Always look for an alternate solution

For last three weeks, I have started a new experiment with my  younger one.

Since she is the youngest and just seven year old. She used to often get upset , throw tantrums , get angry and refused to do her home work and any other things she needs to follow on daily basis.

Till few weeks ago, on some days I would really find it difficult to control her behavior and also ensure that she completes her studies and other assignments.

My only solution in such scenarios -  I used to stop talking to her or giving her any response. This would generally control her and then she would say sorry and we used resume the activity we were doing.. I used to get things done but  never on a happy note

One day I just felt why should I use a threatening technique to control her behavior  She is a 7 year old child. How can I expect her to be at her best behavior all the time. And how can I deprive her from mother's affection and love even for 3-5 minutes.

It lead me into thinking of a better way of doing it.

Did I find it ... you bet I did.

Whenever she would throw tantrum or get upset with us, I started copying her. If she would lie on floor , I would follow. If she goes to other room I would follow her. If she is sitting with crossed leg and head down, I would do that.If she goes and hides behind the curtain, I would do the same. Basically I started imitating everything she would do when she was upset.

The result was that after three -four such actions, she would give a little smile. She treated at it as a game between mumma and her. The smile would be followed with a big hearty laugh. I would then tell her why we need to do the task in hand right away and she would comply without any fuss..

It made my days so blissful. Earlier getting her to do her homework would at times just drain my energy and patience, and would seem such a daunting task. But this wonderful workaround left both of us happy. There were no arguments, no shouting... everything just fell into place so easily.

All it needed was a change of approach from my end.

My daughter is still the same , a little kid who is just having fun. I have changed and am happy with the change.

Note : It's been two months since I started this practice. It still works. Now there are rare occasions when this does not work, and that much I can manage.

Raising kids 1

This post is part inspired by my personal experience as mom and part triggered by recent incident narrated by a friend about her neighbor. The lady, whose behavior prompted me to write this particular blog, has two kids aged 5.5 and 3.5 years old.

She was pushing and thrashing her kids, because the elder one scored zeroes in all his assessments. My friend intervened and stopped that, but she wondered what more she could have done.

Parenting skill is something that is relative what works for me may not work for her. And I do not have any proof that my parenting style is better. But I do believe that raising kids are like maintaining a bed of flowers. You need to nurture them with loving care, guidance and support.

Let me begin by asking, how you would nurture a sapling to grow into a flower blooming plant.

1)     You start by choosing the proper pot for your plant.

2)     You then make a mix of soil and fertilizers (need basis) to get nourishing mixture and pour it into the pot.

3)     You put your little prized sapling deep into the soil and pour a little water each day till the roots are holding the soil strongly.

4)     Slowly you see it grow with each passing day.

5)     You pour small quantity of water ensuring that in the process you do not damage it’s developing roots.

6)     You weed it regularly, so that its growth is not impacted by the weeds.

7)     Occasionally you prune it.

8)     Within few weeks/months your plant will bloom flowers.

9)     Then you can admire the result of all your hard work of so many months.

Questions

10)What if you added too much water in initial few days?

11)What if you pour whole week’s water supply in one day and then for the rest of the week ignored the sapling because of your work commitments?

12)What if instead of gently & carefully watering it, you emptied the entire water can in one go?

13)Will the sapling grow into a healthy plant?

In all possibility it might not grow at all. All you will be left with is a rotten set of stems and leaves.

14) You can keep wondering on what went wrong.

15) After all you did give the entire week’s water supply to it. So what if, it’s done in a single day.

16) Everything else was readily available for the plant, the soil, the sunlight, its own chlorophyll.

17) If it wished it would have turned into a plant with beautiful flowers.

18) Whose fault is it… plants or yours?

19) Keep thinking …. … You already know the answer.

20) All you needed to give the sapling was water at regular intervals, rest all was taken care of by the sapling itself.

21) But you failed to even provide that essential water supply and that and only that was your crucial contribution for its growth.

I will conclude this in one more blog, as what my friend had narrated me was very overwhelming  and today I can manage to write only this much. 

Why mom and dad are better teachers?

1. You know your child's strengths and weaknesses better than anybody else.

2. You are their first teacher. You taught them basic life skills. 

Did you visited a specialist to teach them how to walk, talk , eat, sleep ....?

