Embracing failure.....

"Oh! This is nice picture!"
"But this is not what I wanted to draw"

Disappointment is part of any creative process. She intended to draw the moment she has observed at her kathak class, two of her friends were talking with each other....but it turned up into something else!

So what? That's also part of creativity.

"So,what? it's still unique. Even if it's different, it created from your own independent thinking"
"Yes, and this is exactly Ananya's style of sitting!"

Failure, disappointment, surprises all part of process and I would embrace them all cause they all lead me to discover myself.

"It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all." — J.K. Rowling

Tresure Hunt

'Treasure Hunt !!!'

Everybody busy with their own stuff and I have designed treasure hunt yesterday afternoon.

It was combination of some imagination plus measuring with tape and direction finding with compass this time. Where blue Aparajita flower (Clitoria ternatea) became 'Blue bird', Golden Bamboo became 'Golden ghosts', pink flower bed became jungle of pink fairies, yellow desk became yellow mountain! Clues were hidden into bushes, hanging on the tree, hidden under soil or just stuck somewhere. It took around two hours to find the treasure...treasure was Megh's favorite chocopie biscuits and a glass for painting Ashna wants. They found measuring distance in the given direction and decoding imaginative name of clues challenging.....bit difficult sometimes , took help from grandma for meaning of some words..

Some days back designed English treasure hunt as Megh was having confusion with words like before, after, above, below, behind ....hidden clues around things at home so he has to know meaning to find next clue...like under the pillow, behind the map, inside microwave.

Treasure Hunt is fun...children always looking for it. Treasure might be just a chocolate but finding 'Treasure' is thrilling and good patience building exercise. It can be designed for any age and on different difficulty levels. Just know the child, add some imagination, create & hide clues and go!

It all started from Pirates of caribbean series of movies two year back. Ashna was Jack Sparrow fan those days... bedsheets, drawing everywhere you can find him. And then making pirates stuff in our craft projects...different hats, map, binocular, gold coins, flags, pirate ornaments, ship etc. Then finding this amazing game has opened door of learning with fun-thrill-adventure.


Started with Pirates craft but hunt is evolving with time and we do not need Pirate make-up or other stuff anymore. Clues are designed so they have to use their knowledge, language & maths skill, climbing-digging and use of different tools. I have many rough ideas to make it more interesting, knitting story around hunt, making it a kind of puzzle or adding more adventure into it... i'm learning.

Good Morning!

As usual Megh called me “Mummy……” This is first call of the day. I wake up around 5 and children around 7, so I have good ‘my time’ in the morning. And some hugging, kissing & masti as usual he opened side table drawer and handed me a book – it’s Narsinh Maheta’s poems. (Narsinh Maheta – who is the creator of Gandhiji’s favorite Vaishnavajan to tene re kahiye…). I love his prabhatiya (devotional bhajans of Krishna-bhakti) since childhood and so my kids but since long we have forgotten to sing them. But today morning he just handed the book and demanded me to sing. I sung ‘Mari hundi …’ & ‘Gir taleti ne kund damodar….’ Ah….those were wonderful moments!

So, this is our homeschooling morning. Sometimes song, sometimes story but most of the time narration of dream Megh has seen….sometimes remember fully or sometimes just forget….or sometimes just a story! Ashna is a slow raiser and as Chinese astrology she is snake and I literally feel her like snake lazily rolling into bed!

What was our morning as school-goer? Oh! that was terrible time. Ashna had morning school and making her ready - waking her from bed, brushing teeth or bath everything was an individual battle. And most of the time she has no time for breakfast-just a glass of milk even th school time was 8am. Everyday I was planning making her mornings 'Good' in real sense but at last we all were having stressful mornings… then I was asking myself ‘Why I’m sending my kid to school?'

No point remembering our hard time but when people thinks it's tough and I answer them 'No, it's easy on the contrary'. And it's not just learning it's completely different life-style...living & learning without any boundary.

Homeschooling father

When someone ask what's father playing part in our homeschooling?

Me and children are onscreen player but he is hardly visible as he is playing important roll being off screen!

We are never worried because of 'father figure' that what if we haven't cooked dinner as we are busy in our work - work might be making some toy, doing some craft or just watching some interesting video...'Khichadi' will be fine...no complain.

Being right brained person he enjoys board games more than me and that's mostly our evening schedule. Playing carom, chess, chopat, mancala etc. is more interesting with him for children.

He is not good at storytelling - that's always my interest....but as far as reading and watching movie is concerns he enjoys reading children books and watching children movie just like a child! that's what i'm not good at. He has read many children book series along with Ashna and nowadays everybody reading & watching Harry Potter! That's really a kind of motivation.

Whenever he has to go out of city work-trip... we are mostly with him. Megh likes to observe factories and understand how machine works. Generally people avoid to take family at work but he don't and at the time he is busy with his work we explore places around, play games or just talk with people. And after work it's our family field trip.

