Clay work

Clay is probably first play thing of human kind...and we all still love to play with it. It's still fascinating.

Megh loves to play with clay since long but he made his first recognizable shape recently of Shivling!  'Oh my God's dialogue  "use kala patthar nahi Shivling kahete he" made Megh suddenly interested in Shivling and made one...took my help making Nandi. Colored and worshiped too! I have made some beads and earrings.

We all had different plan. Me and Megh happy with our single day clay work and Ashna made one red mask attached with key chain ring. She made,break and again made some artifacts but somehow she was not happy with her work. She left it for some days. But one day she amazed me by her creation.

As a little girl she was used to set her barbie dolls in gymnastics position and now making sculpture in dancing position! Nobody taught her but that's why it's beautiful work.

 

Dream is dream either small or big

Two days back Megh learned typing Gujarati on Gujarati typepad and y'day he wrote 'My dream came true. I have build my small hotel and served food. I'm very happy. I earned 8 Rs. in a day.'


Megh made delicious Tuver-ringan (pigeon peas+brinjal) sabzi with green garlic and garnished it with coriander...th he don't like coriander leaves taste. Then when he asked 'why i liked it so much?'...i explained him in detail how aroma and garnishing along with taste makes dishes mouthwatering. Then he asked 'how do we know person liked our recipe or not?' i said 'from the speed he finish it !' Then suddenly i remembered Vithal Kamath's incidence of tasting food out of dish his customer left to check why he left it and told him abt Kamath's book 'Idli,Orchid and me'.....then he became so eager to read it. It is my fav. book but found it's missing from my bookshelf! I brought one from library and Megh has read some chapters. He always love to prepare and serve food...so he is liking Kamat's story. That day he started selling Mamra, made his own cone with logo and charged 2Rs. per cone. Then started taking orders of different recipes he can cook and so does his dream came true!!! 'Dream came true' probably learned from 'Idli,Orchid and me'!

For us this is play but for child you can't differentiates it from learning. Selling mamra or taking food order  everything happening with sincerity. Also learning different recipes himself from you tube. He charged & gathered money to buy supplies for next orders!And from his note come to know that he earned money too!!!

This is still an easy dream but another one is there since long...making own boat! We have floating boat but he want his own boat. Not toy boat or not just raft...want to make boat on which he can go for sailing!  Difficult and frustrating! I tried to divert him by making toy boat, he made and enjoyed but not satisfied. He ask for our help but we can't help making wooden 'Real' boat. He made his ship himself out of this frustration as shown in earlier post of Child's creations. but nothing brought peace to him.

 Sometime back he started making his wooden boat himself without anyone's help. Done all the carpentry work he can do, sanded and painted too. Have seen many videos and websites...th he is not fluent english reader he keeps gathering information from pictures and diagrams mostly. Once during morning walk he explained what is V-hull and why it should be of V shape. Front V-hull cuts water and gives direction and speed ! Name of boat given from his fav. word 'swimming'! Now he want to try it in river. After that he realized fevicol and putty will not stay in water, need stronger structure , need more wood...but still  hasn't give up. We could not help but he followed Rabindranath's poem "Ekla chalo re..."

I probably couldn't express his wish, dream or frustration here in words but if you have any idea which can help me to help him please share with me.

The Healer

Being normal human  I too get tired, irritate, frustrate, go mad sometimes...but then it's life. Most of the time you just needs a caring hand. I'm grateful I have one.

Since his early age Megh loves to use acupressure jimmy...he has seen Nikhil giving me treatment using jimmy and he just imitated. Though with little hands he can not press hard or find proper point but it is always healing and relaxing experience for me. He used to make potion using Tulsi, Ginger, Lemon grass, Cardamom or what ever herbs he finds for stomach pain or headache. Once he just added cinnamon and clove powder to water and it became very good mouth freshener!  He don't know what to use or how it helps but just he wish to help.