3. A child is happiest while studying with loving parents.

You can teach them according to their schedule. 

In between give them breaks to play or do some other fun activity in between studies.

This is not at all viable in a coaching/tuition class.

4. As a parent you can adapt teaching strategy to suit your child's interest.

For example, a child who is interested in drawing  can be taught maths concept using drawing.  

Or a child who does lot of chef role play can be taught concepts using kitchen supplies.

5.  Last but not least, you can do a lot of play way learning at home than at school or extra classes.  

Your home is like a big laboratory, give your children freedom to experiment with lots of stuff available at home.

You just need to look around house carefully and you will find stuff that you can leverage for interactive teaching of maths/science and other subjects.

For tips you can browse my blog listing learning activities I do for my kids and students.

Inside Earth's Layers

This was a simple activity just to revise various layers of our mother Eaarth.

We used a thermacoal ball of about 3" diameter for this.

1) Cut the ball into half.

2)  Use acrylic colors to paint a yellow circle in the center with diameter of 2 cm.

3) Use orange and red colors to paint concentric rings about 2 -2.5 cm broad.

4) Paint the outer age of sphere with black or green color.


5)  The central yellow part represents INNER CORE. 

6) The orange colored layer represented OUTER CORE.

7) The red layer MANTEL.

8) The black outline represented CRUST.



This is how it looked

We pasted it on a MB board, and also put label for color coding.

Carbon Atomic Structure

This was done for a school assignment "How to represent Carbon Atom".e

Forgot to take step wise photos of the making process. 

But here are the steps in text:

1)   Take a big thermacoal ball approximately  3" in diameter, cut it into half.

2) Paint it black with Acrylic color.

3) Let it dry.

4) Make a 1/2 cm long ring to represent "L" shell using white color.

4) Take some wooden beads of  three different colors.   We had orange, pink and green.

• Orange beads represented Neutron.

• Pink Bead represented Proton

•  Green Bead represented Electron.

5)  Last step was to paste the beads on the ball.  6 Proton and  6 Neutron in center part representing Nucleus.

And 2 Green Beads on white band "L" shell. And remaining 4 green beads on the "M" shell represented by outer black band.



Here is the final model.

Chemical Reactions Model building activity

We also did a fun model building for chemical reactions.

Not that my daughter had any problem in understanding and forming chemical reaction equations.

We still did an activity, just to ensure more clarity about the concept.

Material used were small thermacoal balls and barbecue skewers. Some colors, we used acrylic as it gives a nice shine and texture.


So you start with coloring the balls in different colors. Ensure you have atleast 8-10 balls of each color.



We used acrylic colors to paint the balls in different colors to represent atoms of various elements.

Once the colored balls were dried up, we were ready to experiment with molecular structure.


Here is a sample reaction we tried for methane and oxygen reaction.

The chemical equation is CH4 + 2O2    =   CO2  +  2 H2O


And this is how we made the model

It helps to a great extent in gaining clear understanding of chemical reaction. 

1. It gives  an actual understanding of how molecules break in a chemical reaction to form a new compound. 

2. Also how atoms bond in a compound.

I would recommend it to all parents as a must do activity for grade 6 and above students.


Wish I had figured out this technique when I was studying. Let me confess that I was very bad in chemistry. Because I never got clarity on concepts like molecular structure and valency and bonding of atoms. 

Star Tracker Program

With two little kids at home, sometime things get little difficult to handle.

As a mother I had lots of thoughts and questions.

In order to help myself, I started followed a simple yet powerful  routine when my elder one was 8 and younger one 3 years old.

Deriving from my corporate experience, I decided to use same motivation technique and performance improvement method that I used for my project teams. With slight modification I adopted it for my kids.

I started  a Star Tracker Program for my girls.  It was a nice colorful diary where in we used to keep daily  record of

1) Good deeds

2) And not so good deeds


They would list all the things they did during the day, we would then categories those and list in separate heading.

If number of good deeds scored more than bad deeds. They would get a Star for that day.

End of the week and month we will check who has got more stars. Both of them tried to do as many good deeds as possible during the day.

