Mum Paints Lives

Holi Faces Accordion Book + Folk Group

2012-03-01T13:22:00.001+05:30

In the previous post I wrote about Mishu's current love for portraits and Holi being just around the corner he likes to paint Holi faces too.
Yesterday he worked on this Holi Accordion book with painted faces. He drew portraits of kids and painted them with poster colours. While he was painting I hinted that a portrait can have more than one colour but he was not really interested and I am happy that he didn't change his artwork by my ideas and rather stuck to his imagination.

After the colours were dry he added features to them. Have you noticed HOLI written on the book (one alphabet on each page)?

Holi Folk Group

These people came at our doorstep yesterday when we were working on more artworks for Holi and added to the festive mood. They were basically from Rajasthan. They sang and danced. Mishu was really pleased and happy with their short visit.

I am happy that they allowed me to take pictures. I loved their beautiful clothes and jewellery.

Faces, Faces and Faces + Holi Faces

2012-02-29T02:03:00.000+05:30

Drawing a Face

Cutting out the drawing to make a puppet

I had shared the above two pictures on my Facebook page. I shifted his table and chair in the lawn. He has been drawing faces for past one month now but last week it became too much. I remember telling him one evening to come out with me for a walk because he drew for hours. The next day I moved his art material out so that he can breathe fresh air, enjoy sun and listen to birds.

Laughing Man with very big teeth

This month I bought a notebook for him. I thought I should let him use notebooks rather than just plain drawing pads. Just for fun I drew a face there. Those days we were talking about emotions, I wanted to show him how different faces look with different emotions. I drew one and he hasn't stopped. Laughing man 1 and 2 are from the first few faces he drew.

Laughing Man with very big teeth and one eye

Now this is something I am very happy and proud of. These portraits are special to me. On left page is MUM that's me and on right he drew PAPA. He drew the right one first, then he said, " Now I want to draw YOU". Look closely I am wearing ear rings and nose ring too. When he finished drawing mine I asked if he wants to draw Papa's too. He pointed at the drawing on the right hand and informed me that he has already done that. Can you spot the difference in hair? According to him our hair look different. And if you think the two lines are to show our necks you are wrong like I was. He says these are legs. :))))))))

Mum and Papa

Now that's him. His first Self Portrait. He has made his hair long.

Yes that's a permanent marker (photo below) and I am allowing him to use all the four colours I have. Why not? I have never allowed him to use these and told him that they are not for him. But every other day all he wanted to use was that thick marker that's on the high cabinet. We talked about the rules of using these markers e.g don't keep paper or book on sofa while drawing with the permanent markers. He is doing great, he is motivated and happy drawing with these.

Monsters with one eye and big teeth

Curly hair

Aunty with bindi, nose ring, ear rings

These are the puppets made by him. Yes he made these. I know they just look like a paper taped to a stick, but for him and me this is a big achievement. He draws a face, cut it and uses a tape. Though I had to hold the tape for him to cut with scissors as I saw him struggling with tape and scissors for long time. I'll be buying a tape cutter for him this week.

This was entirely my idea to turn this blue monster into stuffed puppet.

Little boy at work.

HOLI is almost there. We have started talking about Holi. I am not surprised that Mishu doesn't remember Holi from last year. We didn't play Holi, we both were in Gurgaon and my husband was working in Jaipur. Mishu didn't like to see the colours on his fingers, so putting colour on face or playing with it was something that could made him cry.
Even now he has clearly given instructions to me that he'll not allow any one to put colours on his body or face. Let' see :))))
I googled images of Holi celebrations to show him how Holi is celebrated. He saw people all covered in colours. He liked them, laughed at the pictures and thought that they all looked very funny. So the next step was to paint what he saw. Below are the faces of two boys(left ones) and a girl(right one) after they had played holi. He has written HOLI on a red paper. He asked me to spell holi for him. He got it correct ( from left to right and alphabets in order) in the second try. There is a white paper too (cropped in the photograph), he copied me when I was making a list of menu and activities we can do for holi. So that's his list.

Holi Faces

He wanted to convert one of the boys into a stuffed paper toy. Mishu likes to use stapler and again just like permanent markers I was not allowing him to use before. Often I see stapler in his hand asking me to use it. So now he is allowed. Can u see the dots around the face? I put these for him to know where to staple. He did it all (I helped him by holding the toy) except the last few to close it properly.

Paper stuff toy

Kid made bunting

2012-02-24T11:23:00.000+05:30

Yesterday's cut and paste strips of paper are turned into a bunting today. I punched holes in the strips and we both decided that we'll add pasta to the bunting. Mishu is trying to use thread and needle these days. He likes beading and was interested in passing pasta and strips through needle and thread himself. I was asked to pick the pastas from the bowl and strips from the table while he made the bunting.

Encouraging use of scissors and glue

2012-02-23T14:42:00.000+05:30

This is Mishu's hard work since morning. I am encouraging use of glue and scissors practise. He is trying and doing great. The strips with buttons and glue are cut by him. I asked him to cut paper into long strips and he cut many. Later glued buttons, shells and stars on some of them. We are waiting for all this to get dried. Thanks to the weather it will not take long. We are going turn these into craft things.

Our Nature Walk

2012-02-11T15:00:00.001+05:30

This moment

2012-01-27T13:29:00.001+05:30

Visitor in our backyard.

Easy Vegetable Sculpture

2012-01-16T14:22:00.000+05:30

Pin It

Sorry for the poor quality of pictures. I took these at night.

Vegetables + Toothpicks = Sculptures + Sense of Achievement

Didn't know before that this simple activity can keep him occupied and happy. He was proud of his sculpture, so am I.

Work in progress

I gave Mishu Cauliflower Florets, Carrot, Onions, Big and small brinjals, Lemons and Lady Fingers. He told me that he wouldn't add cauliflower to his sculpture as florets would make it look funny.

Where to add this brinjal so that everything doesn't fall apart?

D is for...

2012-01-15T15:49:00.000+05:30

Slowly and steadily we are coming back to our curriculum. Yes we are still on Alphabet D. For past two months I was not following the curriculum with Mishu. We enjoyed this phase. We worked on some projects, read books, went for nature walks, played and I let him be free most of the time. But he has been asking and requesting me for that structured way of starting school for past some days. He seems to be missing that routine. So from tomorrow (Monday) we'll start our school the way we did when we were in Jaipur. However I'll not allow the curriculum to take over, we'll have fun and just enjoy.

I made alphabet D with homemade playdough two days back. We hunted for the animals that begin with D in our basket. So here we have Dinosaurs, Ducks, Donkey, Deer(with broken antlers) and Dolphin.

Mishu decided to add a biker to it. And started singing Biker, Biker..Duh, Duh Duh.

On the right hand, that's Mishu's attempt of rolling the market bought play dough and shaping it into Alphabet D.

Our Nature Walk

2012-01-14T14:14:00.000+05:30

"Never be within doors when you can rightly be without."- Charlotte Manson

We love to feed birds. We carry seeds and bird food from home to the nature park. We carried bajra and dry poha this time, we enjoyed feeding birds and squirrels.

We have fed squirrels from our hands before. The other day we carried banana chips and peanuts, we were amazed to see how comfortable squirrels were in our presesnce and ate banana chips from our hands. But this time they were not coming near us to eat seeds. After trying many times Mishu lost patience and shared his Oreo with them.(photograph below)

The picture above was inspiration for the zentangle inspired art (below). I love art and maintaing a nature journal for recording our nature walks is my becoming new passion.

this moment

2012-01-13T11:52:00.000+05:30

Mishu has recently started going for skating classes. He loves it.

Mishu with his instructor

He has shown keen interest in skating and especially in joining classes since he was two and a half years old. So we gifted him these skates on his third birthday (Nov 2011).

Boy and his Blocks

2012-01-12T12:08:00.002+05:30

Just like all the kids Mishu also likes to play with blocks. He has been making things out of blocks for past some months now. I have taken pictures of some of them.

A Camel. Isn't it perfect?

A Gun.

He said it's a Helicopter.

Helicoptor. helicoptor.......up in the sky. :)

Bow and arrow.

This is from yesterday morning. A drill machine. He asked me to cover my ears because his drill machine would be making lot of noise.

All of you please cover your ears too. My boy is at work.

I thought these are shades or glasses. How wrong I was! He told me he's getting his eyes tested. Surprisingly he has never been to an eye specialist. Probably the inspiration came from television.

Our Nature Walk

2012-01-11T18:37:00.000+05:30

Smiling in 2012!

2012-01-04T13:49:00.001+05:30

Mishu: Mum I drew C.

Happy New Year everyone! We are having easy and relaxed days here. Though I do panic at times when I realise that we are way behind in our curriculum. Thanks to Mishu who makes me smile from time to time by showing me that he's still learning (without a curriculum).

Body Tracing: Work in Progress
We started new year by body tracing and Mishu painted it. We'll be adding finishing touches in few days.

Easy and quick word cards

2011-12-24T14:57:00.002+05:30

These are some of the word cards that Mishu read today. I made these cards when we were moving from Jaipur and while I was setting my house here in Gandhinagar.

They look rough and not very neat but they have helped me to maintain Mishu’s reading habit. I have neatly written cards (on ivory sheet) too but these are the ones that are mostly used. Just cut cards from cereal or biscuit boxes and write with a marker. Done! Something that has helped him in reading and getting interested in reading is that I write the words from the book he’s currently interested in. For example if he’s interested in “Go dog, go” then I write words from that book on the cards. Words are written in uppercase just because he still has confusion between some alphabets in lowercase.

Growing love for nature

2011-12-22T15:10:00.000+05:30

I can clearly see Mishu falling in love with nature. He enjoys our nature walks and always keen to go to the nature park. I feel blessed to have a big nature park near my house. In coming days I’ll be sharing photographs from our walks.

Mishu and I like to look at trunks of trees to see different textures and patterns. We keep looking up in the sky to see how tall a tree is and how beautiful the branches and leaves look up there.

We even like to hug trees when we find any cute, funny, beautiful or sometimes just like that.

We even get attracted to trees without leaves.

Okay! So now our necks are aching after looking up high for long and let's look for intresting textures down under the trees.

Let's Learn to write

2011-12-21T14:21:00.004+05:30

Mishu is getting intrested in writing. I thought it would be difficult to teach a kid how to write. I am happy that I have been proved wrong. He is writing alphabet A.Today I am trying to see if he gets intrested in writing other alphabets too.

Our Nature Table: Photographs

2011-12-19T16:53:00.000+05:30

Can you see the dead dragonfly?

Butterfly wing,shells, the black and red seeds we collected from a kind of shrub during our three month stay in Gir forest and a moth

I have more than one place to store nature goodies in my home.