It was very busy day, many task on hand since morning, climbing stairs up and down, frustrated due to some reason and badly needed some rest but couldn't find it. Megh came to me "Mummy, what do you like most ?, I want to give that to you" I said "Right now I just need a hug from you" He hugged and said "Peace, I want to give you Peace in gift!!!" Then he went to a room, closed curtains, arranged pillows to make comfortable seating, hold my hand and took me to that room. Requested Ashna "don't disturb" and closed the door. He told me to close eyes, then he sat besides me holding and caressing my hand gently. Hardly five minutes and all my stress gone away , I was relaxed,  happy with my son's gift of Peace!

Last week I had headache and some stomach  problem...he brought a Phudin Hara pill and water along with acupressure treatment so I relax fast. Then with my surprise he came with drum and before he start playing I stopped him "Pl. don't play drum right now" ...i was in trouble and he was hurt by my tone started crying! "I want to play drum in a manner to soothe your pain" !!! Oh God, how many times I will do mistake to know the child.

Life is beautiful even if with pain, with such a healing hand.

DIY - wall painting!

Since about a month we are doing really hard work...Walls of our home full of children's art work by crayon,pencil & water color!, really in worst condition after some re-baring of ceiling, water proofing problem  and other repair works and we painted them about 10 years ago. So painting walls is badly needed task at home.

   
    It was looking like a tough task...we were hesitating to take it on hand. But one fine morning we just started and children too enthusiastically joined us.

     The first task is preparing wall for paint is the toughest of all........ scrubbing and sanding requires quite a hard work. Tried and learned many tricks to remove crayon work, found tooth paste best in it!

     
     Facing many wall preparing challenges & learning many tricks for them, listening radio, discussions on  flaws & fixes  and selection of colors, getting completely dirty while working hard, making mistakes and learning from them...finally we have completed painting two rooms. We are going slowly and still have lot of work pending but now our team is confident.


          From scrubbing, sanding, filling putty, applying primer and finally painting walls with brush & roller.....so many skills needed to finish wall painting. Children participated according to their energy, mood and will but both have involved themselves in almost everything. Rather reaching professional perfection we have tried to do our best.

 

Kid's creations.

I love drawing but i always need an object in front of me to draw the image on paper, whether it is flower, leaf, photograph, picture, situation, landscape, person anything. I can hardly draw something directly from my imagination or i need to try really hard. To draw a train or ship i need picture of it in front of me....i'm dependent, i feel helpless. No doubt i enjoy creating such drawings and it brings delight to my children. I have never been trained for art of drawing...just drawing periods of school time, but i feel to draw more than technical aspects i'm lacking something fundamentally. Is it lack of keen observation? lack of practice to draw different curves? poor imagination? absence of creativity?....don't know but i always feel i can't express myself completely with drawing.

But with kids I have always felt they don't have to think before creating something whether it is drawing, craft or anything.....it's spontaneous action.

Planning was of making Ganesh from paper-mache but due to Kathak program and gymnastics competition couldn't have time and when realized that we are too late Ashna made Ganesh from cardboard within 10 minutes and decorated with color LED from a broken toy!

A quick drawing from Megh..........Turtle mummy brought tiny kids to play on this 'learning while playing' ride...built of stone, wood and cement! 

Another quick craft from Megh!

Megh's ship!... front wooden pieces is 'mast' ; thermocole is 'yard' of his ship by moving it can change direction of ship and wires is air pump removed from aquarium ... he used it for oxygen need while diving!

Love all these creative energy.....

Expecting perfection from a child

I remember whenever we have to weave paat ( cloth strips ) on charpai my father couldn't control his anger cause being perfectionist he not like slight difference in distance between any two strips. Though he is perfectionist he never forced me to be but slowly by observing him i too took his path and believed to do everything perfectly. My books were up to date, uniform always ironed, clean shoes, perfect preparation before exam and try hard to keep every corner of my study table and home neat and clean. I used to spend my lot of energy behind perfection. But after being mother everything changed. Then freedom became much more important than perfection. I left perfection far behind.

