Part 1 of many.

All posts from this series.

I have always wanted to be an artist.

I most definitely have the passion and the patience for it. But the environment I grew up in was different. I was expected to read my academic books and when I got bored, I had a choice of minding my own business without bothering the adults or browse through the college level books that were crammed in my house.

After I was born my father did his M.Phil and then his Ph.D in organic chemistry. This with a full time job as chemistry professor. The man would happily skip to college to do another degree in this ripe age of 64. For heavens sake, he did his M.Ed after he finished his Ph.D because he was going in to withdrawal. Last phone call, I became aware that he enrolled for Tamil Vedham class on Sundays because he is bored and misses learning. *Rolling eyes*

All this meant that my amma had extra responsibility at home. Oh! add two of my amma’s sisters to the equation. Yes, my two chithis were staying with us and went to school. When I was born the older chithi was 15 years old and the younger one was 13. Later the older one stayed with us and did her med school and the younger one did her engineering. Plus there were the usual obligations for my amma from both her mother’s side and in-laws side. So this translated to more expenses, lesser money, even more work for amma. So unless I was drawing something on my record notebook or for my school assignments, it was highly frowned upon.

But I wouldn’t exactly call it an environment devoid of art. My amma was an expert in kolam, embroidery, basket weaving, stitching and an occasional pencil sketching. When I say kolam it is not the small and simple apartment kolams. I am talking the 4 to 5 feet diameter free hand kolams, with symmetry. May be it was because my amma has been doing all this since she was six or seven, it had already become a daily chore and may be she just wanted to get it over with and move on to the next in her agenda. Or may be because my amma being the oldest daughter, she had been the ‘teacher’ for her four siblings. Though I was her first biological child, I was her last baby, so may be she thought she had time. Plus amma comes from the belief, ‘Kan parthu kai seiyanum’ which translates to you must look at how it is done and start doing it. Both my chithis studied ALL the time, but when they did an occasional art like painting a piece of pottery or drew something, they were awesome. Perfect work, absolute symmetry, great perspective…all this without any kind of practice.

So I must say that I kind of wanted to do art. Though I had owned only a couple of sets of sketch pens, one set of water colors and a few color pencils all through my childhood, I did it in a small way I could. The pictures in my record note books were outsanding. Then there was this phase in college where I was head over heels in to making my own greeting cards. But they were mostly cutesy stuff. So I wanted some one to hold my hands to do serious art.

I took art lessons when I was 23. My first formal exposure being water colors. At the time I took the class, I don’t think it went well at all. I found it so very hard to control the medium. I could follow the demo to some extent, but observational drawing/painting and drawing from memory were Greek and Latin. Perspective left me perplexed. Then there was capturing how the light falls, depth, color mixing, technique, layering, form and movement. I would recreate at home some of the techniques such as masking, texturing, sponging but from my experiments I found I had three limitations.
-I couldn’t bring out the depth.
-I was too careful with the paint. Every time I squeezed out paint, I found something holding me back. “Got to be careful, do not waste” mantra kept ringing again and again in my head. “What is wrong with not wasting?” one might ask, I will come back to it later.
-I was always copying. I would like a painting or a photograph and would want to recreate it.

Around this time, I saw Bob Ross on TV and I was dumbfounded. He made it look like a piece of cake and I believed that acrylics were my destiny. Unfortunately it was a very short-lived experience. I needed step-by-step guiding and the teachers I had were amazing artists but poor teachers. What seemed basic to them was a giant step for me and the gap couldn’t be bridged at all. So I stopped acrylics in 12 weeks.

Oh I must mention the one stroke painting phase! Inspired by Donna Dewberry, I painted everything in the house. Flower pots, plates, lazy susan, wood storage boxes, serving trays…. 😀

Next in line was oils and I must say that I loved it. Th teacher was amazing. All along I had worked on a white canvas, layering it with dark colors. But this time the teacher started me off with a black canvas and helped me bring out the light with every step. The fact that I could finish a portrait was a big deal for me. I was able to come up with a finished product that had depth, but I still had the other two limitations.  This was around the time I was having my miscarriages and some old wife tale about heavy metals in oils and smelling turpentine fumes put a complete stop to any further development.