A shoe box to collect peacock feathers that we bring from our nature walks

This box has piegon feathers I have collected during our stay in Agra, Gurgaon and Jaipur. This fact maked me laugh!

And I have other spots (other than nature table) to display our finds from nature. This is a high cabinet and it also serves as my drawing table whole day. My desk in my bedroom has more nature things on diplay but right now it's not ready to be photographed. :)

Just Facilitate and Forget the rest!

2011-12-13T14:08:00.001+05:30

Today morning I decided to paint on a larger surface. I have been doodling and making some zentangle inspired art lately on big and small sketch books but today I decided to attach a big sheet to the board that has been neglected for years. With a dog and a three year old boy in my home I was painting and drawing by keeping my art materials on a high cabinet or on the microwave in my kitchen. But with a big sheet I couldn’t find a place other than the one you see in the photograph.

Flowers are on my mind these days so I started by painting some circles on the sheet with my new set of artist water colors by my side. I felt the need to drink some tea.

When I returned from my kitchen with a cup of green tea in my hand, a wave of ideas in my head and a heart that is happy realizing that I have finally started working on my dream of being an artist, I saw this. Mishu was sitting painting on yellow circles. I took a deep breath and went to see the lines he was painting.

Was I angry? Did frustration creep inside my voice when I chatted with him? The answer is no. He was not really interested in painting of late but today he enjoyed. He told me that my set of colors is good and he likes it. As a parent I have realized that when I expect him to do something or in a certain way it never works. However when he gets an environment or sees someone else doing that particular task he wants to try, to understand whether he likes or dislikes it. He tries to experiment, makes his own mistakes, succeeds, fails or gets frustrated. And this is very important for a child to have his own choices, likes and dislikes, have his/her own pace and to have their own personality. So from now on I am reminding myself to JUST FACILITATE and forget the rest.

Play Box: Construction Site

2011-12-05T16:35:00.001+05:30

I set up this construction play site for Mishu .The pictures shows all the things I kept there. I fill all the toys and play things back inside the tub when he is done playing with them and set it again when he asks for it. This is his play box for the month.

Peacock Feathers on our Nature Table

2011-11-25T20:12:00.001+05:30

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
www.soulemama.com/soulemama

Crochet Cap

2011-10-14T23:16:00.000+05:30

I finished my first crochet project for this season. This is a darling crochet shell cap that I crocheted for Mishu. He was very excited to see the colours of wool I took out from my box bed to decide upon the projects for this season. He chose this colour and asked me to make a cap. I was thrilled. I just followed this video. I love the videos by Teresa as she takes us through the complete journey (including tricks and tips) while working on any crochet project. She is one the big reasons why I love crocheting and plan to crochet in future. I started learning last year and have to learn a lot.

New State, New City

2011-10-13T12:14:00.001+05:30

A photograph of Mishu when he wraped himself in the packing material. I clicked similar photo of him when we moved from Gurgaon.

Last two weeks have been very busy for us as we moved from Jaipur to Gujrat. We knew we’ll be relocating but things got finalized at Rohit’s workplace last month only. I don’t mind moving from one place to another even at a few months gap but this time moving from Jaipur was not exciting at all. I met a superb person there and she has made a deep impact on my life. I found it really hard to accept the fact that I’ll not be able to meet her now in the park or at our houses.

My husband chose to drive from Jaipur to Gujrat. I was very skeptical about covering 700km in a car with a kid but the roads and the view outside my car window proved me wrong.

We stayed at Rohit’s Uncle’s house in Ajmer for a night. Mishu enjoyed meeting them again. He made friends with their pet tortoise. It was a very short visit, wish we could spend more time with them.

For now we are in the hotel and will be spending at least one more week here. This is our school corner in the hotel room.

Here is Mishu (looking so little) trying to play Billiards in the hotel.

C is for.....

2011-09-29T22:35:00.002+05:30

Spin art using Cabbage base

Printing Cabbage. We tried printing Cucumber too but didn't get good results.

Mum tried too.

Cabbage Prints

Painting with Corn Cobs.

I made sand dough. But the dough didn't work well for the Cave. It was heavy and kept falling down. Using plain sand and water might give better results. Mishu decorated the cave with shells and glass beads.

C is for Cave

Cardamom and Cumin

Set up for Mishu

B is for Bud!

2011-09-19T23:45:00.000+05:30

So you have already scrolled down to see the bud. Did you find it? Read to see what happened to the bud.

We went to collect leaves and flowers in the park last week. Mishu decided that he’ll arrange them on the table. When he was almost done I heard, “Throw it!”. I went to see what he wanted to throw. And it was a Bud! I said to myself, “This boy is going to turn three soon and I haven’t told him about a bud and not even showed him one!”.

I swear. I swear. I didn't give a 15 minute speech. I just spoke two sentences and he was off to play with his toys.

After two minutes I came to say, “Hey Mishu! Let’s open the bud to see what’s inside!”

This is what I saw. A crane had come to lift the bud and to throw it into the dustbin.

Did I tell you that he used to treat flowers the same way some months back? But things have changed here!

Alphabet B Lapbook

2011-09-17T13:54:00.001+05:30

It’s the first lapbook I have made and we absoloutely love it. Making a lapbook always looked like a big task to me. But after we did Alphabet B for a week I had mini books (downloded from differnt websites and printed), pictures, colouring sheets, cards, rhyme sheets and work sheets stuffed in a folder. I was sure that I just can't continue storing our learning materials like this. I decided to stick pictures in mini books. Mishu was very happy to see the mini books I made and then I realized that it was time to stick all in a folder. Lapbooking is so easy and fun. I made this lapbook to store loose pieces of paper in an organised way. But now i feel that it's also a great way to record memories, review what we did and find everything at one place.

Open the flaps to reveal the Mini Books.

We did five rhymes when we did alphabet B.
1. Row, Row, Row your Boat.
2. I am bringing home a baby bumble bee. He can't stop laughing when I sing it to him. I have sung it umpteenth times. I have to stop singing when his stomach pains because of laughing.
3. Ba ba Black sheep. That's everyone's favrouite
4. Little boy blue. He learned the word haystack from this. One afternoon he lied on the bed with his head in my lap. He looked at me and said, " Mum, I am Boy and You are HAYSTACK" (Gosh! I need to reduce)
5. Waves splash back and forth.

He sings 'Street' instead of stream.

Mishu isn't very fond of this one.

Mishu knows more boats other than these. I just could not find the pictures then.

He knows about these games from books, television and from his visits to the park. He tries boxing on me often. While we were talking about these sports Mishu learned another word "Net". The other day he was telling me his experience of watching kids playing volleyball and badminton. He said," They were hitting the ball on the cloth". I knew what he was talking about!

Recently I had introduced Banyan tree as our national tree and he remembers banana tree from his alphabet picture book. I have added pictures of leaves, it was my idea. Recently I have seen him giving attention to leaves of trees and plants when we go to the park. He touches them, says,"these are leaves" and feels the texture. Though it happens just for a minute or so.

The middle flap can be opened and I have pasted more mini books here.

Oops! Forgot to label these. Long time back I made Alphabet Book for mishu. These are from that book. Yes I destroyed it.:) It was not phonetically correct.

The curriculum I am using suggests to introduce one new animal and bird that goes with the Letter of the Week. I had no plans of introducing so many things this time but next year. However, I had a picture of Basking Shark and Butterfly fish. And...and....ok so I have to confess now. I don't know much about fish,trees, many animals and yes flowers too.

So I decided to watch some videos on YouTube to gather some basic facts about Basking shark and Butterfly Fish. This was not for Mishu but for myself. But we watched videos together. He put up questions like what do they do? What do they eat? He loved colours of Butterfly Fish. He got to learn a new word- Gills.
I hadn't decided to make a lapbook or even a mini book then. When next day he brought the picture of Basking Shark from my folder and showed me where the Gills are, I felt that I should have a record of these things too. I am not telling him that B is for Basking Shark, but I wanted to keep a record of that evening when we watched gigantic Basking shark swimming with it's mouth wide open and the astonishing beauty of Butterfly fish.

We have a Buddha idol in our house. While we looked around in the house for things that begin with B, I spotted the idol. It's a little wooden idol and Mishu has seen it in the house always. After we talked that Buddha also starts with B Mishu developed a strange liking for that idol. I heared him singing, " Budhhe, budhhe. budhhe", one day. And I was taken aback. I felt so bad and had no idea as to where he picked this word as it sounded Budhhe (the indecent way of calling an old man) and not Buddha. After probing a little he brought the idol; he made me laugh.
Some day he made it sleep and fed milk too. I told him about Buddhist temples, I guess we should watch a video on this.

This is a shape book and again pictures of words with starting B sound are there. Mishu likes the Big Barn Farm on Cebebeies.

Accordion book: He already knew these words except baker. Sometimes we don't realise that our kid doesn't know a very common word or thing. He had lot of questions regarding the work of a baker. Though I have answered all his queries, still I feel I should take him to my husband's hotel or a local bakery to show him a real baker.

Oops! A Brocolli got in there. We didn't cover Br and Bl words. Though Mishu told me that Black begins with B the other day.

Flap book: I knew he will read when I'll write the words this way and I was right he's trying.

Shape book: A simple book that says I love yellow balloon, I love green balloon....

Wish I had some funky pictures of bugle and bongo so that you could also visualise the fun we had one afternoon we spent watching a video of bugle call and trying to copy a teacher who was giving lessons on Bongo to beginners. We hear scary bugle calls that Mishu makes, often in the house.

Mishu knows Band from a book. I had cut this picture of a band ( Indian ocean, when they performed in Jaipur) from the newspaper months back we talked about the instruments they were playing.

Mishu was thrilled to see people dancing (bottom right corner) and tried to copy them. Mishu has looked closely at a trumpet once when we walked past an Indian wedding band.

Shape book (it's a mouth): Mishu has never eaten a beetroot. So I have told him that next time I'll see it in the market I'll buy it for me. It's very tasty and I'll cook it nicely for Mishu. Mishu gave no reply, no reaction either. Days after this we opened this book for the first time. And.....

Mishu: (Pointing at Beetroot) I'll not eat this!
Mum: What's this?
Mishu: I'll not eat this. I'll eat bananas and Burger.
Mum: Alright! You don't need to eat it. Do you know what this is?
Mishu: No, no ..Beet. But I'll eat bananas and Burger. I have to go to Ec Donlads.(He calls it Ec Donalds instead of Mc Donald's)

I have pasted an envelope on the back to store these:

1. Writing sheets that he'll use some day. Artwork (Not much here, he didn't want to)

2. Word cards.
3. I have kept a sheet in the envelope to jolt down the ideas that I come across for Alphabet B.

Though we are doing alphabet C these days but we continue to discover more words that start with B.

Learning Continues: This week Mishu discoverd that Bedroom and Batting also begin with B. Together we realised that Bud, Bucket, Bathroom, Bowling, Basket begin with B.

