigger. My only regret is I am no longer as prompt with the camera as I was last year. But the Olympics have been playing big on his heart and mind as he watched the opening ceremony with wide eyed awe and wonder. And then went on to make Michael Phelps his hero and Gabby Douglas his heroine ;)

So he planned an opening ceremony with all the props at hand. A gun shot was fired with his toy gun to mark the beginning of the ceremony. He then switched off all the lights and switched on the light of his toy projector and started rotating a Rubik cube in front of the projector light in order to get a flashing disco lights effect; realized that the cube is opaque and only gets him shadows, got some Ikea translucent kind of different colored bowls and got the desired effect. He had then orchestrated a band with the instruments they have which included him on the violin and Chica on the piano and I and A were handed over maracas and tambourines. I was then duly asked to play some marching music on youtube as he handed us handouts of names of countries with their flags - which he had carefully drawn beforehand. I was to represent India, the father son duo were from USA and the sister was from Russia because she is a good gymnast. The Atlas was seen outside and this was the time I realized it had been taken out to draw Russia's flag. Finally I was asked to play the British National Anthem and the climax had to be a self done Light Saber show because of course he can't let his absolute favorite thing down by not including it in the ceremony.

And ever since Swimming competitions have been going on in the home and outside - never mind that a swimming race just means running inside the pool from the 3 feet end to the 4 feet end :) (Swimming has eluded him by far). Plans are made as the Big gang of children meet every evening either in the pool or while biking for the next day's events of their very own Olympics. Tennis, Basketball, Track and Field have all been held in one way or the other.

While I wish I had taken pictures of Niño doing all this, this year; I will share here pictures from his fascination with the Commonwealth Games held in New Delhi while we were there in Oct 2010.

Weightlifting - a hot favorite! Don't miss the expressions and the weight - 225 kgs, in case you are wondering ;)

He's a pro at getting the body language and the expressions just right! 

And these are the current cool dudes and wannabe Olympic swimmers!

Share

Of Presidents and so much more

Niño has been learning about the 44 US Presidents at school for the last month or so. And I am astonished by the fact that in just over a month's time, he now knows the name of all 44 by heart along with at least one interesting fact about each one of them, an insatiable desire to learn more and an enthusiasm to share with us everything new that he learns each day. Just before writing this, I just wrote to his music teacher who has been working with them in teaching the president song and sharing very interesting tidbits about all of them, thanking her for the brilliant way she is doing it. The children sing the song which goes like George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and so on, complete with actions like they hold up one finger for Washington because he was the first President, they make the White House with their hands for John Adams because he was the first one to stay there, they hold their hand on their heart for a President who died while in office, etc. I tried searching on you tube for the song that they have been learning at school. I couldn't find that one but I did find another very interesting one which I have linked to at the top of the post and which is being thoroughly enjoyed by both the siblings ever since!

Which makes me think how effortlessly such important information is being shared with the children. I mean my jaw literally dropped to the floor when Niño told me that Theodore Roosevelt was the President of the United States during World War II and the participating countries were Japan, Korea, France, Germany and the United States. And Japan attacked US and that's why Truman, the next American President asked for two bombs to be dropped in Japan. My mind immediately raced back to my Grade 9 classroom when I learnt about WW II and the Japan nuclear attacks and how I struggled to memorize the notes that were dictated by our History teacher. While Niño's knowledge is far from complete and may be even inaccurate in places, but at 6 years of age, teaching the children how their present day country was shaped and getting in them the voracious desire to know more is extremely commendable in my eyes. 

He shares several anecdotes like how Abe Lincoln was very lean but so strong that he once lifted a 600 lb load all by himself or that it was during Andrew Jackson was the President during whose term the train was invented. I am so glad to be learning something new almost everyday with him. And at times even ashamed that I don't remember anything about some important events like the Civil War when he talks or asks me more about them. Luckily, while at Target last week, I chanced upon a great pack of US President Flashcards in their Dollar aisle and needless to say they are being devoured like crazy by a very excited little boy who goes over the information on the behind of the pictures and remarks that James Madison shares his own birthday and to everyone's amusement, when a friend of mine playfully asked him a couple of weeks back "Whose birthday is coming up soon?" (referring to Niño's upcoming birthday in March), in all earnest he answered Abraham Lincoln's (which was the next day). 