For a long time I had had my eyes on tanjore paintings. So I took a workshop and loved it. Again I must say that I had a wonderful teacher. I have made four tanjore paintings so far. One of which is hanging in my house and the other three are gifts. Lovely hobby, but expensive, both in terms of time and material.

Given my limitations and time restrictions I think my art experiments will be postponed for another 10 or so years. I am not giving up, because I enjoy the process of creating something even if it is a copy, but because I simply do not have the bandwidth for classes and practice. So I was clearing my art storage boxes in the garage, salvaging some stuff for the girls to use. All this got me thinking…..

What is art? How do I define MY art? How do I teach my children to find THEIR art?

 

 

Contd: Part 2 of many.

All posts from this series.

Technorati Tags: art, art for young children, art for adults, my experiments with art

Part 1 of 3 here.

Part 2 of 3 here.

(Part 3 of 3 follows)I got to be frank. When I said part three would follow, I seriously had something running at the back of my mind. What that something is I am desperately trying to summon from the notes I made, but I am failing miserably. I simply do not have it in me. I can either wait for inspiration to strike and let the blog gather dust or fess up and get it over with. So some random blah that I am hoping would tie up loose ends.

2.5 years back I did a post on preschools and the popular streams. Back then I was looking for preschools for Chula. Reading that post again, I am surprised that I wouldn’t change much of what I had written. Except that I would correct my thoughts on child centered learning. A child centered method fits for all children, provided, yes there is a disclaimer, provided the teacher is a well experienced guide. We are talking about ‘THE TEACHER’ when we say teacher. Also I had mentioned that Chula would fit better in an academically oriented program. After her spending two years in this Montessori she is currently attending, I cannot say how wrong I was in my older post. I chose this Montessori purely based on gut and looks like I chose wisely.

I also found this in my archives regarding the basics of children learning and found it very appropriate.

I have witnessed both topic based random knowledge dispersion as well as cumulative acquisition of knowledge where everything is interconnected and grows from the partnership between the student and the teacher. I thoroughly endorse the latter style, especially for the first six years I believe in on going learning without borders.

But if any one has any specific questions, do ping me.

Technorati Tags: types of schools, child centered learning, teacher centered learning, how children learn

Part 1 of 3 here.

(Part 2 of 3 follows)One fine day, at school, the teachers talked to the children about Afghanistan. They talked about the devastation, lack of schools, necessity to educate the children and things like that. They also showed a short movie clip and images being powerful than words, the movie really drove the point home. At home I heard stories about how the children do not have classrooms, they do not have food, some times they don’t have mommies or daddies, and how some mommies and daddies are building schools and how we can help Afghanistan by giving them our pennies. The seed was sown.

On a Saturday morning we went on a coin hunt and dug out all the coins stashed away at the most unsuspecting places. Chula and Mieja have loosely heard the term money, but do not know much about it. So I had a sudden spark to teach them the various money denominations. So we made different piles, one with pennies, one with nickels, one with dimes and one with quarters. Chula was able to pick up a coin, read the denomination and put it in the appropriate pile. For Mieja, I first showed her how to compare the coin in her hands with a coin in a pile and when she placed it in the right pile I said, ‘That is a penny’ or whatever was appropriate.