The two new books we added in our book basket.

Special thanks to
http://www.letteroftheweek.com/
http://abcteach.com/
http://www.first-school.ws/INDEX.HTM
http://www.kidzone.ws/
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/
http://www.starfall.com/
http://prekinders.com/
http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/

Shared it with Play Academy

PreK Year 1:Week 1

2011-08-29T10:39:00.005+05:30

Few weeks back Mishu asked me to sing a song about hot air balloons (He does that often. He picks up a theme or word and asks me to sing a rhyme or song on it). So I googled it and stumbled upon Brightly Beaming Resources. This website put all my confusions in planning a curriculum for Mishu to an end. I was planning a curriculum for months but wasn’t able to achieve a satisfactory plan and structure. I really needed a well thought and tried curriculum as I am a new homeschooling mom and moreover I don’t have any prior experience of teaching kids of Mishu’s age. I have chosen their Preparatory and letter of the Week Curriculums. I have made some changes in the curriculum. I’ll put the curriculum together in my next post.

I am happy the way we started home school last week and I am getting prepared for this week but my heart is very sad. My husband is in terrible pain and these are very difficult times for him and us. I mentioned earlier that he has kidney stones and this month has been worst in terms of his health and work.

I am sharing our first week of home school. Mishu likes this kind of structured learning and waits for school to start (even on Sunday). I'll put posts here once every week and I am posting pictures of Mishu's activites on our Facebook Page regularly.

We were supposed to make a learning poster for the week but I decided to use our refrigerator for displaying the themes and other study material. So I kept removing and adding things here. Was it a good idea? No. All the time Mishu ran away with pictures, sheets and cards I had put. I found them in the weird places and corners in our house (One day my husband called me from office to tell that the picture of cow and calf was in his lunch bag). So this week I’ll make a learning poster.

I have posted the pictures of almost all the study materials we used for the week. These will go in their respective lap books. I’ll make separate lap books for each alphabet (Hindi and English). I love lap books and have been planning to make for many months now (please read one and a half years). I feel these will help Mishu when we’ll review what we learned; it’s a great way to record child’s learning and work. Plus a lot of information can be found at one place.

Letter of the week (English): A

Things we collected from the house that start with short a sound.Apple, Animals, Alphabets, Ambulance and a book about an astronaut. He thought of keeping some learning materials like cards, coloring sheets and rhyme sheets too. Mishu loved the song Alligator Pie!

Our cards of short a sound words

Coloring sheets

Pages of Letter A book. I found on Star fall

I slipped the colouring sheets in plastic covers so that they can be reused. And yes we read Ten Apples on top by Dr. Suess.

This is Animal matching game I made for Mishu long time back. I bought two identical sheets of stickers and stick on cards to get two sets.

Mishu took letter of the week too seriously and grew antlers.

I tied sticks on a hair band

Mishu finger painted an apple tree

Mishu's art work: Apple tree and an apple. He is looking at his Hey Diddle Diddle Mini Book

Signing: Mishu is a signing baby and he has been signing since he was six months old. Till January 2011 he could sign lot of words but when he started talking we somehow forgot signing, I just continued to sign alphabets to him. But recently I checked the website I used to refer for signing and signs, it said that signing to preschoolers has lot of benefits. Mishu can tell correctly all the alphabets when I sign to him but for a month now he’s been telling me that he wants to do hand actions for alphabets himself.

So this year I’ll take signing further where I’ll teach Mishu how to sign more words and help him to sign alphabets himself.

Mishu is signing Alligator here.

Alligator, Step1

Alligator, Step 2

Mishu is signing Alphabet A here.

Letter of the week (Hindi): Ga (Oops! I just couldn’t figure out how to write in Hindi here)

This year we'll just focus on letter recognition in Hindi. I have picked 26 alphabets from Varnmala, our activities will revolve around those and rest of the alphabets we'll cover in Prek year2.

We have a Gaay, Gulab, Gamla, Girgit( Chamaleon Book) and Gajar here. Gend (Ball) and Gond(glue) are other words.

Weekly theme was: Cow. I had selected some rhymes on Cows but Mishu liked Hey Diddle Diddle! We read Cows by Hannah Ray.

Shape of the week was Square.

We tried Microwave painting on some cardboard squares. Recipe: Mix water and colur in self-raisng flour.

Microwave for 10-20 seconds. It gives a puffy art work.

Number of the week was 1. Vocabulary word for the week was calf. Another new word Mishu learned is Nostrils. He was amazed to see cow's big nostrils.

Science: Mishu learned basic facts about- Anteater, Albatross

Social Studies: I talked about the work of Astronauts with him. One thing that got his attention was- astronauts travel in space shuttles and rockets.

Week 2 starts today.

Special Thanks to:

http://www.letteroftheweek.com/
http://abcteach.com/

http://www.first-school.ws/INDEX.HTM

http://www.kidzone.ws/

http://www.homeschoolshare.com/

http://www.hindigym.com/

Mishu's Books

2011-08-08T18:03:00.004+05:30

Mishu (2.8 years) loves being read to. These days all he wants to do is sit next to me while I read books to him. He likes being surrounded by books. There were days last month when I read to him from 12 noon to 5 o’clock in the evening. We took breaks for meals, going to the washroom and when I drank water while Mishu wasn’t pleased with the breaks!

I am sharing the books I am reading to Mishu and the ones he likes to look at. I am ordering books through Flipkart mainly but I do go to book stores (Crossword here in Jaipur) to find good books for him.

Recent addition in Mishu’s books basket. Thanks to Megan@Our Dozen Beautiful Feet for suggesting me to buy Bob Books. I ordered My First Bob Books: Pre-Reading skills. In this pack there are 12 warm and humorous little books. These 12 read-aloud stories starring Sally the circle,Seth the square and Tanner the triangle gently present pre-reading skills and tasks.

Sadly my First Bob Books-Alphabets is not available at Flipkart.Very soon I’ll be ordering Set 1 Beginning Readers.

We have 5 books from “fun with phonics” series. The books have text with clear, colour illustrations. The series has ten books and rests of the 5 were out of stock last month on Flipkart. Mishu makes me read and re read these and I keep checking if rests of the 5 are available.

Cub in a Tub
Sid the Kid
Posy the Pig
Pat and the Bat
Rod and the Cod

Books from Fun to learn series

These are simple stories with nice illustrations and that teach early concepts to children in interesting ways.

There are four books in the series we have three:

Early words

Time

Counting

Mishu complaints many times in a week that he doesn’t have the fourth book (shapes and colours) from the series. I’ll order it soon.

Milly’s Silly Suitcase by Tish Rabe

I have read this book many many times to Mishu in a day. It helps in reading together. The book has short sentences and repetitive phrases and the best part is it has rebus pictures for read-along. It came with a 24 two piece, easy to solve rebus puzzles too.

We love Eric Carle books. We have 5 of them.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

The Grouchy Ladybug

The Tiny Seed

From Head to Toe

The Mixed up Chameleon

Three of these books have text in Hindi too. I read both to him at different times.

Ready Readers Stage1. It's a book with colourfully illustrated entertaining 10 stories.It's a second hand copy I bought from a book sale in Cochin when I was pregnant. Few months back Mishu liked only one story but the number has increased to 4.

Winnie the Pooh Books

I started reading to Mishu when he was 9 months old and his first book was a Pooh book. He used to love the book. Sadly lot of pages are torn now and I am unable to find another copy anywhere. Here are other Pooh books we bought later.

Pooh went to the Doctor

Winnie the Pooh and Tigger too

Pooh's Grand Adventure

The Jungle Book. I usually avoid reading this book. These days every time read the book from first to the last page Mishu keeps asking one question, "Iske Mummy Papa kahan hain?" (Where are his parents?) I have tired answering this question in many different ways and even tried to distract him by reading and explain about the life of the baby after being separated from his parents. But nothing works, my all explanations end up to the same question and I feel like Hair Pulling.

Who's my Mummy?

My Best Friend

The sturdy tactile books with appealing illustrations and fabric patches.

Bruno the Artist

Bruno learns to Share

Pepper throws a Tantrum

Bubbles is Careless

These are books from Bruno, Pepper and Bubbles series. Good read aloud stories with nice messages/lesson.

365 Stories and Rhymes for Boys.

We have liked all the stories that we have read from the book. This is my personal opinion: Collection of stories is better than the rhymes in the book.

These are some books on general topics that Mishu looks at from time to time. Some days back he used to look at the book of vehicles, these days he keeps bringing the book of rhymes to me to read/sing.

Some more. I feel that we should have more Hindi books in the books basket.

Can you please take out time to suggest more books (English or Hindi or both) for our home school?

Drip Art and Colours from Indian Flag

2011-08-05T20:49:00.001+05:30

I have been talking to Mishu about earth, world and India for quite some time now. As Independence Day(15th August) is approaching I plan to do more activities that can help him know more about India.

5 activities that we are already doing:

1. Locating India on the World map or globe.

2. Singing and listening National Anthem.

3. Singing and listening National Song.

4. Looking at Indian flag.

5. Talking about national animal and bird.

This time I chose to talk about the colours of our national flag. It required him to look at the Indian flag for some time, tell the colours, remember them and help me remember when I made homemade colours for dripping art.

The recipe for the colours is super simple. Just add water to corn flour and add colour. Keep checking the consistency you want.

Here what I had was a batter with equal quantities of corn flour and fine flour (I planned to make Manchurian, prepared the batter and chopped the vegetables but I dropped the idea at the last minute. It didn’t contain any seasoning).

Drip Art using hands

I made three colours orange, green and blue. I think I should have made white too but that day I thought that we were already using a white paper.

Mishu tried one colour at a time initially and told that he really loved it when he dipped his hands in the colour bowl and dripped it onto the paper.

Drip Art using brushes

Later he used brushes to drip the paint. But Mishu’s favorite was to use hands.

He later took the colours and paper to the balcony to try splattering but didn’t do much, may be because after few seconds of splattering lot of flies almost attacked his painting and his body.

Paper Mache Heart

2011-07-31T01:53:00.001+05:30

I was inspired by the works of students of Chesterbrook Academy Elementary school. Check the blog for lot of ideas.

I knew that it won’t be easy to make Mishu work with the paper mache pulp. I have written many times how Mishu hates gooey things but with encouragement things are improving here.

We started by tearing newspaper. This boy can’t tear paper! It was a frustrating and difficult work for him. To improve his motor skills I need to encourage him to tear more paper. I hope I’ll be able to explain him well that this excersise will work only on the rough paper I’ll give and tearing should not be applied to books and notebooks!

We soaked the paper in the water overnight. It was turned into this pulp in my mixer grinder.