How I wish I could do something similar for making the kids learn about our Indian Presidents and Prime Ministers. While we composed our own similar song for Indian President and we are through to President No. 4 VV Giri, Niño wanted me to also tell him something about each of them and I couldn't find much information that would interest a child, except for the Teacher's Day information about S. Radhakrishnan. When I put Indian President Song on you tube, what came up was a clip of Obama dancing funny to a hip hop song in Mumbai, India. Pretty promising! However as I write this, I realize that it would be more interesting to teach them about our Prime Ministers because Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi seem more interesting than their Presidential counterparts. Whatever little they learn at this stage is anyways good, I feel :) 

Do you know of some ways you or someone you know have shared this kind of information with their kids? Please do share :)

Share

Some recent favorite books

It has been a while since I reviewed some books that the kids have enjoyed a lot. It so happened that recently Chica and I spotted Trashy Town which used to be Niño's favorite book for a very long time. I had reviewed it and had been pleasantly surprised when the authors of the book had e-mailed me saying that they were happy to hear their book was enjoyed so much. I thought I'll just pen down for memory's sake and of course as a reference to those who happen to stumble upon the list.

A truly beautiful book to warm your heart, bring a smile to your lips and teach some very relevant  values to young children. The main premise of this book is that everyone carries an invisible bucket which fills when someone is nice or kind of them and when they are really happy and empties when someone is rude or disrespectful. And your own bucket fills or empties depending on whether you fill or empty someone else's bucket. It has been asked to read aloud many many times in our home and has also been referred to by Chica when she is trying to figure out what is making her person sad. It sensitizes the children amazingly to others feelings and encourages them to be fill more and more buckets! A must must must read!!

Oh my! Hats off to the author Herve Tullet! How can someone be so original and creative! You have to open this one to believe the magic it can create in a two dimensional book format. Press the yellow dot on the cover and open the next page to see what you did! You will see your kids' eyes open up wide and their smile widen in surprise and disbelief as they turn the pages in this one! 

A slight digression - Notice the number of exclamation marks I used in the above paragraph, consider each a sign of excellence and go get the book !!! :)

We love silly books because the kids, especially Niño, like to laugh out loud; crack silly jokes of their own by the dozen; love it when they see someone acting cheeky and this very recent gem of a find does all that and more. The cover itself speaks a lot and invites you to first open this one book even it is lying among many others. Chester, the cat who's the main character of the book, strikes off the author Melanie Watt's name and puts down his own with his signature red marker which he uses throughout the book to hijack the story totally! A very grumpy (for some reason) Niño at the beginning of the book was soon holding his tummy and rolling with laughter a few pages into it!

For me personally, a book is truly excellent, if a reluctant fiction reader like Niño picks it up himself without prompt, looks at the pictures very very carefully, reads it and keeps laughing! This is one of those rare books.

We have also immensely enjoyed the Scaredy Squirrel series by the same author.

Share

Tidbits from the very very fun last week

Dear friend Noonoo always does her best to bring me out of my slumber :) I know I had said that I would try my best to write as often as possible. Last week and the weekend were pretty busy. We had friends visiting from Minnesota who stayed with us for Saturday and Sunday. These were friends we had made when we ourselves stayed in MN and had had several fun outings together. Their kids and ours had played together when they were babies and toddlers. So a lot of last week was spent in prepping up for their visit plus the Mon-Thur driver duties of lugging both my kids to their respective camps and classes. On top of it, jumping into the pool myself to try and help V get over his fears of leaving the wall of the pool and going in the middle to practise his front and back floats. I did that last Wednesday for an hour and a half inside the pool when I knew there's a load of laundry that needs to be done, some groceries that need to be brought, a house that needs to be cleaned before the long weekend and still I did it and then was so hopelessly, utterly, wholly tired that I just collapsed for 2 hours in the afternoon and my muscles still ached when I woke up. But yeah that was me feeling frustrated as a mom watching her son struggle in the swimming pool to overcome his fears. Anyways, we are taking baby steps and I'll update when there is something to update about :)