Some of the deeds were put in special category like
 1) Helping grandparents
 2) Taking Care of your siblings
 3) Not watching TV but going out to play.
 4) Eating two fruits a day

These were awarded more stars.

I added these special categories to highlight importance of these things in our life.

Also there were days when the Not so good deeds score was very high and chances of getting a star was bleak. These special categories would boost their star value on those days.

The objective of this exercise was not to highlight the wrong things but focus on good things. So I always ensured that they get at-least one star a day.  The  number of stars for a day depended upon how many activities remain on Good side after cancelling against the Not so good deeds.

Later based on my girls feedback we also added a Mother Star tracker, where in we would also list my good or bad deeds of the day and rate me as well.

We followed this daily for almost a year. And helped me a lot in instilling the right values and manners in my children. Sometime they would fill it themselves (especially my elder one , younger one was too small to write) and bring it to me for marking a star. Though my younger one was barely 3 years that time, but she used to list out all good/not good stuff properly.

I am not a trained psychologist, but as a mother I can vouch that this little exercise did wonders to my girls and myself.

It ensured that we talked about good and bad behavior for at-least 15 minutes daily. The 360* feedback (term from my corporate days) that I added post my daughters feedback added a new dimension to the whole thing.  It made them  realize that everybody (their mother included) has limitations and even grown-ups needs improvements. And there is no shame if someone highlights your wrong doing and asks you to improve. Life is about bringing a positive change in your life.

It also helped them open up a lot, as we discussed both good and bad things with out fear of any reprimanding later.

I would recommend it to all parents. All you need is a nice diary with colorful pages (to begin with choose one cartoon characters or some kiddie design) some star stickers, sketch pens. Plus you need to set aside 15-20 minutes from your busy day for this activity.

Do try it out and let me know how it helped you.

Would be happy to hear your feedback.

Happy parenting and happy learning.

Friendship Band

Tomorrow is friendship day and as always we decided to make the bands at home.

We started with chenille stems and wooden beads.

Chenille stems  as it can be easily weaved and molded into shapes.

Here is what the girls did with the supplies :

Finally, the friendship bands were ready to use.

We all had such an awesome creative time, making these bands.

Aren't these pretty?

Paper Mache Birds

Some more fun with paper mache this year.


We made birds perched on a tree branch using paper mache.  For this only raw material was old newspaper.


For glue one can use wheat flour mixed in water , i prefer to use diluted fevicol as that dries up quickly. And is suitable for school projects.


To make birds their are lots of tutorial online ..you can refer this one

http://www.ultimatepapermache.com/paper-mache-bluebirds 

This one is the easiest and best available on net.

So following this we made the birds.


To make branch take a full sheet of newspaper make a roll out of it and crumple the roll to get the feel of a tree branch. ( This time I have taken photos for each step, will upload those soon.)

We added a layer of white tissues to get some texture on the birds as well the tree branch.

Use pastel colors to paint it. The whole thing was ready in 3 days.

Ready for display at school.

Type of House - Model for School Project - Red Indian Tipi/Tipee/Teepee

My second grader has to submit a project on type of house, where in they were asked to make a model of any one type of house.

I felt that hut, brick house and igloo is something very common. Most kids will make that. So we decided to make a Native Red Indian Tipi.

We used Drawing sheets to make a Tipi, two native red Indians, a Totem and a bon-fire. Some ready made felt flowers and horses were used to decorate the project.

visit this blog for a sample cutout shape of Tipi.

http://www.thatartistwoman.org/2009/07/how-to-make-mini-teepees.html

Here is our finalized model. We used old thermacol from AC box for the base. and rest of the things were erected on thermacol using toothpicks.

This time I forgot to take step wise pictures ..but from next time I plan to upload a details tutorial kind of blog to help other parents.

Ganpati from Quilling

One more year of Ganpati Festival , and here comes a new assignment. Make Ganpati idol without using clay or plaster of paris.

So we decided to do it with our favourite medium paper quilling.

With a little research on net to get an idea of how to go about it, we made this.

Use 1/2 cm quilling strips and 1" strips. Some embellishments and a small piece of cloth for dupatta.

And Voila !!

Final outcome .. my elder one was really pleased with it.

