The Insatiable need to get more answers

Whats your favorite animal?
Whats your favorite alphabet?
Whats your favorite color?
Whats your favorite bird?

It started with these simple ones. He asked everyone including a clueless Ziva .. when she had not even started speaking. He even decided that Ziva's favorite animal was a Zebra.
And then it went on to  ...
What does a baker do?
How do you make bread?
How do you make cupcakes?
How does the car go to the garage?
How does the car get lifted up?
How does the bags come go to the airplane?
Where is the control tower?
Why is the light blinking?
Whats your favorite truck?
How does the digger dig mud?
...
You get the idea...
I know I should encourage these constant questions. But there are moments that he catches me while I am trying to do something and am just able to keep up with his questions and then he gets snapped at.
'One minute Isaac!'
But the other day I got the most interesting question.
ME: 'Isaac XYZ is going to have a baby sister or brother soon!'
Isaac: 'Where is XYZ's baby sister/brother now?'
ME: 'In her mama's stomach'
Isaac: 'How did XYZ's baby sister/brother come in her mama's stomach?
I took the shortcut out of this one
ME: 'God put XYZ's baby sister /brother in there'
Isaac: ' But how did God put it there!'
Time out - mommy needs to think! He is almost 5 is it too early for him? I wondered. I managed to slime out of the question and then I found this book a few days later. It was perfect - just what I needed.
It was actually part of the 3-4 year old curriculum.


I had always thought that dad would teach Isaac about how we make babies and I could teach Ziva (gave me at least another year or two !) But in the light of recent events in Bangalore I decided I would teach them both and definitely be the one to tell my son. I believe moms need to actively teach their children (especially sons) about respecting women and its starts from right here - Where do babies come from?

Isaac listened intently as I used words like sperm and egg and while I was a little giddy he just seemed interested. At one point he looked and said - That looks like a tadpole!

I do not know how much he will remember of this,  but I am glad I got to be the first one to speak with him on this topic. Here is to more parenting topics such as these! Here is to being able to answer those questions! Here is to being there for them!

The insane Mama - Joys of homeschooling

I think every mother has a breaking point!  Its not only homeschooling moms that lose it. So I am sure I will see a lot of heads nodding. I think for schooling mama's these days comes mainly during the summers vacation. As a homeschooling mom I have these insane days every week. I do not really need to wait for Summer!
My breaking day - I notice - is Wednesday. The yelling and the screaming at the kids. The high decibel talk that only dogs can hear and occasionally --- the crying.
I cannot still understand how a 4 and a 2 year old can individually make me cry.

But these past two weeks have been a little easier. I guess thanks to 'Sonlight curriculum'
Now let me warn you - if you want your child to be ultra smart. This is NOT the curriculum for you.
If you want your child to be a child prodigy - This is NOT the curriculum for you.
If you want your child to enjoy learning - Bulls eye! Come check out the stack of books Sonlight sent me. Almost 90% of them story books for Isaac. 100% story books for Ziva

This past week I decided no matter whether I did the 3/4 year old Curriculum or the 4/5 year old curriculum - both Isaac and Ziva would sit with me. One big screaming and yelling reason is because Isaac gets in my way when I want t read to Ziva and Ziva gets in my way when I read to Isaac. But its stories ... they can both listen.

As a result we read Good night Moon again. A book Isaac has been seeing since he was age - 3 months. But it was like we were reading it for the first time. There were instructions at the back of this book that told us to look for the 'mouse' on each page. All those of you who have this book - do this exercise. The story takes a new level suddenly! And an add on to that was Ziva flipping through the pages on her own and saying -
Wheres the mouse - Isaac/ Appa/Amma?
I guess she is ready to teach someone!

But the important thing was I was not screaming on Wednesday. I did yell a little on Thursday. But it seems I have made it over the Wednesday bump. There were also small activities sprinkled around the curriculum and I love doing things outside the books. So we made pancakes and buckled all the belts we could find and painted the front steps with 'WATER'
(The pancakes were supposed to be pumpkin flavor in accordance with 'Peter Peter Pumkin eater'. The belts were in accordance to 'One two Buckle my shoe ')

Schooling at home is finally looking like fun for mama!