So the said friends arrived with 3 kids in tow and much fun was had. Jiya became best friends with Arunabh as Vansh and Shreshth couldn't get enough of each other in the two days that they were together and shed copious tears when it was time to say goodbye. Vansh is counting days to the next long weekend when we can visit him in MN. We went to Navy Pier which was crowded just like Delhi is always and I enjoyed it so much. I actually crave crowds, I have noticed and enjoy them. We took a boat tour of Lake Michigan and Vansh listened very carefully to the narration for words like 300 feet deep, storm, windy and hyperventilated. He is such a cutie pie who gets nervous about little things as his knowledge about tornadoes, floods and the likes increases :) Jiya's birthday was on the same day and she entered her 5th year running, hopping, jumping and dancing to the music which played at Navy Pier all in her very very dressy outfit and being in the best of her spirit. I think I should dedicate a separate post to the person that she is, so more there. We returned very late after watching the fireworks, some time wasted because of some wrong parking by a friend who cursed his GPS a million times and drove in complete terror when he lost sight of our car and the super heavy traffic but at the end of a very very fun day. The next day everybody went to Adler Planetarium except I and Jiya who decided to stay back so Jiya could rest some. She is still very tiny and little and doesn't have the stamina to do two consecutive hectic days. So I just took her to the library for some time and she wore her crown and bangles there because she had forgotten to wear them on her birthday. Vansh was extremely animated when he returned, pouring out all that he had done and learnt on his dream visit. After some great grilling on our new Cuisinart Griddler Grill Centro which we chose from a variety of items on Ashwini completing 5 years in his organisation and have never been more happy with our choice. Its great great great, really! And some animated gupshup with the friends retired for the night.

Monday morning they left and I waited anxiously for the evening to meet one of my favoritest bloggers and friend Cee Kay. It was my first ever blog pal meet in the US and I was really looking forward to it. And the meeting was delightful. Its wonderful how love and familiarity traverses distances and makes you feel so connected to a friend. Its like you have chosen a friend because your thoughts and views match and inspite of the distance you are able to maintain the friendship and the bond even though you may not be communicating often and then when you do meet, its like you are just catching up and not like you are starting anew. I really wish I can meet more and more friends I have made this way. Ninni, her 4 year old daughter was charming and delightful. Cee herself was even better than what I had imagined her to be. Poised, gentle and just so mature and balanced. When I told Ashwini that she stopped yelling at her kids a long time ago and I bookmark her blog posts on parenting for reference, he told me I should so try doing that myself and I swear I am making a conscious effort. So your visit was just as inspiring Cee as it was fun. We were so engrossed in conversation that we forgot to take any pictures at all, such a pity :(

Anyways so that was our fun packed week and the weekend. This week I have mostly been getting over the hang over, looking at pictures and videos and have resumed my driver duties. How have you been?

Share

The world of .com

It so happened that one day my father in law's inbox was open on the desktop. He stepped away for a few minutes to attend to something else. It was during the time when IPL was going on this year. I think the Mumbai Indians team was flashing on the side of the inbox that caught Vansh's attention. He clicked on it and lo and behold. All the pictures that he could ever dream of, a very very catchy look with all the jazz, it was like a dream come true. He spent a lot of time on it looking at cricketers' profiles, snapshots of various matches, speeds of bowlers because speed fascinates him.

In more or less the same time frame, looking at his passionate interest in airplanes, airports, etc (he remembered the color of the two planes that we had taken one and a half years back from US to here, the time when the wheels folded when the planes took off, he remembered E8, the gate number from which we had boarded the plane and that was the first combination he made if you gave him magnetic letters and numbers), I searched for some take off videos and videos of inside the cockpit on youtube and showed it to him. His little yet fast paced mind put two and two together and gradually made him realize that there's an address bar where in you punch in a few letters followed by .com and what follows thereafter is nothing short of a magical journey. Ever since, there has been no looking back.

The things that he now does are rather amusing. One of his favorite thing to do remains looking at airplanes' videos on youtube. It helps that once you type in the first few letters of 'kingfisher', say 'kin...', several spellings come down below making his job super easy and rendering mom's help useless.

During the Commonwealth games here, he saw Ashwini look at the games' schedule and book tickets online and in short create magic again and so he added it to his mental list of favorites. He was often found browsing through the website clicking on various stadium names and trying to book tickets himself. Thank God he still doesn't know the concept of credit cards, for the concepts he does know, he puts them to excellent use. Like he once put in Ashwini's company name, say XYZ, in google. Unimpressed by the technical website which was the first result, he clicked on the second one which was a jobs website where you apply for jobs. He typed in his name at the correct place, our home phone number which he has recently memorized in the contact number space and XYZ where it said company's name and went on to announce smugly that he had applied for a job in papa's company.