I should have added colour to the pulp

I was excited for the next step, while Mishu was horrified to see what happened to the paper and how ugly the pulp looked. I heard this long Uhhhhu…and eeeeeeeeeee when he saw this. I had not decided of what we were going to do with this pulp, I wanted Mishu to decide and he decided to not to touch (I am sure he was thinking of throwing it into the dust bin).

I saw a heart cookie cutter lying next to me, I thought I would be a good first step to squeeze water from the pulp and fill the cutter with the pulp to get a nice solid heart. After a lot of ‘mama you do!’ he finally picked it with two fingers and then he started squeezing and filling the cutter with the pulp. He wanted to finish it as soon as possible.

We finally got this.

When completely dry (it can take a week if it’s very humid) Mishu painted it. He chose red colour. He painted front and back of the heart and then he left it telling me that he can’t. I showed him how to paint the sides. I was little disappointed as I felt that it could have been entirely his project and not Mum’s too. But I feel there is a difference when the child says that he can’t and when he says he doesn’t want to. When Mishu says he can’t I encourage him few times telling that he has the ability or at least he can try once. When this doesn’t work I do the job to show him that it was not impossible and was not that difficult as he imagined. Hope I am doing the right thing. Experts what do you say?

Later he happily applied glue and poured glitter. When it was dry and complete I asked him if he wanted it to gift it to someone. He replied, “Papa”.

Visit to the Zoo on Rainy Sunday

2011-07-18T11:10:00.002+05:30

Check the next photogragh to see how Mishu tried to Copy.

"Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need but not every man's greed"-Mahatma Gandhi

Did you hear that roar?

Mishu wanted to try horse riding

He was trying to put his finger inside

Going to close

I want this excavator!

Mum is too tired to cook. Let's go to Mc Donald.

The Joy of Cooking Together

2011-07-16T00:31:00.000+05:30

Whisking

Mishu’s love for cooking has made me try baking with him. I haven’t baked much in my life and I always had some kind of inhibition that made me feel that baking is a difficult technique of cooking. But now it’s time to face all the fears and give my child the best I can. So we are trying baking these days.

We tried making banana bread and Mishu amazes me with his dedication and willingness to participate.

Dry Pouring

It was pretty hot that day and he was sweating profusely even in our properly ventilated kitchen.

Mashing

This boy is always ready to work in the kitchen with me and wants to try doing everything himself. I love it when he stands next to me on a stool and listens carefully, follows and says, “Main bhi cook karo hai mama..I can cook mama”. We are making beautiful memories here and I know that my heart will never forget these days.

Seiving

We have made this banana bread three times now and I am still working on that perfect taste I want to get. I’ll share the recipe soon.

I am trying to spend less time on internet as I have to find a balance between housework and homeschooling. I am still planning this homeschooling year for Mishu. So in coming weeks I have decided to put more pictures and lesser text in my posts and I’ll be sharing more photographs of our activities on our Facebook page too. I think it’s a better way than disappearing all together for weeks.

POP Sculpture

2011-07-04T18:14:00.000+05:30

I saw this activity on Artful Parent long time back and we tried it last month.

I gave Mishu some beads, shells, buttons, plastic bottle covers, plastic rings, some parts of broken toys and waste sketch pen covers. Mishu chose some things that he liked and I asked him to put these in our sand tub.

Then he helped me in mixing water and POP (2 parts POP and 1 part water).

We poured the mixture into the tub. Now the difficult part for him (read us) was to wait till it becomes dry. He checked many times if it was dry and every time I had to tell him that it would take longer.

It took one day to dry properly.

Play Box: Vehicles and Spacecrafts

2011-07-01T00:51:00.005+05:30

I bought some small toy vehicles and spacecrafts from a craft shop. I haven’t added these in Mishu’s toys; I keep these with myself and use these as surprises. I asked Mishu to stay in another room while Mum was preparing a surprise for him. I arranged these in a tray.

And..

Just look at that expression

See how cute are these really small scooters.

Mishu arranged these on the floor.

Then we arranged these around things to get a shape.

Keep toys around the bowls; lift it to get a shape.

A rectangle here

An oval too.

Mishu decided to fill the toys in the plastic wrap roll and lift it. It was lot of fun.

But these bikes won’t stand; they keep lying all the time. So bring some playdough.

Then I made platforms with the playdough and placed one of each toy on them and asked Mishu to sort the toys. And he did it nicely.

Musical Monday

2011-06-27T18:29:00.001+05:30

Mishu and I have been watching this video for past one week now and we simply love it. It has a very soothing and refreshing music. One day Mishu recognized earth on a website I was looking at. I thought of showing him more videos of earth, life on earth and views from the space. I showed him some videos on You Tube and he liked this best. This is a beautiful video and I think everybody will like watching it. I have to buy a globe for him soon.

Rainbow Love

2011-06-24T17:58:00.005+05:30

Kate at An Amazing Child is hosting a blogging event to celebrate Eric Carle's Birthday on 25th June. He is turning 82.

We read Eric Carle books in our home all the time. Mishu’s favorite is The Very hungry Caterpillar; he likes The Mixed up Chameleon and From Head to Toe too. I have recently bought The Grouchy Lady bug and The Tiny seed through Flipkart and we are going to buy many more Eric Carle books in future. I like the way Mishu opens the last page of the book and checks which book he has and which he doesn’t. Mishu’s love for Eric Carle’s books started after watching this video. Initially I didn’t get his books but when we moved to Gurgaon I found a store that kept his books.

Mishu learned his colors from this page of his Mixed up Chameleon book. When I read the book for few times initially his main interest used to be this last page of the story and he use to sit for some time gazing the rainbow. Very soon he started telling all the colors from the rainbow.

To celebrate the birthday of the man who taught my son colors, I decided to make homemade rainbow colors.

Recipe is very simple. Things required to make the colors are

Fine Flour (Maida)
Water
Color, I used student’s poster colors. Tempera colors, food colors or water colors will do

I mixed these and filled in homemade piping cones.

I had made one such piping bag few days back and I tried to make Mishu understand how we should push the piping cone mainly with the palm of our hand, rather than squeezing with our fingers.

Yesterday he did it correctly and was pretty comfortable using these. He picked pink one first and then there was no stopping.

He tried some body painting too.

I love this texture and I am looking at these photographs again and again.

Initially he moved all around the paper to drop the paint but later he sat down and tried making some lines.

He looked impressed by the way paint dropped on the paper.

So Mishu's art work looked like this.

Now it’s time for experiments.
Mishu squeezed paint in a tray and I suggested him to try printing and he immediately agreed.

He printed his hand too. He was laughing and giggling when I was droping paint on his hand with the cone.

Here are results of printing.

Mum tried printing too.

This is for Mishu’s forest love. I made trees on the tray and Mishu took the print.

We got abstract forest.

Now the piping bags are empty, time for another experiment.

This time I gave Mishu plastic wrap. He did some wrinkling.

He printed the plastic wrap on the paper.The plastic wrap we used was the one Mover and Packers use to cover the cartons and it is thicker than the one we use for kitchen.

We just loved this. Look at the beautiful colors and the way they got mixed.

Now we still had paint in the tray, Mishu laid paper on it and this time I gave him a roller to press paper on the color and we have a different kind of print.

I thought that our artful afternoon was over (include morning and evening too…we took breaks and this activity was stretched from 11 am till evening, we enjoyed thoroughly). But then I remembered that there was some extra color left in the bowls. I filled all the colors left in one cone and we tried dropping paint with it.

Mishu was thrilled to see different colors coming out of one cone.

And yes I must mention that when we started this activity it was very hot outside but after seeing our rainbow activities nature too supported us and it heavily rained in Jaipur for the first time this season.

Drawbacks of having a long day of art activities: Mishu slept at 6 P.M . Meanwhile I cleaned the mess we did during our art session and prepared quick dinner (I cooked Kadhi), Mishu was up at 10pm and was fresh and ready to play. He went to bed really late and we missed the opportunity to go for Cars2 morning show. A friend of mine invited us to go with them. She has three kids and she is homeschooling them. We live in the same society and I feel blessed. Thank God I have someone who can guide me through my journey of homeschooling and parenting. And she is a blogger too. I forgot to mention that she is an American, check her blog American Khanna where she uses Indian Ingredients to prepare American recipes.

Play dough Forest

2011-06-22T18:32:00.003+05:30

After working on two small projects we did for forest fiesta, Mishu is in love with this theme. He came up with the idea of making play dough forest. He told me, “ Mama ek idea aaya hai” (Mama I have got an idea). I smiled and asked him about his idea. He said, “Play dough forest banate hain” (let’s make play dough forest) and asked me if I could help him. That was very cute as it was the first time he asked for my help by saying it.

We played with the play dough for very long time and tried to figure out how we can make trees and make it look like a forest. Mishu liked this idea. This looks easy but for my 31 month old boy it was little tricky. He took a while to understand the way to put play dough balls on the stick to look like a tree top. Initially he pushed play dough to the bottom of the stick. He understood that they were not looking correct and practiced it few times and he was very happy with this little forest we created. This time I forgot to bring his plastic animals for the forest. We’ll do it next time; I have to come up with more ideas of making a forest as I feel that Mishu is going to stick to this theme for many more days.

Love thy Trees

2011-06-17T18:26:00.001+05:30

Trees are your best antiques. ~Alexander Smith

This is our second creation for Forest Fiesta. Scroll down to see our mixed media forest we made for this blog event planned by Rashmie of Mommy Labs to celebrate World Environment Day (june5).

Pari (Rashmie’s daughter) created a three dimensional nature collage and it gave me an idea for our collage. Thanks to her.
This is not exactly what I had planned but I love it. Mishu enjoyed the whole process and his main focus was on cutting heart shapes from play dough using cookie cutters.

We started by gathering our materials which included homemade play dough (green, orange and yellow), cookie cutters, plasticine moulds, corrugated sheet, thermocol (I cut clouds from it), gravel, shells and other tools.

Mishu immediately started working on heart shape leaves for our tree. I need to roll the playdough so that he can cut shapes using moulds or cutters.

Meanwhile I cut trunks and branches from corrugated sheet. I added a layer of green play dough for grass and for grass effect I pressed fork into it.

Later Mishu pressed shells and gravel to it. He wanted to finish it quickly so that he could go back to cutting heart shapes.

Then I pressed play dough hearts on the trunks and braches. I tried to put them in such a way that all the corrugated pieces stuck together.

Remember I told you in my previous post that Mishu wanted to have sun and clouds in the mixed media forest we made. Mishu helped me in laying layers of yellow play dough for sky. We pressed thermocol clouds and orange play dough sun on the sky.

Mishu was keen to add a butterfly. He used plasticine mould for play dough butterfly and I placed on the tree trunk. He pressed buttons on it. Hope you all like what we created this afternoon.