Glue, cotton, paper and a black sketch pen = One happy homeschooler ...

It was a rough morning. I had to keep screaming at him to get him to write. Isaac used to love writing .... but watching Ziva run around and get in his way kept distracting. He also kept laughing for no reason at all. That is his latest method of annoying me and Suresh.
But we managed to get through some coloring, tracing and a few 'big boy' stories. Big boy = 45 page books ... 6 sentences per page .... I am very grateful for his increased attention span when it comes to listening to stories.
When the morning came to a close I was exhausted and he looked happy to get away from me. Not the feelings I want him to leave with!

I dragged my feet that afternoon to wake him up. I usually wake him up about 1/2 hr before Ziva wakes up so we can have some more reading time together. But I struggled and in my head I kept thinking what would be fun to do ... teach him time ... let him color ... or read more books

I picked a farming book (by Disney Smart beginings), sat him on the sofa and turned to page 1... There was a simple project  ... to make a sheep! An answer to prayers. In less than 5 seconds of me asking him if wanted to do it .... he was awake and holding Fevicol in his hand. About 15 minutes later we had this.

I drew

He stuck the cotton
He coloured the feet and then ' We will show Appa when he comes home OK!'

Just to make him realize that 'school' was not just reading and writing .... but anything that involved learning and trying and finishing I told him 'Isaac this is also school!'. He repeated this sentence, while showing his sheep, to a few friends who walked past the door a few minutes later !

Perfect end to a disastrous morning .... I believe in miracles .... I believe life can turn around just like that!

Homeschool June 2013 - Why would you do that to yourself?

Why would you do that to yourself?
I have been asked this again and again! I can see homeschooling is more accepted now. I don't get strange stares or weird looks anymore. It does seem like more people sympathize with me though.
At a friend's kids birthday party. I got 'Why would you do that to yourself?'  and 'I commend you for doing it'
Its not like I am fighting in the army -  guys. I know schooling your child is not everybody's cup of tea. But its not that hard. Also I have excellent help! Both hubby and my maid are good resources at giving me the break when I need it ... as I need it.
Besides I like schooling Isaac. He is an great learner. He does have his annoying moments, but if I can associate anything with an animal and teach him... he absorbs it like a coffee filter!

                                                      (Photo credit ... Veena aunty ... In think)

I had not expected to do much in June. Suresh was travelling for 13 days and I had planned not to push myself. But the two weeks Suresh was away worked out rather well. Ziva took a nap every morning for about 45 minutes, which gave me some time with Isaac. You may think 45 minutes is a short time ... but to a pre-schooler its seems infinite.
I found a ton of workbooks from Reliance with incentives - STARS (I will write a separate blog on the stars.) and it is helping me work through things systematically and stay organized. We started June with stuff Isaac already knew.We covered phonically pronouncing alphabets. There were a couple of books that went from A-Z simply asking the child to guess the word.
Of course Isaac did fabulously and got a star on each page. I guess it was good boost to his confidence. Since he does not like phonics .... getting the confidence back into him was a big deal.  I tried rhyming words after this and he did not take to it. So we jumped to ending alphabets. I did not know that it was hard for child to understand what sound a word ends with. He knew starts with ... he did not know ends with! But a couple of tries and he figured that one too.
One great success was match the columns. A nice workbook which I got a year ago from D- Mart had words on one side and pictures to match up on the other side. I really have no idea what gets the kick going in kids, but drawing a line from a picture to the word got Isaac all excited. He kept asking to do more and more. In the process I realized that he had memorized a few sight words like 'Owl' and 'Orange'.
Then there were numbers. I left him with a tracing sheet on 1 to 10 and when I returned they were all very neatly traced. Tracing I realize goes very well on some days and poorly on other days. If caught on a good day he would trace anything I asked him to. On a bad day he would doodle with his pencil. I guess doodling is acceptable for a 3.5 year old.
Isaac was already done with capital letters and so it was time for little letters. I decided that since he loved finger painting so much, I would try letting him trace with his fingers. I printed out an alphabet and let him paint it with his fingers. He had a blast and we were going through two and three alphabets a day. I believe tracing with the fingers gives a child a lot of control over his movements. By this time Ziva would be awake and would join us in finger painting. Ziva would paint capital alphabets.
Then there was plenty to read. Now Isaac loves reading the same story again and again. I decided I would read at least one new story everyday to him. Thanks to one gigantic book from Veena Aunty and some book sharing with Sonal Aunty we have a full stock of books. I haven't been able to keep up my one -new story a day ... but we got a good number a new stories going.
There was 'Snappy the Crocodile' ... 'The elephant child' and tons of Aesops fables.  Isaac has definitely increased in patience as far as listening to stories that are couple pages long with fewer pictures in them. I may be getting a little ahead of myself when I say ... that he is very close to sitting through a chapter of Narnia pretty soon. But I am so excited for him. Thanks to Kanchan Aunty ... I now know how to grasp if he has understood the story. He loves summarizing them to Ziva and I even occasionally get asked if I want to eat some 'Crocodile'. This brings me to role play.
While Ziva, at 20 months has started role play, Isaac has only recently gotten into it. He loves playing 'me'.
'Ziva sit in one place and listen' ....'Ziva you dont want to learn?' ....
But the best so far is Isaac turning on his imaginary gas at a coffee table and making me crocodile fry. He even pours the oil into the pan the way I do! Clumsily!