Beutiful isn't it... this has now become a permanent fixture of my art display wall  at home.

My take on using shape lacing kit

My friend asked me to suggest some toy for her 3 year old to keep her engaged during their flight to US.

She said I don't want to carry to many toys, give me something that can be used in many creative ways.

For my kids, I always use to carry a small bag full of small plastic animals and bird, a soft toy and a set of pencils, erasers, colors and papers, a set of match play cards etc. So I always had a bag full of toys and other stuff just for keeping my kids occupied during the flight.

When I saw this lacing kit while searching options for my friend, I just felt why I never searched market for such supplies when my kids were toddlers. It can be used to create so many activities.

Here is what I am talking about 

Looks plain simple lacing kits, isn't it.

All you can do is run a lace the through the holes in shape and work on your motor skills.

or loop a set of shapes through single lace.

There is more my dear friends. And here come the photo listing......

Mikado with Little Ones


Play with Numbers

One little two little three little toys

four little five little six little toys

.....

Play sorting game 

1) Start with color sorting. Stack same color toys in one group.

2) Next come shape sorting. Pick similar shapes objects and keep them together.



3)  Segregate Animals, Fruits into two groups.{if you are lucky you might get one more category "vehicles" in your pack, we did not get that)



Concept of More and Less: 

Arrange red color shapes in one row, yellow in second and green in third and so on.

Questions for kid

Which color row has more shapes?

Which color has less?

How do you decide what is more what is less?


Now ask your child to arrange these in a order so that colors that have less shapes are on top and color that have most shapes is at bottom of pyramid.

Here in a simple way we are introducing ascending and descending order .

Remove few shapes from the bottom row so that it has least shape.

Ask your kid to rearrange it.

Even a  simple toy can be used to learn several concepts.


Stencil for drawing:

Pick a shape and draw an outline with pencil or sketch pen. Let your child follow this method to trace all objects. They will not trace the perfect shapes. You need to appreciate their effort all the time, that's how you inculcate learning and a habit of trying out things.

Always remind yourself of the age difference between you and your little one. He/she can not demonstrate  your level of dexterity. It took you so many years to draw that perfect circle... allow your child time to master a skill before expecting perfection.


What is heavy and light?

Take two laces, in one put at-least 7-8 shapes and in second put 2-4 shapes. Tie the two ends of laces to make a garland of shapes.

Let your child pick one garland and then the other one by one.

Ask if he/she finds any difference while picking up the garlands.

Now let them pick both together in two hands and ask them to compare what they feel.

Paper Crumpling and texture drawing

holiday activities at home

Semicircle paper craft

My younger one got an assignment to make some designs using semicircular shapes cut out of paper... and we made a scenery

And this was her own creation a ladybug and an umbrella

Another year and a new Festival Craft

This time it was Pooja Thali. So we used Red velvet paper, Some glitter tape and gemstones stickers for decorating the thali. My daughter was given only one day notice by art teacher for making this .. so we decided to use papers and sticker to get this quick decoration ready.

The gemstone sticker speed-ed the work, otherwise it would have become a heavy duty task sticking one stone at a time.

Here is how it turned out ...

DIY Foam Vehiclaes

Today we decided to make some working models (not exact replicas) of vehicles.

First we collected things we might need to do this.

Here is our set of supplies :

6 mm foam sheets,  straw pipe, wooden sticks, some buttons for wheels. Some colorful paper for decorating the vehicles.

We started with making a red bus. 

Step by step picture tutorial.

1) Make small holes using straw on the foam sheet where you want to put the wheels.

2)  Next cut small 2" pieces from straw and pass it through the two layers of foam sheet.

3) Next we added some window and doors on the body of bus. I printed stickers for this, so that it is easier     for my daughter to stick it on bus.

    The focus of this exercise was not pasting and sticking, but making a demo vehicle.

4) Next we put the wooden sticks through the straw. And put two buttons on each side.
This is how the assembly looked like.

6. Later we realized that buttons did not prove to be good as wheels. So we replaced it with  wheels made from  circular foam pieces. 

We tried several variation, by putting uneven sized wheels on either sides and analyzing  how the bus moves under various scenarios.

We also made a Jeep, a car, a Train model and a boat with the same supplies.