Children have to draw perfect circle and must have to fill color under the boundary is the first thing that made me think about development of creativity at school. It's an art, how can you force a nursery kid to draw in a particular way?! Teacher praises kid's perfection in drawing, craft, writing etc. and then starts 'pleasing the teacher game' instead child's own expression th art. Children coming from obedient culture at home adapt it easily but not all. 'Practice makes a man perfect' and teacher gives homework of writing same spelling 10 times or 25 times!!!...utter wastage of precious childhood :(

When parents try to impose good habits, manners, etiquette etc. they uses 'that's like a good girl'...isn't it a tool to mold child in perfect person? Before a child could understand meaning of 'sorry' and 'thank you' they have to use it as parent tell them to say it. Perfection towards socially excepted behavior by pleasing others. Have seen many parents hitting kids for making cloths dirty...another kind of perfection push.

 'Perfection' is not a bad word in itself....in fact that's our ultimate goal. Nothing wrong in providing yourself as 'perfection' model but imposing it might damage something irreversibly. For parents child's perfection in academic, sports, behavior, art, smartness etc. is the measure of good parenting, child perform good and parents feel proud but child's failure makes them feel bad. Today's child-oriented parenting making it tough for the children to flourish with this rush for perfection.

As toddler Ashna wanted to attend marriage reception wearing slipper, and she did !. Megh always says "what's need of cloth inside home?" he's happy with his Mogli style, it's ok...but if there is guest he knows now not wearing cloth is not freedom  (This is for parents who wrongly takes word 'freedom'). They might not look fashionable smart kids but they are free...not rushing to behave like an adult.

 Ashna was drawing and filled whole page with black crayon lines , our friend shocked and said oh, she wasted whole page! Her jr. KG teacher rejected Ashna from annual cultural program saying she don't have perfect steps! Megh was 2 yr old and we planned making Ganesh idol with friends, we were talking and before we start Megh came with his Ganesh. He tried to make head, hands, legs and round stomach, not joined them but just put them together. That was very quick and instead appreciating his efforts they found it funny, they laughed comparing it with ideal Ganesh idol!

Today Ashna is 10 and Megh 7...they love to make different things...sometimes makes with help sometimes without any help. Most of the time perfection is missing but sometimes they do really nice work. For me every creation by my children is precious because I know how much thinking process, passion, hard work, efforts they have added to it....and whatever coming is their own original work and not copied from somewhere. It's the same force of creation by which this whole world exists...when inner energy (Shakti) combines with the work (Purusharth) , new creation emerges.

“Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it” – Salvador Dali

Green ----> Grey ?

A sight of rising sun was beautiful. Me and Megh were on flyover riding Activa. As we came down from flyover he no longer able to see sun because of tall buildings.

After few minute's silence he said  "now there should be grey color instead of green in our flag" 
I was surprised  "why?!"
He said  "increasing no. of concrete jungles"

Don't know from when but he has special affection for our Tricolour. Love to draw it, wherever he find these three colours together he attach it with national flag, keep asking history & evolution of  our flag and meaning of three colours. We have many conversations about Tricolour but such simple but deeper meaning thought has made me think about it. Increasing amount of deforestation/industrialization/construction reducing amount of green  and raising amount of grey on our land . We are proudly attaching terms like fertility, growth, prosperity, happiness etc. with green in our Tricolour but without real green Earth will any of above term be reasonable? Will this mad race of so called development lead us to replacement of green with grey?

Rock exhibition

Suddenly children decided 'Rock exhibition'! Originally Megh's idea but collecting stones/rocks is hobby Ashna cherished since long so she immediately joined in.  "Mummy, today we are going to awake whole night"...took Rock, Mineral & Fossil book and their collection of rocks and started identification themselves using net. Reading book & websites, examining their rock closely, giggling and laughing together , remembering from where they collected that rock,  memories of visiting Mardak bet and 'Rock & Mineral Exhibition' at Mumbai few months back still fresh ...everything making cocktail of beautiful learning with fun environment and th suffering from throat infection Nikhil was enjoying children's interactions and I was busy with 3000 pieces jigsaw which now Ashna left uncompleted. Me & Ashna both can't easily leave jigsaw without completing it but today it's 'Rock'!