We also managed to complete two craft projects. Well I guess they were my projects that Isaac helped with by hand stamping them. A father's day card for Suresh and a birthday scrap book for best bud Dhruv.

There is a lot more to talk about ... but I wont bore you ... I guess you get he point when I say for the month of  June ... homeschool was very satisfying.

Closing those doors!

I think today being March 23 2013 (It took me one month to write this blog -- today is in fact April 26th) and the official school year starting on June 4 2013, we have officially made our decision for Isaac  for the year 2013-2014.
Isaac will technically, according to his age, be in Nursery or Pre-K. And he will be homeschooled!
Yes after visiting 6 schools and weighing our options and even with the slight chance of me loosing my mind - we have decided on homeschooling our boy. We have also prayerfully decided that we will take one year at a time (Thanks to Shanthi and Faith for making me see that this was an option) and will revisit our decision next year and see if this is in fact the best thing for Isaac, Ziva and me.
How did all this happen? Well we started our school visits at the beginning of January. We visited 6 schools

Inventure Academy: This was a fantastic place and frankly if we lived closer, we would have sent Isaac here. But sending a 4 year old this far (17 km) seemed unfair to us. Maybe he will get used to it. Maybe we are hyper-ventilating a bit too much. But the distance to the school and a long day (8-3 pm) ruled it off our list. But I think if Isaac is going to school next year, it will be a no brainer pick of Inventure

Indus Early Learning center: I loved the place. Suresh did not. What I loved was the amount of creativity we saw in our 1/2 hour tour. Children were playing with hay and sand and having so much fun! But the fees were exorbitant which would probably be fine till Ziva was to got to school as well. Sending both of them to Indus would mean I would have to go back to work. Since Suresh did not like the place anyway, it was checked off our list.

Viha: This tiny place was not much to talk about. Just felt like any other small school/ day care facility. But the principle/ owner/ teacher was one dynamic lady. I was very impressed with her confidence in what she was doing and more importantly realized she was a no-nonsense person. In addition I had a brief view of her love for teaching. As we walked past the classes, I had seen her sitting on the floor, her back close to the black board with three kids sitting around her. She was teaching them phonics and you could see the passion in just the way she was pointing at the vowels and creating three letter words. The facilities at Viha were a little poorly maintained and after seeing places that are all yuppy, you wonder! So Viha got checked off our list.

Canadian Maple bear: This place seemed an O.K. Nice play structure. Nice class rooms. But two things put us off. One Isaac had a complete meltdown and would not calm down. To make matters worse the teachers and helps were overly nice. While I like nice people, I do not like people who encourage tantrums of 3 year old's by being overly nice! Another thing I noticed on our tour was a teacher grasping (probably gently) the wrists of a 4 year old. The child was not paying attention. I had a mental picture in my head of that child being Isaac a year later. I could not get my picture out of my head. I am allowed to hold my son's wrist and shake him to get his attention  ... but I do not give that right to anyone else. Canadian became a choice we would take if we had /must send Isaac to school and was slowly pushed to the bottom of our list.