This is My Forest

2011-06-17T12:05:00.002+05:30

Thanks to Rashmie from Mommy Labs to invite me to participate in her Forest Fiesta Project to celebrate World Environment Day (June5). This is year our country, India, hosted this event. The theme chosen by UN was Forests. Many bloggers have participated in this Forest Fiesta project to help kids appreciate and understand the value of our forests.

Check Pari’s (Rashmie’s daughter) inspiring three dimensional nature collage and be sure to check out the linky at the bottom of this post to see various forest activities created by children from around the world!

Here is the mixed media art we created.

We had lovely time making this. In my previous post I wrote how Mishu had little interest in art and craft for past two weeks and here I am writing about this project we did yesterday. I have tried one outdoor and one art activity with him for environment day earlier but he never showed interest. I have been talking to him about forests for past many days now. I have showed him forests on television and we saw pictures on internet. He never reacted when he saw forests, even at times when I talked about forests he listened to me for few seconds and walked to another room or got engaged in some other activity (a trait that he inherited from his father….lol). But yesterday when I told him about my plans to make a picture of a forest he seemed excited and remembered lot of things I told him (again just like his father….they both make such a face which makes me feel that they are not listening but when the correct time comes they happen to remember the details as well). I wasn’t expecting much contribution from him as he had little fever the previous night and looked dull but he proved me wrong.

I knew that Mishu would love to use egg shells for this craft, just like every kid he likes breaking egg shells in smaller pieces. I wanted to use wood shavings and ground nut peels as well. I found these wood shavings in this newly constructed apartment when we moved here in April. I dyed these in green food color.

Before working on this mixed media art work we talked about it. I asked Mishu what he wants to have in picture other than lots of trees. He said that he’ll make sun and clouds. But while working on our forest we (read I) completely forgot about sun and clouds.

We started by painting the white paper with watered down blue poster paint. Then Mishu broke egg shells in smaller pieces. I pasted a thin strip of green craft paper at the bottom of the sheet to look like grass. I cut corrugated sheet roughly into strips to make tree trunks.

Mishu and I pasted the corrugated strips on paper. There was a moment when we both were quiet and applying glue to our corrugated strips. My heart told my brain that it was a beautiful moment and just then Mishu looked at me and said, "Mama I love You”.

Mishu said some really interesting things. While we were pasting trunks he said, “Aur tree lagao”(Put more trees or you can read the universal message-PLANT MORE TREES).

He even planned a trip to a forest, he said, Mishu forest jayega, mama bhi jayegi, papa bhi jayenge, bahut sare trees dekho hai” (Mishu will go to forest, mama will go, papa will go, we’ll see lots of trees).

Then we glued wood shavings, groundnut peels, and egg shells to our trees. Mishu said “hamara forest accha bana hai” (our forest looks nice). I had kept some green bottle covers to use it somewhere in the picture. Mishu decided to paste it here there and when our art work looked complete Mishu announced,"Yeh mera forest hai!” (This is My forest!).

Later in the evening I knead a big batch of green play dough to go with the forest theme. I gave Mishu some of it and he played with it for more than two hours (surprising for me as well). He finished his play by pressing buttons, some beads and shells in the flattened play dough.

He said that he made a garden. I agree, to me it looked like a garden with lot of flowers.

Puzzles,Books and Play

2011-06-15T18:59:00.004+05:30

No art, no craft. For past 15 days Mishu hasn't done much of art or craft activities. I am counting pouring all the poster colours in a water bottle and shaking it to make a coloured bottle (dark grey) or scribbling on the floor or painting toe nails with sketch pens as art activities.

Early this month I noticed that Mishu was losing interest in art and craft so instead of asking him daily if he wants to paint or try to work on some craft project with him I tried to figure out what interests him these days. I realized that he is developing interest in solving puzzles and reading books. There have been days when we read all day and solved puzzles together. Mishu is keen to help me in household chores and especially cooking. He is trying to make rotis and loves making omelet. Though he requires a lot of help from me but he wants to do everything himself.

See the happiness on his face after he finished rolling a roti for lunch. He has his separate set of regular chakla(board) and belan(rolling pin). He is not someone who can be satisfied with toy tools.

He plays with sand almost every day.

I didnt have a recent picture of him playing with sand. I clicked this two months back.

This phase of loosing interest in art and craft is not new. There were few more occasions when he showed little interest in painting or craft. Earlier I used to get worried and impatient but now I try to focus on other things. It’s always said that a child should have access to lot of art and craft material so that he can choose and create whatever and whenever he likes. I make sure that lot of things remain in his reach. But these days he just picks up a book or a tray or box of puzzle. Here I’ll take you on a little tour of his room (only play corner). Please don’t expect anything great or compare with that out- of- magazine kid’s art corners you see on other blogs.

Yes the walls are empty as he hasn’t painted anything this month. I put here all month’s artwork and remove when the month ends. What is still there is a car poster, a little artwork I did and one of his paintings he did when he was 17months old.

You can see everything is on the floor (as we still have to buy furniture for his room). Here I have kept poster colors, tempera colors, brushes, clay, feathers, buttons, beads, crayons, chalks, water colors, roller, drawing books,tapes and scissors.

Sketch pens, glue stick, colored paper for collages, his cars, his puzzles in trays and boxes, basket of books.

His toy vehicles and that's not all. I have a section of cabinet in his room that stocks art material, colored paper, and loose sheets of paper, glue,colours, glitter and stickers. More toys are kept in other corners of his room.

While he’s taking a break from art and craft I am reading more about homeschooling and different approaches of homeschooling. Can’t tell how happy I am to decide to home school. I am learning a lot about teaching kids, parenting and it’s making me a better person. Very soon I am going to post our curriculum which will be loosely based on Charlotte Manson Approach to homeschooling.

Decision to Homeschool and More Activities we did in May

2011-06-03T00:56:00.004+05:30

Before I go ahead and tell about my decision to home school I want to mention here that I don’t have any prior experience of teaching kids of Mishu’s age (he is two and a half years old). But do I think that I can teach my child at home? Yes, I can and I know I can keep him happy too. Although I want to home school him till he is 4 or 5years old but right now I am focusing on this year (2011-2012). If this year goes smoothly and he continues to learn at home I’ll think about schooling him further at home. For a kid of his age learning should be fun and through play so I am planning a curriculum based on that. I am not going to follow the curriculum rigidly, it’ll be to give us direction and it saves lot of time. Our learning will all depend on Mishu’s willingness and mood. I am not going to force anything on him. So here we are with one of the most important benefits of homeschooling. We just don’t need to force anything on our kids.

I mentioned in my last post that here in India almost every kid who is around two and a half years old goes to play school. And I am not against sending the child to play school. I hardly know a kid of Mishu’s age whose mother is not planning to send him/her to playschool. For many parents sending the child to school work better rather than having a frustrated and bored child at home.

“Homeschooling is the best gift we can give to our children”. I read this recently and it made me more proud of my decision.

Till last year I knew nothing about homeschooling and used to think that it’s a must to send the child (of 2.6years) to play school in today’s world otherwise he’ll lag behind. Then I read some blogs of mums who home school in U.S., then I searched for more websites and useful recourses that could guide me from the very beginning and answer all my queries (including the disadvantages of homeschooling). I have found many and I’ll share the links in my future posts.

Gradually I started to feel that it’s for us and we should try homeschooling. But next task was to convince my husband. We were in Agra then and I discussed homeschooling with him, as I had thought he wasn’t much impressed. His first question was, “At what age should a child go to school?” I told him that usually kids start Nursery at the age of three or three and a half. He said “You can do whatever you want to do till then but Mishu will go to a very good school”. This response was not enough for me as I wanted homeschooling to be a happy and a joint decision. I dropped the idea (I was disheartened). Then we moved to Gurgaon, I started my search for a good play school. We knew that we won’t be staying in Gurgaon for long but didn’t know what ‘long’ meant- two months, three, six or one year. Then the news came that we were moving to Jaipur, I searched net for schools in Jaipur. I liked two and we were supposed to take our decision after visiting both. Now came the twist, Mishu was ill and we went to the pediatrician and I raised this question that Mishu is going to be of two and a half years soon and when should we start school. The doctor looked me and he was quiet for a second and I thought he would say that we should have started early (as there in Gurgaon everybody sends their kids to playschool when they are two and even earlier). Being impatient by nature I asked another question, “Are we late?” And then came a very happy moment, the doctor said that a child shouldn’t go to any kind of school till he/she is four.

I knew that this would be enough for my husband to happily agree for homeschooling and recently I have heard him saying on many occasions, to guests and relatives that Mishu will not go to school till he is four.

It’s not easy to homeschool, it requires lot of patience and courage. And the test of the parent’s patience and courage happens during bad days. I know I’ll have to give explanation to people on this decision all the time as whenever we go out first question that is asked about kid is “How old is he?” and next is “Does he go to school?” That’s one disadvantage- you have to constantly justify your decision. We’ll talk about disadvantages later.

Out of many many advantages the ones that lured me to homeschool are

• More family time

• More time for play (in other words he can have his childhood)

• I want to develop joy for learning in my child

• More time to discover and unfold the hidden talents

• Flexbile scheduling

• And this one my favorite reason – we’ll have more time for our art and craft projects.

More activities we did in the month of May

International Family Day2011

It was international family day on May 17; we celebrated it by printing our feet and hands. My husband was in pain that day (due to kidney stones) but happily participated. It was the first time when we three took part in an art activity. I think I should plan more frequently.

Here is our experiment with door mesh rubbings and colored ice cubes.

Mishu tried rubbing crayons on the door mesh. He is learning to rub with the side of the crayon. Looking at Mishu’s clothes you can tell that it’s really hot here. But what is this hat doing here? Don’t ask me. He was feeling hot; he was sweating but just wouldn’t take it off.

After rubbing with yellow, red and pink crayons he wanted to rub orange crayon because his hat was orange.

Later Mishu rubbed blue ice cube over it.

I am not judging the result, MarryAnn says “art for young children is a process not a product”

Look closely out of the window of Misu’s room. There is some construction work happening.

We discussed about construction and Mishu decided to chose the task of trasfering gravel using a dump truck.

First fill the open box bed with gravel

Take the truck to the delivery site

Deposit the contents on the ground (he did it in a tray).

Spray Color Bottles

I got the idea of using spray bottles from Artful parent. For us these bottles are more of a motor skill than being an art technique. I mix tempera/poster colors in water and keep them in refrigerator.

Whenever Mishu wants he can take these out and spray. Please use newspaper under the sheet. I removed mine to take pictures.

Sand Bottle

We made our own sand bottle. Usually everybody rubs dry colors or chalks to color the sand but I didn’t have both so I mixed some water in poster colors, mixed with sand and left it to dry. I saw the activity on First Palette. I know the colors are not very impressive as the sand we managed to get was almost brown. I wanted to choose orange, green and red. But Mishu wanted one of the colors to be purple.