He often visits spicejet.com or air-india.com to book tickets to Bangalore or Chennai which was where Ashwini recently travelled for some trainings. I mentioned his immense interest in KBC in my last post which is also a regular destination because he is very very keen to register me as a contestant.

And to get an opportunity to get his hands on the computer, he has become one smart negotiator knowing and implementing the tricks of persuasion, black mail, sweet talk to the hilt.

Share

The Journey to the Achievement Week

Vansh has in his school starting today what they call the achievement week, in which basically they would be tested and graded on whatever they have done throughout the year. As I and Ashwini cajoled him into learning at least 2 more rhymes out of the 20 odd rhymes, other than the ‘Aeroplane, aeroplane’ and ‘Lal peeli motor’ in a last ditch effort last evening, I realized that making him prepare for the said week has been a rather amusing experience.

- As you might have noticed, the rhymes that he did remember well are related to transport. No surprise that. Day before yesterday, I asked him to narrate the 'teddy bear, teddy bear turn around rhyme’ which he narrated as ‘teddy bear, teddy bear up in the sky; where are you going flying do high’. Basically he was just replacing the aeroplane word with the teddy bear in the ‘Aeroplane, aeroplane’ rhyme. On being asked what was he saying, he replied that the teddy bear is riding in the aeroplane. Hmmm, okay – what can one say to that except laughing at the logic!

In another instance last evening, Ashwini asked him to narrate a rhyme titled ‘2 little apples’. I’ll quote the conversation that took place :-

Vansh – 3 little monkeys jumping on the bed

Ashwini – I asked you to narrate 2 little apples

Vansh – No, 4 little monkeys …

Ashwini – 2 little apples

Vansh – No, 6 little monkeys …

Ashwini – 2 little …

Vansh – 10 little monkeys … (reminded me of the times when I tell him he’ll have to repeat a word he doesn’t remember 5 times, if he resists I go on increasing the number to 6,7,8 – its his turn now, hmm!)

Ashwini – Okay, lets just make it 2 little monkeys …

Vansh – 6 little monkeys jumping …

Chachi called the doctor …

Chacha called the doctor …

Dadi/Dada/ Papa/ Mamma called the doctor …

Us : Oh! So that was the logic behind the 6 jumping monkeys. Each one from the family ought to get a chance to call the doctor!

- I made him several worksheets for English, Hindi and Maths to practice matching the picture with the correct letter, circling the correct letter, counting and circling the correct number and the like. Many a times he liked to do his own thing with those.

This is what a typical worksheet on matching looked like. I couldn’t just give it to him and then proceed to check it some time later for that would be a maze exercise for me to see whether the picture is actually connected with the correct letter. I would have to actually look at him start from a particular picture, doodle endlessly and finally reach the corresponding letter. Normal is boring for this little fella!

He once didn’t want to work on any Maths worksheet because he was bored and said that he wanted to make one of his own. So he picked up a template and came up with this.

He made several English worksheets too at the back of the ones I gave to him to work on. I just have one picture though he made much better ones when the idea was novel to him and he drew meticulously.

The zig-zag matches with the Z, thats an umbrella matched with the U and a Race-car with the R. The big curve on the right is lots of smoke from the race car since it moves so fast.

He decided to spruce up a plain looking hurriedly made ‘What comes after’ worksheet by drawing an amusing looking Papa on it. And didn't deem the worksheet important enough to be completed, by the way.

- I am not sure if I have mentioned before that Vansh is extremely conscious of his public image, especially his image at school. I have a mighty hard time explaining that at home, he is the total opposite of the really the sweet docile boy that he pretends to be in front of friends. At PTM’s, when I and his class teacher (whom he is very very fond of and would do anything to be in her good books) exchange notes, I am like “Are you sure, you are talking about the same Vansh that I am talking about?” The difference shows in his work too. While his class work is immaculate and like his teacher claims among the first one to be finished, he likes to do his own thing taking his own time at home. On a regular basis, he does not write the counting in the correct order. He’ll first write say the 20’s line, then spend some time thinking where the 70 would come and then write the line backwards till 61 and so on. While practicing to draw a garden scene for his art test the next day, this is what he came up with at school and then at home. The school one is complete with a shining sun, trees and flowers and a bunny. He wanted to just make a big sun sitting in the garden and kept drawing rays of the sun.Then he wanted to draw a dog in its kennel which is what that square is.

Share