Then we were not allowed to terrace for two days where they arranged their exhibition. They were busy in their work and I too collecting more info as it's interesting for me too but mostly I do not have answers of their questions and then I have to answer 'Beta, I'm not geologist'. We do not have great rock collection  but this is what children have gathered and arranged  themselves...tried to identify as much as possible. They might be wrong in identifying them. They might not remember names of rocks but how such different verity of rocks formed is fascinating for them. Sharing some pictures from children's Rock exhibition.

But a pale yellow stone became very much important for Ashna as she found there is something like fossil in it! Oh! this is Amber!...it was like ureka moment for her....keep asking me is it really amber? it is plant fossil inside it? But again i have to say "i'm not geologist, we have to find it" She has searched and seen many videos on net and read in book but this is a subject which requires deep knowledge and experience.....we are learning and gathering our experiences. She knows it's ongoing process...this is just start and will never end.

Dog dilemma

Before three year we found three little puppies around our home with their mother. Children immediately attached with those three little puppies and given names Whity, Blacktail  and One sone (  don't know why this name!). They were always with children. If Ashna goes for cycling they all accompany her until few months back suddenly One sone  disappeared and never returned. Whenever they need Ashna's help, food or just want to play they make special sound for calling her.

Once Ashna went to Nature Club's sunday meeting and someone left 2 days puppy who lost mother in road accident...she brought it home. And two days after that went painful for all...puppy was little, crying continuously and we are probably not able to take care of it properly, Ashna was feeding it every 2 hour even at night and taking care but 'if puppy will not survive' making her tense & emotional at a time. Unfortunately,  it died after 2 days.

Blacktail has given four puppies few months back somewhere in our society and this time they gave them names from books they were reading. But unfortunately they all crushed one by one under the vehicles. Children felt very sad and helpless, they already playing with them. Still miss their playful Sikander!

This time  taking more care for safety Blacktail has given 6 puppies in our compound. Chidlren are very happy, they are taking good care of Blacktail and giving her enough food time to time....hoping naughty puppies not get out of compound gate before they grow up and live safely! Difficult to give name except one as all are looking same right now!

Like Nikhil, Ashna too likes dogs very much and every dog comes running to her like already know her! And you can find her taking dog-photo most of the times!

Till this everything is fine..........but they also want dog as pet whom they can bring inside home, on the bed. They are waiting for my permission. I'm not ready for that plus if they bring dog pet what about all these stray dogs with whom they are sharing such wonderful connection? We all know pets are beneficial to children's development but here will having dog 'inside home' make any difference?

Hogwarts

Children's interest in Harry Potter lead us to making of Great Hall. 

And then making of Hogwarts!

Have used  empty boxes we stored at home and collected from office.

It's a big project for us and at times it was tiring. Ashna wanted to make more detailed, more perfect model but I having less patience put perfection aside sometimes. 

This is our mother-daughter project...now Ashna is determined to make other smaller but perfact models herself! 

Travelling

Travelling is like throwing a stone in a pond. The ripples keep happening, keep making waves, connect with each other and it is only a while later you can feel the magic....Santosh Sivan.

I have traveled south India before 25 year in a school trip but I'm still feeling the magic! South's huge temples, Vivekanand memorial, rail travel to Rameshwaram, Banglore's science museum etc were still in memories...and since then I always wanted to go there again. How I lost in Vrindavan garden that evening and how I crossed dam and reached to our bus myself in huge crowd as our president Gyaniji was there that night. It is one of my childhood adventure! Travelling is lot more than just visiting a place...that was 21 days unforgettable trip & that experience has added something to my existence. It took years to realize why my father always wanted me to travel more. When my father booked my school trip, our neighbor told him instead sending her to trip why don't you purchase TV , then she will enjoy whole world sitting at home! Could he ever understood what Mark Twain has said- "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness… broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime" ?