Discovery bottle- Magnet bottle

I filled the bottle with plastic bottle covers, pins, coins and other things. I made it when we were in the hotel so I used whatever I could find there. Then I gave Mishu a magnet which he rubbed outside the bottle and he keenly observed the things that stick to it. He was excited to see that he could move things inside the bottle without moving the bottle.

A boy who doesn't like to touch flowers

Mishu likes to look at flowers but doesn’t like touching them. There is a small flower stall next to the grocery shop we go to. They keep roses and marigolds. I buy loose flowers but that day Mishu wanted me to buy the garland.

He was excited to wear it but didn’t like the way the flowers felt on his neck so I put it in such way that flowers didn’t touch his skin.

Here he tried to print with flowers. Don’t think that he liked the idea of painting with flowers instead he tried it because he was happy see colors in Idli plate.

Aquarium Gravel Sensory Box

Our sensory box had aquarium gravel with glass stones and coloured stones.I gave Mishu his basket of plastic animals and he made them stand in the tray and then once he kept all animals in the tray and poured gravel to hide them. Later he transferred gravel to the steel utensil.

We together separated beads and coloured stones from the gravel.

Frozen Treasure

One morning I surprised Mishu by this frozen block of ice. I froze plastic toy animals, moulds from plasticine kit, covers of died sketch pens, beads and buttons.

He took it in the bathroom and played there for very long time. He watched ice melting and things becoming loose and come out. Every time a toy became loose, he came running out from the bathroom to show me.

We’ll be doing this more often this summer.

Musical Monday

2011-05-31T00:47:00.001+05:30

These are some Poems I have copied from Can Teach. I am going to sing these to Mishu in coming weeks. Can teach has a very good collection of poems/rhymes, I found the link on counting coconut’s blog. I love their poem baskets; will try to make some soon.

Ladybug
Ladybugs all dressed in red
Strolling through the flowerbed.
If I were tiny just like you
I'd creep among the flowers too!

Spiders
Clever spider spins a thread
to make a trap we call a web.
Clever spider knows that she
will have some insects with her tea

Mary Had a Little Frog

Mary had a little frog,
Little, frog, little frog,
Mary had a little frog,

It’s skin was green as grass.
And everywhere that Mary went,
Mary went, Mary went,
Everywhere that Mary went,
The frog would jump and splash.

What is a Whale?

A whale is not as small as us.
Most whales are bigger than a bus!
A whale is not like a fish in the sea.
A whale breathes air like you and me.
A whale can't walk upon the ground.
A whale must swim to get around.
A whale is a mammal just like me.
But its home is in the deep blue sea

An Elephant

An elephant is fat and strong,
His trunk is very, very long,
His tail and ears flap bugs away,
And keep him cool on hot, hot days.

I'm a Little Penguin

I'm a little penguin
Black and white,
Short and wobbly
An adorable sight.
I can't fly at all
But I love to swim,
So I'll waddle to the water
And dive right in!

Cats

Cats sleep
Anywhere
Any table
Any chair
Top of piano
Window ledge
In the middle
On the edge
Open drawer
Empty shoe
Any body's
Lap will do
Fitted in a
Cardboard box
In the cupboard
With your frocks
Anywhere
THEY don't care
Cats sleep
Anywhere

Sleeping Bats

Bats are sleeping,
Bats are sleeping,
Upside down,
Upside down,
Sleeping in the morning sun,
Waiting for the night to come,
Then they'll fly all around,
Then they'll fly all around.

Grey Squirrel

Grey squirrel, grey squirrel,
Swish your bushy tale.
Grey squirrel, grey squirrel,
Swish your bushy tale.
Wrinkle up your little nose,
Put a nut between your toes.
Grey Squirrel, grey squirrel,
Swish your bushy tale.

There was a little squirrel.
He ran up a tree.
When he turned around
He threw a nut at me
Here's a Rabbit
Oh, here's a fluffy rabbit
With two ears so very long
See him hop, hop, hop about
On legs so very strong.
He nibbles, nibbles carrots
For his dinner every day
And as soon as he has had enough
He hops, hops, hops away.

Polar Bear

The polar bear lives in Alaska,
He never gets cold in a storm,
He swims in cold icy water,
His heavy coat keeps him warm.
Warm, warm, warm, warm,
His heavy coat keeps him warm.
Warm, warm, warm, warm,
His heavy coat keeps him warm.

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, turn around,
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, touch the ground,
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, reach up high
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, wink one eye,
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, slap your knees,
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, sit down please.

To the Farm

Horses, donkeys, cows that moo,
Chickens, kittens, piglets too,
Fish that swim down in the pond,
Ducklings quacking all day long.
All these animals you can see
If you go to the farm with me.

Duck

Duck in the water, quack, quack, quack!
Soft, white feathers on your back, back, back!
Duck in the water, splash and splish!
Dip in your bill and catch those fish!
Duck out of water, walk on land.
Your webbed feet make it hard to stand!
Waddle with your family, waddle in a pack.
Duck out of water, quack, quack, quack!

The Dog Song

I see a dog.
The dog sees me.
I like the dogs.
The dogs like me.
Big white dogs.
One, two, three.
I like the dogs
and the dogs like me.

Once I Saw a Little Bird

Once I saw a little bird
Come hop, hop, hop.
So I cried, "Little bird,
Will you stop, stop, stop?"

I saw going to the window
To say, "How do you do?"
But he shook his little tail,
And away he flew.

I spend last week on reading homeschooling blogs, websites and going through curriculums. Oops! I forgot to mention that I am planning to home school Mishu this coming year. Here in India almost every kid who is around two and a half years old goes to play school. There are reasons why I have decided to not to send him to a play school. I’ll write every thing that’s going in my head (about home schooling Mishu) in my next post.

Splatter Art and Results of Plastic Wrap Paintings

2011-05-23T01:41:00.002+05:30

It rained here in Jaipur today afternoon. It was very pleasant outside. Mishu has been asking to do splatter painting for quite some time now. But I never allowed him to do indoors because I just can’t have walls spoiled. One of the reasons is that it’s a company accommodation and secondly the colors we use can’t be removed completely by washing.
Today I taped a sheet on the floor of our bedroom's balcony and Mishu did splatter painting. He enjoyed it. He preferred to sit on the floor and splatter. I love the end result.

The floor was dirty after the storm and rain (but it was dry), Mishu just didn't bother. Can you see the color box with him? He likes keeping it with him.I see him kissing it often. He took breaks (more than 5 times) to take out these bottles and arranging them again in the box. And whenever during his breaks I asked him if he's done with painting, answer was always a big no.

Here is the outcome of our painting done by colored ice cubes and plastic wrap.

Later we tried it with two colors for intresting results. This time we used watered down student's poster colors and spread plastic wrap over it. We did this together; we both painted and Mishu did wrinkling on the wrap spread by me.

Painting with Colored Ice Cubes

2011-05-20T20:07:00.000+05:30

It’s a great activity for summers. Freeze some paint in ice-cube tray and rub the ice cubes on paper.

I used Camel student’s poster colors mixed with water. I put some color in the tray with the brush and added water. Mishu stood next to me, watching and putting the cover of the color bottle back after we had used it.
I turned on the ice acceleration mode of my refrigerator (I lack patience; even Mishu has more patience than me).

We took out the tray after around two hours and I gave Mishu two cubes (red and yellow), though he wanted all. He liked rubbing it initially but after some time he started getting irritated by seeing so much color on his hands. You can see color on his legs; he kept wiping his fingers on the legs. I soon gave him a rough towel.

After a while he was okay rubbing cubes on paper. He told me that the cubes are cars. Soon we had yellow and red cars zooming in all directions (thankfully only on the paper).

We talked about color mixing and saw yellow and red make orange.

Later I decided to put this plastic wrap on the watery painting. Mishu did some wrinkling. I saw this on Artful parent once. We have left it to dry. I’ll share the results tomorrow.

Spin Art

2011-05-19T16:53:00.001+05:30

Immediately after seeing this Spin Art done by little Putti we went to Mishu’s room and tried it. I used regular quarter stainless steel plate from my kitchen. Later we tried it with a bowl, flat bowl and a lid. It’s so much fun, we did it yesterday we are doing it today.

Just squirt some paint or use brush to drop the color on the back of the plate, flip it over the paper, turn/spin, remove the plate and you can hear Mishu’s “ woooow and niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice”.

Yesterday we used students’ water color tubes lying in my art material for past three years. Mishu enjoyed squirting paint. This is the first time he used tubes because we have always used Faber Castell Fun Paints or the Rangeela Tempera colors for his art.

He liked turning the plate, though I did it two or three times initially to show him (truth is I too wanted to try this and have fun).

Today we tried painting with big stainless steel plate. I gave Mishu poster colors on the plate. I think we should use color liberally for more interesting effects.

Mishu decided to scribble with both hands while the spin art was drying.

An Alien in Our Home

2011-05-18T17:53:00.001+05:30

Last night Mishu was watching Mister Maker on CBeebies when he saw a tutorial of making an alien.

Mishu fell in love with the green alien even before the tutorial began; he called me from the kitchen and told me that he wants to make it. We sat and watched the show together and when it was over Mishu said “Mama yeh banao” (Mama make this). This is the first time he wanted to try a craft activity seen on TV

We started working on the alien immediately. I used newspaper to make face, body, hands and legs. I used tape to secure the loose ends. Covered everything with aluminum foil and taped all the parts together and the alien was almost ready. I thought we saw a green alien on television so Mishu might want me to color his alien green but he chose orange. I painted it in the night and today morning I painted eyes and mouth. Right now alien and Mishu are taking a nap and in afternoon Mishu insisted on giving alien a bath. I had to make him understand that we just can’t put this alien in water.

Last night I was sitting with my husband, who is dealing with a terrible pain from kidney stone. I saw Mishu coming in the bedroom with the alien, keeping it on his side of the bed and telling him “Alien yeh bedtime time hai, mishu dood lekar aata hai” (Alien its bedtime, Mishu is bringing milk).

Today we read this book called Counting by Nina Filipek . Here Jim, the spaceman, goes in the space and meets green men (aliens).

I need to put more color on the alien’s body as we still can see aluminum foil everywhere. I’ll do it tonight.

Hanger Structure

2011-05-17T00:50:00.000+05:30

This is Mishu’s first independent hanger structure. For my two and a half year old boy it’s a Beautiful Butterfly.