Every morning we all work in the garden...he never ever feel shame to do our own work himself, cleaning car-garden, doing gardening etc. That's odd or say difficult when you are living in posh area. But who cares...for us it's dignity of labour.

He is our swimming coach or say coach for any sports........I'm zero in sports and he played almost every game. Being a scout and sports lover he has developed sporty characteristics. When we have planned our first Himachal trip- i was worried as he don't have any experience of driving on mountains. But he alone drove 5,200km along with Rohtang. So, love for sports/ adventure is also his department.

One more thing I have learn from him that might be the base of our homeschooling. We never join package tour as we are not interested in counting destinations but journey itself. Our journey starts from deciding in which direction we will go (reaching decision might take months or just a second! we never know) gathering information and just exploring new places & people.

Recently I have read a nice article by Dr. Hansal Bhachech that mother can be a best teacher but child follows father. And that's true. He is not with us whole day but children follows him. When I see keen observation, sensitivity & love towards nature/animals and eye to appreciate natural beauty I know that's not from me. But that's advantage for kids when both parents are differently wired!

Too long ! but can't take all credits always for myself , so have to write :)

Puppets!

Making Puppets is there since 2009 I have visited Shreyas School, Ahmedabad. ( http://sejal-vidyarth.blogspot.in/2009/11/puppet-mania.html ). Me and my children both were equally unknown how to make puppet to how to use them. Though i found it's very interesting medium and the way it captured children's interest is quite positive input but that time I found myself frustrated because I couldn't help channelize Ashna's excitement into real projects. We were making puppets , some song & dance, tried to present story too...but i could see my creative limits while working with puppets. That's me but company of puppet itself brought lot of fun and excitement for children. Over time we are gathering things we can use for puppets, many unfinished projects, many smaller projects never recorded just done and forget...but still love puppets!

Here is shadow puppet show we prepared yesterday. Making shadow puppet is easy, cut shape of a character, stick straw, a curtain and a source of light. Presenting requires bit of practice and that is fun part, we do mistakes, laugh on each other 's mistake, learn many things together including team work.



Another puppet show we prepared last year with a beautiful story of Chhutaki Ulli. Chhutaki Ulli is special since toddler age for Megh. First loved to listen this story from me, then reading it many times himself and at last working on Chhutaki's puppet!








Ashna has made puppet heads for the story 'Three little pigs' from paper mache. We prepared set for the story...straw house, house from sticks and bricks house from architecture set and no practice needed as Megh decided to read story while puppets act on it.




So, puppet is a powerful tool...so much craft, language learning without actually knowing ( that's always amazing 'without knowing'! ), timing & response, team work... and much more can be possible with puppets which still we have to explore, to learn. Sorry, for long post but puppets is very fascinating subject for us and haven't share since long on my blog. Please share your experiences with puppets with us...which might help us to learn more on this subject.

Poor King!

We decided to check out how much rice King needed to fulfill that mathematician demand who invented 'shatranj' or we popularly know 'chess' today.

We started with chess board drawn on paper, a grain of rice in first square and two in second and doubling it every next square.


Until 256 grains we couldn't weight as it's too small for our electronic weighing scale. 256 grain weighted 4 gram.


Now no need to count or weight...just doubling weight is enough!


When number became big and difficult to handle we filled all 64 squares with figure calculated using calculator.


And we reach on a really BIG figure.

2,88,23,03,76,151.71 tonne

288 billion, 230 million 376 thousand one hundred and fifty one point seventy one TONNE!

or

2 kharv 88 arab 23 crore 03 lakh 76 thousand one hundred and fifty one point seventy one

Poor King could not fulfill this demand, Obviously!

Pitagora Suichi

I have just read my old post ( http://sejal-vidyarth.blogspot.in/2009/09/joy-of-making.html) I’m surprised – still my kids are same … always want to make something new, experimenting with different things. Making and playing with marble train is wonderful experience. Making different tracks using broomsticks and rolling marbles on it brings joy, excitement and fun in the air. Few months before when we found a ‘Pitagora suichi’ video on youtube while searching something else (probably dominos)…and they immediately fall in love of it! Our home is already a ‘Kabad khana’ anything from empty boxes, bottles (plastic or glass), bamboo sticks,tube, electrical fittings, wood pieces, string, wires, cycle spokes, stone, buttons, broken things/toys etc…you name it and everything is available. So, no surprise why this pitagora suichi thing clicked to them…they found it’s challenging to their ‘making’ spirit. Of course it’s messy activity and addictive too but who cares!

Pitagora suichi was a children’s programme on Japanese TV channel and it means Pythagoras Switch or Rube Goldberg Machines…designing complex machine to complete simple task. Task is simple it looks simple too but I have witnessed how tough to make them working is...sometimes it's frustrating too....but all efforts completely paid when successfully completed that SIMPLE task!.