Ashna was in std 1 and we went for Goa trip during school days, her teacher complained after return that she had forgotten everything after trip! 10 days trip had washed out what she learnt in 6-7 months!!! Me and Nikhil both are travel-lover and we never joined any package tour as we always needed freedom, instead visiting just places we love to experience whole journey, we are more interested meeting people than just counting places, we never wanted home like food or other convenience during travel....we are thirsty, curious explorer  and like to take journey as it goes and in our own way. Actually our mode of travelling inspired homeschooling! ...we don't want to study in pieces and instead reaching somewhere we want to learn things completely. Life and learning both are ongoing journey...every moment something new going to be unfolded.

I would like to travel by foot like Kaka Saheb Kalelkar's Himalay Yatra but compromised it with by car journey. With Nikhil all trips are by car, it feels connected with  soil & soul of our country....flexibility to stay wherever we like. Whenever me & children have to travel without Nikhil we love to travel by train & bus too. We are very flexible as far as traveling is concern. Except petrol expense our trip is a kind of budget trip...by choice. We are not fond of luxuries, comforts, fashion or anything glamorous in real life and so does in travel...our thrust is to know, to feel, to experience.  

We travel frequently for work, without work or with work. While Nikhil or me busy with our work...we finds ways to be busy by just roaming around, visiting nearby places, meeting people, playing, making stories or drawing. During last trip to south at one customer place there was two big cherry trees, a big fish pond and a loving watchman uncle and open area to play...children enjoyed whole day while Nikhil was busy at work. 

People look at me with surprise when I tell them me and children alone go for trip. We have to sometimes due to nature of Nikhil's work. But I always found my children supportive and responsible during travel.  Even Nikhil asked how will I alone manage a long trip with children when we went first time  (Megh  4 & 1/2 and Ashna 8 that time)...but that was nice memorable trip. During such trip one has to be careful, punctual, responsible, flexible and so many life skills develops without really knowing about.

Just looking at how things changes with the place...people, prices, terrain, food, tastes, crops in farms, culture etc. makes children wondering about all new things around. First time when Megh eaten on Banana leaf he was so excited , after return to hotel he called to my mom and said "Dadi, here people eating on banana leaf...how nice na?  instead using plastic, paper or steel dishes they can directly throw it to compost?" 

Amazing feelings after watching wonders of nature like Jog fall or man-made wonders like Meenaxi Temple, Madurai are magical in true sense , stays within our heart forever...inspires children many different ways. Visiting any historical places has it's own thrill. After Lothal visit  Ashna was very much curious about Indus valley civilisation....she draw pictures and still any new finding about it makes her  eager to know more.  

Travel no matter long or short or just a single day outing...changes something within you, you never know exactly what. It's fun, enjoyment, learning, experience, feeling , adventure , family bonding, connecting with different people....... one can extend the list as per own experiences. 

Play

 why children play? what children play naturally? 

is there a biological roots to play & toy? ... Jinan

Here is my search to answers of these questions th my son's play...7 year of unstructured play. 

Zero Shadow Day!

Earth is ball shaped, rotate on tilted 23.5 degree axis and has elliptical orbit around sun ...just these facts makes earth really interesting place to live on! Amount of sun energy (light) varies throughout year and we have different seasons and then life escapes from being monotones.

Understanding Earth - Sun relations is interesting with some simple day time astronomy experiments. Generally we say Sun is overhead at 12'o clock noon but when we get smallest shadow Sun reaches at zenith and that is different time than our GMT. We get smallest shadow in the north.

On 21st March Sun passes  exactly above the equator and reaches line of cancer 23.5 degree N on 21st of June. Then again starts southward journey and reaches equator on 23rd of September. There are certain days twice in these six months that Sun passes exactly above particular place between 0 to 23.5 degree in northen hemisphere. And ....when Sun is exactly above head there is smallest of all solar noon shadows of the year! which seems almost near to 'Zero' or 'No shadow'!

We were waiting for this day since long. If your place's latitude is less than 23.5 Degree then don't miss this amazing phenomena and great opportunity that can inspire your young astronomer!.