Activities from past few weeks

2011-05-16T02:10:00.006+05:30

We are pretty much settled here and this new apartment has become home, although I am still working on the guest room. I have got the laptop back as my husband has got another for work, two days back we got our internet connection and first thing Mishu wanted to be done on the laptop was to see “Dear Zoo”. The book was suggested to me by a mum with a very stylish blog Café Bellini. I couldn’t find the book in the market but this video is one of Mishu’s favorites. I sing this song to him very often and now he’s started singing along.
We are painting, playing, learning and I try to take Mishu out in the building compound every day. There is a park with some swings and lot of open area. They have a separate play area for kids under 5 years of age. And the centre of attraction for everybody is the fountain where all kids come and get wet, they scream with joy, play, and dance and don’t want to move from there. The authorities turn it on in the evening and it brings relief from the terribly hot summer afternoons. Tomorrow I plan to take my camera along and capture the happiness on Mishu’s face when he enjoys being in the fountain. There is a nice swimming pool as well but I see more kids in the fountain than there.

A Crocodile

When the child tells that what he has painted is something is I suppose a big joy the parent. This is happening to me at times. It started with this painting. Mishu did this painting two weeks back. He drew some lines and circles with sketch pen. While drawing he kept saying “up,down, sideways” and drew some vertical lines. “Up, down, sideways” is from his book ‘The Mixed up Chameleon’ by Eric Carle. That part of the story goes like this-When the chameleon was hungry it sat still and waited. Only its eyes moved up, down, sideways until it spotted a fly.

Later he chose to finger paint on the same drawing. He used green colour. After he finished painting (left page of the book) he announced that it’s a crocodile.

Kangaroo

A few days back he was painting in his room and I was busy arranging a wardrobe in another room. He came running, hold my hand and pulled me in his room. He was saying “idhar aaake dekho,idhar aake deko” (come here and see). He showed me this drawing that he did on the floor and said “Mama dekho Mishu kangaroo banao hai” (Mum look Mishu has drew a Kangaroo). I actually felt that it looked like a kangaroo, maybe because I am his mum I could.

Ladybug

This he said is a lady bug.

It seems that collage making is a relaxing exercise for him.

Sketch pen drawing

This is one my favorite. I just adore this mixed media painting. I introduced sponge painting to Mishu few days back. I gave him two colors (pink and blue) in a tray. He did some sponge painting. Then we left it to dry. He chose to paint with brush using tempera colors. Again we left it to dry. I thought he had finished working on this painting but he had other plans. I asked him if he wants to paint more. He said yes. He did some scribbling with sketch pens. And to my surprise he chose pink and blue pens. He found a blue tape in his collage basket and I cut some pieces. He taped them and took out a packet of bindis from the basket and stuck two pink bindis there.

For me this was a failed project but for Mishu these are his Rainbow bottles. We did this on Earth’s day. I poured some glue, color and little water in bottles and gave Mishu to shake. He enjoyed the shaking part. The color and glue both were thick so I had added some water; I suppose that was my mistake. I saw paint cracks, it made bottles look bad. I was thinking and saying that it looked bad, Mishu heard , picked up a bottle, did some shaking and said “dekho ye achha hai” (see this looks good). Yes after shaking the bottles looked good. I am thinking what can further be done with these bottles.

I made fresh play dough. I used food colors for green and orange while I used tempera colors for pink and blue.

This garlic press is a favorite play dough tool in our home. I have even seen my husband trying it few times.

It’s done with a painting roller and later Mishu finger painted blue on it.

I have saved thermocol sheets from packing stuff. It was a different experience for him to paint and potato printing on it.

He is learning to paint with water color cakes. I have more activities that we have been doing. I'll post soon.
Have a happy week.

It’s Mother Earth’s Day

2011-04-23T00:21:00.001+05:30

I had planned some activities for this day. But my house was full of dirt from yesterday’s wall drilling, A.C fitting and other plumber work. I had arranged Mishu’s room before but yesterday I had to pick up everything so that some wall drilling could be done.

While cleaning the house I did a quick activity with Mishu. We made some coloured bottles. I used some empty water bottles; poured kid’s poster color mixed with glue in each and gave Mishu to shake. We made bottles of eight different colors. Other thing that we did was to collect pebbles and gravel. There is some construction work going in our society building, there I saw pebbles and gravels. I took permission and collected. A worker helped me getting some sand for our activities. I’ll post the pictures soon.

I gave some shells to Mishu, I bought these from Kanyakumari. He arranged these on the floor like this.

A day full of art and craft activities in "New House"

2011-04-21T07:33:00.004+05:30

While arranging and organizing of my home is still in progress, yesterday we managed to take out time for creativity. Mishu made some drawings with sketch pens.

He likes to trace things these days. Here he is trying to trace his hand; he even tried to trace the dolphin you can see in the picture.

Here he is busy arranging his finger paint bottles one top of the other after finishing his painting.

You can see all his things are arranged on the floor. We need to buy some furniture for his room. We are buying furniture from time to time for our house as till now we were provided with furniture for the company my husband used to work with but here they have different policies.
We haven’t shifted to the apartment properly. We are still staying in the hotel. I come here in the house for arranging things during day time and return to the hotel by the evening. This way I don’t get too tired and manage to keep Mishu happy all the time. I think that’s the advantage of being the wife of an hotelier.

Mishu enjoys his short trips to “new house” (this is what he calls our new apartment) and then to hotel. He says, "Now we are going to new house”, or “Now we are going to hotel”. When we are in the hotel he tells me, “Mama this is not new house, this is hotel, here papa works”.

His absolutely favorite activity these days is using scissors and glue stick. He spent around 30 minutes on cutting and pasting. Then he asked for some wool and tried some pine cone weaving. I showed him how we can wrap yarn around the pine cone other day. I saw this fun activity on Quince and Quire.

We are in Jaipur

2011-04-13T09:17:00.001+05:30

So we are here in the Pink City, Jaipur. We are staying in the hotel and having few days of rest. But this rest and extra sleep is for Mishu and me while my husband is having very hectic days at work. In a day or two we’ll move to our new apartment and I’ll start this long job of arranging things. Mishu is super excited about ‘new house’. He has been there with me when our things were moved. He has decided which room will be his and he was too pleased to see the park and the play area.

He keeps saying 'Circle' or 'round and round' while arranging things on this table.

He spends time in the room by arranging the sachets of coffee, tea, sugar and cards in different ways and shapes.

He keeps asking for bubble bath all the time and we read his books many times.

Things are being packed

2011-04-09T16:45:00.003+05:30

Mishu, wraping himself in the packing material

Packers are packing our things this moment. I just caught Mishu with these big scissors trying to cut newspaper. Tomorrow we’ll drive to Jaipur.

While everybody is busy wrapping things, filling the cartons and packing them, Mishu chose to work on a puzzle.
We are having a weekend full of hustle and bustle; hope you enjoy a weekend full of peace and rest.

Clay Flowers

2011-04-08T13:47:00.000+05:30

Mishu is making towers, sculptures and snakes with clay these days. I showed him how we can make flowers,buds and leaves.

Alphabet Picture Book

2011-04-07T15:00:00.004+05:30

Alphabet C page in Alphabet book.....I have pasted cotton too.

Every day after we finish reading the newspaper I cut pictures for Mishu’s Picture Books. I cut pictures of everything Mishu should know about or knows about. Then I paste these in a book. Mishu likes looking at these books everyday and has learned a lot. It becomes more interesting when he finds new pictures in it every day. We look at the book together and I tell him about every picture, this has helped him a lot, he has learned more about different sports, vegetables, fruits, animals and everyday things. I like it when he talks about and speaks words like warship, cruise, astronaut, missile, wicket, cricket, shopping mall, castle, magic, double-decker bus, drill machine, scuba diving. I pasted pictures of Sachin Tendulkar in his book; he took few days to remember his name. He used to put his finger on the picture and in his broken Hindi he used to say."Yeh Cricket khelo hai”(he plays cricket). But now he recognizes Sachin in TV commercials and proudly says,”Shachin”.

Alphabet T page............there is picture of a tow truck towing a truck

He has many books but I feel kids get bored reading those books after a while and need more and new books. These assorted pictures books give them exposure to different fields of life and won’t cost anything. One just needs a regular drawing notebook and eyes that are always looking for useful pictures from old newspapers and magazines.

Alphabet F page....Mishu is completely in love with flags these days....Ithink I need to think of some crafts using flags

This time I decided to make our own alphabet book. I am pasting pictures according to alphabets now. Truly speaking looking for pictures, cutting and pasting is a good relaxation exercise for me. I should now start labeling the pictures as Mishu has started developing interest in reading words. I bought two sicker books about animals and birds, cut them and pasted in our alphabet book. Hope you try maintaining these picture books for your kid too and have fun.

Happy Summer!

2011-04-06T02:36:00.006+05:30

I feel little awkward writing here after three months. In fact it was just yesterday that I checked my mails and quickly looked at some blogs I used to read. No I wasn’t thrown in some other era where I didn't have access to internet but it was just that my husband has been travelling because of work and staying in other city for quite some time. He was carrying our laptop along and truly speaking initially I was uneasy without having a computer in the house but later I started liking it. One gets so much extra time for life when this machine is not around. But it could have been a company to me when Mishu and I were here in Gurgaon and my husband was away for more than a month. I spend February at my parent’s place. I went there after two years. We had a great time there, Mishu bonded beautifully with my parents and my sister. With many people around Mishu started talking there and now this boy keeps talking all day. He just can’t remain quiet for five minutes. Even when he’s playing he keeps talking to himself. When he had just entered this phase of nonstop words, broken at times hilarious sentences pouring from his little mouth I had to drink coffee and take Disprin to treat headaches. Now I know why mother after listening to my endless stories used ask me to remain quiet for some time as she used to end up having headaches. To this I always said, “I’ll but just listen to one last story”.

I love to see this big strange smile on my husband’s face when he sees Mishu talking endlessly. He was away from us for more than two months and this has been a drastic change in Mishu. Thank God this phase is over and we'll stay together and not in different cities.

I am here with news of us shifting to another city. We knew that our stay here in Gurgoan would be really short. We are moving to Jaipur this weekend. My husband was born and brought up in this beautiful and colourful city. I too haven’t been there much so it’ll be pretty exciting to spend a year or more and knowing the place he belongs to.

Photofair 2011

2011-01-09T01:37:00.001+05:30

I know I am little late in wishing you all a very happy and peaceful new year. There are reasons for my disappearance from here. The main reason being our ill health, Mishu is still recovering from cough, cold and fever. I have no idea when I’ll be able to get rid of this constant coughing. Hope you all are in good health and especially all the mums, everyone knows how everything becomes a mess when the lady is not well. But I am happy that it’s me who is not well and not my husband, it’s very painful to see your loved ones in pain and according to doctor Mishu is also 90% fine now.

Folks I’ll be away for few more days as Rohit is using our laptop for official purpose but when he comes home from work I check the blogs I regularly read, though I am not leaving comments but I am really enjoying reading and seeing what’s happening in your lives.