Klay Schools:  We received an excellent review about this place and were all excited about a school we were almost sure we were going to send Isaac. But I realized that you like a place and approve it based on the person who takes you around. Unfortunately for us, the center co-ordinator was in-charge of showing us the facilities. She first told us to come at 1 pm and then called at 12:30 and changed the time to 2 pm. By this point I was already half way through and decided to pick Suresh up and then wait outside the school till 1:45. At 1:45 we slowly parked the car and picked a sleeping Isaac and walked into lobby. It was another 45 minutes before our conversations with the center coordinator began. I was pissed by this point since I was to be home by 3 pm to relieve the maid and take over Ziva. To add some further fume to the fury, the center coordinator was completely unprofessional. With a checked shirt rolled up past her elbows and leaning back and rocking her chair, she gave me the impression that she was sitting at a coffee shop across her college buddies. While I loved the facilities and what they were doing, I was completely put off by our point of contact. Another thing that made us uneasy was the lack of secular environment. While looking through the calendar I noticed that in January they had decided to celebrate Sankranti instead of Republic day. I mentioned that it was odd since I would think school would give more priority to patriotism than religion. I am of the firm belief that faith and religion should be things taught at home so it matches the environment you grow up in. The coordinator casually said that they choose one holiday in a month and celebrated it large scale (I understand choosing 'one', since India has so many holidays and festivals). She continued to says 'Well in March we will be celebrating Maha shivrathri. I asked how they celebrated it.
Her response: Well the kids do a pooja.
I was a little shocked - what do kids know about a pooja. I again had a mental image of Isaac chanting something he did not understand. She probably recognized the confusion in my face and quickly added 'In April, we are celebrating Easter'. Big mistake! I do not want Isaac thinking Easter is about Easter Eggs or bunny rabbits!

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At this point Suresh and I had this long conversation and the key phrase that I will keep in my head is Suresh's line 'What must I do to so you will homeschool Isaac?'
I think Suresh had realized that a major reason for me even thinking about school was the lack of appreciation within the home and the fear of ridicule from outside.
At the end of two or three days of conversation, we had almost decided on homeschooling Isaac for one more year. But we had one last school left to go see. I did not have much hope since most schools close admissions by January of the academic year. We were in the mid of March. But we had put in our admission forms and decided to go for the tour.
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Neev: Neev was  wonderful, small little place but used up so well. Lots of light and lots of arts and crafts. We felt comfortable with the place. One important happening at Neev were the other kids. Isaac was on the play structure and we were in the midst of our tour when the kids were let free for play time. One of the girls came up behind him on the play structure, probably about 2 years older than Isaac and asked him his name. As usual Isaac shied away. Then a couple more kids came and decided to be friendly and I responded for him 'His name is Isaac' All of them started squealing with joy. 'Like Isaac Newton'! For the first time Suresh and I both liked the place. Suresh made sure there were no religious celebrations that required participation (observation is fine is what he said) and he was assured that harvest festivals were the only things that were celebrated. Cultural knowledge is fine.

We seemed to have found a place and yet there was no peace! I seemed to have this feeling in my heart that something was being pulled out of me and taken away. Suresh just kept saying 'I have no peace'


That evening at family prayer Suresh prayed this way 'Lord close the doors that need to be closed!'

Had Isaac been rejected or denied admission from Neev, I would have been very upset. Instead the following day afternoon we received an email from Neev. 'Isaac has been wait-listed' Which meant he could probably get a chance to go to Neev mid-way through the year.
Doors closed!

I have never seen Suresh so elated. We were both afraid of the decision we would have to take if Isaac had been accepted. I think as parents we are always second guessing ourselves on what is good for our child. I thank God for closing those doors! (for this year at least)
Now to start praying for peace, patience, perseverance and joy in teaching Isaac and Ziva.



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A few days ago (April 4th 2013) we got a mail from Neev saying they had a seat available. Suresh and I politely declined. I ended my phone conversation with the sweet lady across the line saying 'Maybe next year'
I don't want to try and open something God has closed. I don't want to challenge the peace I felt when those are closed and the peace I feel right now.