Mishu and Papa, sharing a fun moment

Today we went to Photofair 2011 in Pragati maidan, New Delhi. It’s World’s 3rd largest exhibition of photographic equipment and accessories. My husband loves photography and wanted to attend it. Though it was very cold today but we were feeling little better and I too was dying to go out after many days. Mishu travelled in Metro Train for the first time. He liked to see Metro Train and enjoyed being inside for a while but started becoming impatient after few minutes and asked us to move out every time the door opened.

Rohit, busy looking at a catalogue

Mishu likes being outdoors and running around but it’s a tiring task for us and especially in a crowded place like an exhibition. While I tried to remain near my husband when he visited a stall, Mishu used to run somewhere else and while I looked after Mishu and tried engaging him and distracting him from running, my husband used to move to some other stall, disappearing in the crowd.

That's me with Mishu. I have put on a lot weight, I am tring to reduce but a part of me is happy being like this as I have been really thin always.

And these camera companies keep/hang toys, ballons, toy cars and bikes for people to take photographs to test new cameras and lens. And Mishu was insisting on buying some of those, and sadly they are not for sale but it’s difficult to make a two year old understand this. It was funny as well as annoying for me.
Overall it was a nice family outing after many weeks.

this moment

2010-12-24T13:01:00.000+05:30

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

www.soulemama.com/soulemama

We are Back!

2010-12-22T12:20:00.000+05:30

I have been away from my blog for more than a month now. We are in Gurgaon and really liking our newly rented flat. Unpacking is not over yet, there are ten more cartons I have to open and arrange the stuff. This is no more an exciting activity for me as I know that we have to move from this place as well and that too pretty soon.

I am still working on the baby blanket I was crocheting. I never knew that I’ll take so much time to finish it. We are spending our days sitting in sun, eating ground nuts, sipping tea occasionally(yes I am sipping tea, it must be surprising for some who know me really well), eating early dinners and going to bed on time.

Mishu is happy being here, there are two parks in the society compound and he is always ready to go there and never wants to come back. He is showing interest in listening to stories now and I have heard and read of “The very Hungry Caterpillar” by Eric Carle. Whenever there is a discussion of stories for toddlers this book is recommended by everyone. But I don’t have the book and have to go to stores where I can find it. Mean while I showed this You Tube video to Mishu and to my surprise he loved it. It doesn’t have very clear quality but he understood the whole story and wants to watch it often. While watching or afterwards when we discuss the story he repeats some words like pop, big fat, hungry, caterpillar, apple, strawberry, house, cocoon, butterfly and I never want to miss those smiles and giggles when the caterpillar turns into a butterfly so where ever I am in the house I run to be with him to enjoy the moment.

Taj Mahal

2010-11-19T02:45:00.007+05:30

Before you scroll down and see lot of pictures Rohit took (except the ones in which you see three of us) when we visited Taj I have to say that I am taking a break for around ten days. Reason for my disappearance will be that we are moving to a new place in just ten days. In December first week we’ll be in Gurgaon, we stayed here in Agra for 5 months. I have to focus on packing and I’ll be working on a baby blanket I am crocheting. I loved my stay in Agra, what I loved most was our big house and the beautiful lawn. I can’t say whether I’ll miss this place or not as I have become used to moving from one place to another, without getting much attached to it. We got married in 2007 and I went to Periyar, Rohit was posted there. Then we moved to Gir Forest(most memorable experience of our life), from there we went to Cochin, then for few months Rohit was posted in Jaisalmer so we went there, then again Cochin and now we are in Agra. Soon we’ll be in Gurgaon. Right now I am enjoying this way of our life but can’t say about the coming years when Mishu will start school.

As we decided to move from Agra, first thing we wanted to do was to visit Taj Mahal. Though we went to see Taj Mahal on full moon night but that was little disappointing as we couldn’t see it (we thought it would glow in moonlight) because a day before it was Dusshera and the pollution from the crackers had created mist. Last week early morning we saw this beautiful building that stands as a symbol of eternal love.

Mishu sat here for few minutes like this. Maybe he was taking a break!

Calligraphy

Painted Geometry

Mishu loved his visit to Taj Mahal. He was running all around and had lot of fun.

The Great gate—gateway to the Taj Mahal

Mishu is busy looking at other people who are ready with their cameras and waiting for their turn to get photographed on the bench.

Minaret

Inlay work

Plant Motifs

Pending Diwali Post

2010-11-17T01:23:00.001+05:30

I made these play dough lamps. I wanted to reuse the play dough I was about to throw. I make play dough at home for Mishu but after some days when he has rubbed it on the floor and played with it many times, it collects lot of dirt and I don’t feel like giving it to him.

This time before throwing I made these lamps with it. I rolled it into a cylindrical shape and pressed my thumb inside to make a cavity to hold oil. I placed a wick in side and poured some oil. I made several lamps like this. They looked beautiful and Rohit took pictures of them. I couldn’t decide which ones are really nice so I am posting many.

We made this super quick Diwali bunting. I cut triangles of two different sizes. I had bought some stickers from Diwali Bazaar (market); Mishu enjoyed sticking them on the banner.

Musical Monday

2010-11-15T18:29:00.001+05:30

I love this song from Ice Age 3 and Mishu loves it too when I sing it to him or play it on the laptop. Now and then he is demanding for "Boom Boom".

Mishu’s Birthday

2010-11-13T17:02:00.002+05:30

My little baby is a big two year old boy now. It was his birthday yesterday. He got a little idea about birthdays two days back on my husband’s birthday. He saw me singing “Happy Birthday”, giving gifts and flowers. On the same day when I was buying second bouquet for my husband he sang to the florist, “Happy,happy,happy,happy”.

Many weeks back I planned to make many things by myself for his birthday like a birthday banner, a birthday crown, bean bags, cake and so many more things. But there was some sort of uncertainty revolving in our home and I simply couldn’t make myself involve in these birthday activities (Doesn’t sound like a good mum! too bad). I had plans of buying everything from the market. But the day before his birthday I went to the market and I found myself buying materials for his crown, banner and cake. I sat till late night and even worked whole day yesterday and I was happy with the final products.

I made this birthday crown for Mishu, he simply loves stars.

This is the basic shape.

I covered it with a handmade paper, and stick some shiny stars on the stars printed on the sheet. Then I cut number 2 out of a shiny red packing paper.

Here is my little two year old Mishu.

I worked on his birthday banner. It was really easy to make it.

I used these colorful sheets and used alphabets, from his alphabet board game, as stencils. We gifted him this alphabet board game on dushehra and there is an excavator in this photograph which was Mishu’s Diwali gift.

This is how the banner looked after I finished working on it. I encouraged Mishu to participate as I wanted it to be more personalized.

Then I collected some things that Mishu knows about or likes or loves.

Mishu loves bindis and stickers, so I included stickers of aero plane, giraffes, cat, elephant, wheel, parrots, and penguins.

I gave him feathers, beads, buttons, shells and some twigs.

He enjoyed gluing and sticking things on the banner.

And this is my son’s birthday cake.

I baked two eggless chocolate cakes for my double layered cake. Thanks to my very good friend Neha Bhukania for her recipe. She sounded more concerned about the cake when she phoned me to jolt down the recipe. She is a person whom I can speak to when I am stuck in any difficult situation, confused, sad and she comes up with most constructive, positive ideas and solutions on earth. Thank God for giving me such a friend.

I decorated it with Cadbury dairy milk and Cadbury gems. Mishu loves and loves gems and was finding it very difficult to wait till he cuts the cake.

He blew the candle even before we were ready. We tried again when my husband was ready with the camera but oops then he couldn’t blow it, he even tried very very hard. Then I had to help him.

Here is mishu with his birthday gifts. We gifted him some toy vehicles and a laptop meant for babies. The idea of buying this laptop was given by my school friend Neha Jain. Many weeks back I was discussing about Mishu’s increasing interest in Television with her. She suggested me to buy this little laptop meant for kids to divert Mishu’s developing interest in watching television. Not only did I like her idea but I was impressed by the kind of interest she took in understanding my worry and came up with such solution when she is not a mother herself. She is not married even. I feel that she is going be a wonderful mum and will bring up happy kids with beautiful hearts and positive approach towards life.

I was discussing about the uncertainty revolving around my house for many weeks now. Finally things are taking shape and I have some news to share. We are leaving this place (Agra) and moving to Gurgaon very soon. Again I have to start thinking about packing and have to settle in another city. Hope I am not sounding sad because I am not. I have mixed feelings.

This birthday of Mishu was very sober with three of us celebrating his birthday. He doesn’t have friends here. We don’t have kids of his age in our building and because we are new to this place we don’t have many friends also. But soon when Mishu will go to play school he’ll have his friends and his next birthday will be a party.

Big sheet cut into pieces

2010-11-02T20:47:00.002+05:30

Inspired by a post from Artful Parent I taped these six sheets and Mishu painted on them. I couldn’t find the link of that post but instead found this one which is equally creative. I cut paper into 8 ½ inches long and 7 inches wide pieces. Mishu liked painting this way. These days his favorite color is black and he uses it in all his paintings.

Stacking

2010-10-29T01:34:00.003+05:30

Mishu likes to make such small buildings sometimes. These are Faber Castell Tempera Paint Bottles stacked by him. He hasn’t ever shown interest in his blocks. That made me worried at times. I used to wonder why my toddler never liked to play with blocks or arranging them the way other babies did. But soon he started running away with my kitchen boxes and putting them one top of the other. Another lesson learned “kids choose their own ways of understanding and learning certain things”.

A wreath

2010-10-27T15:24:00.004+05:30

This is my first attempt of making a wreath. I made this little wreath (not so neat) this morning. We went to the lawn when Mishu got up, he enjoyed his time watching squirrels, birds and butterflies while I collected feathers, twigs, sticks and flowers from the grass. I have been thinking of using the twigs, from the Gulmohor tree (Flame tree) outside our house, in some kind of project. Moreover the monkeys play on this tree often and do a lot of damage to it, so there are lot of sticks and twigs under it always.

Yesterday I saw this post from Kelly of creating a family home where she made an "interchangeable wreath". That gave me idea to use the twigs and sticks. I used the ones which were flexible. The branches she used seemed pretty long and flexible but mine were short and not that flexible so I had to tie yarn here and there to give it this shape. Later I decorated it by attaching these flowers and feathers to it. I haven’t used any kind of glue; I just tucked these between the twigs. Don’t forget to check Kelly’s beautiful wreath.

A Very Big Traffic Jam

2010-10-26T22:55:00.004+05:30

It was Mishu’s idea to arrange his toy vehicles like this. He started to put his vehicles in a row on our centre table but soon realized that it had very small space to display his complete collection. So I helped him in arranging it on the floor. He simply loved this big traffic jam and hugged me many times.