I noticed that Chula made two piles of every denomination – two piles of pennies, two piles of nickels, two piles of dimes. When I asked her what the two piles are for, she said that one was old and the other was shiny and she proceeded to tell me that she was going to throw the old pile in the garbage because…well they were old. So I had to explain to her that we could still use the old coins because it has VALUE. She was puzzled. As luck would have it, we had a bake sale by our junior high students in our school. They lay out their goodies at 2.30PM sharp and target the kids skipping out with a parent and ‘stressed-out-I-need-sugar-N.O.W’ teachers. I strongly suspect that they make more by selling to the latter category! Okays, at the bake sale we bought two pieces of banana bread for fifty cents each. I gave Chula five old pennies, a shiny nickel and four shiny dimes. She handed it over and got a slice of banana bread. I asked her if they accepted her old pennies or asked her for new money. Even if she only kind of got that concept of value, I was sure she wasn’t going to throw money in to garbage *whew!*

One of the days that followed, we were a late for school and I was getting in to my irritable self and I snapped at the kids and Mieja reminded me in her usual loving and kind manner, “I am not your friend. I am not listening. I will scratch you and run away with appa and akka and go and live in a different house.” So I launched a lecture on how it is my job to be in my classroom at a precise time, we are all working for money, without which we will not be able to buy anything, even for this other house she was going to live in her appa has to work for and he needs to be ON TIME for that work. Okay not the best way to teach that money does not grow on trees. But soon, I will find a sensible way to make them understand this concept.

Now, HOPE accepts donations in our neighborhood on a regular basis. I give away things like the children’s books, toys, puzzles, clothes etc. I have been doing this for the past three years. All of a sudden, Chula made a connection and asked me if all this stuff is going for Afghanistan. I clarified that people in need are all over the world, not just in Afghanistan and we help in some degree that we can. This she hasn’t completely understood because she has seen images of Afghanistan and none like that in the US. So she continues to believe that the donations we are making for the holiday toy drive our school is doing and the canned food we buy for second harvest are going to Afghanistan. Every day she wonders loudly, “May be teacher X will go to Afghanistan to give the children without mommies and daddies the toys/soup.”

Pretty soon, there will be questions about poverty most importantly, ‘what is poverty?’, ‘why are some people poor?’ etc. I do not have an answer for them right now, but I am sure, I will come up with one at the time of need.

Correlating my thinking process and how the children responded I could come up with a web, that roughly looked like this.

Disclaimer: This was mentally mapped in 6 minutes and by no means a comprehensive list. It varies much with the personality of the adult and the personality of the children.

But the point is one simple seed like Pennies for Peace has lead to something called a ‘curriculum web’.

Links

Pennies For Peace

Part 3 of 3 on teaching styles, learning, broad learning Vs deep learning, how children for associations.

Technorati Tags: Pennies for peace, Afghanistan, Curriculum web, teaching children the value of money, preschool curriculum for money

First of all thanks to all those who read my previous post on my anguish over the food battle ‘under the tree’. Also advance thanks to all those who successfully complete reading this detailed post.

Tharini asked me the dreaded ‘How?’ question. I was dreading this because it was quite vague in my own head. For the past ten days, I have been trying to crystallize the ideas in my head. Hopefully this post where I will be putting things in print will help me process my thoughts.

I believe introspection is the first step towards a solution in any problem. Because, in many situations our reactions are a direct consequence of the believes, values, judgements and labels that are embedded in our subconscious. So when we know what we are made of, we can pro-act and not react to the situation. When I am doing something, be it cooking for Chula and Mieja’s birthday party or even day to day dinner/lunch I always do it with great secrecy. When friends offer help I turn it down and when the R asks me what my plans are, I invariably bite his head off. This has created unpleasantness between R and I in the past.  My intentions were definitely not to hurt him and keep him out of the whole jing-bang-jix. Introspection revealed that I am person who  keeps improvising things till the very last minute or wait for inspiration to hit me and do things the very last minute. So when he asks me whats up and if he can help, I get irritated with myself for not having anything solid to offer and misdirected anger lashes out. OK, now that I have illustrated the value of introspection with a suitable example, let me move on.

Introspection in this situation led me to believe that:

(1)I believe food is the gateway to culture. My kids growing up away from India only made me more determined to offer them proper South Indian food. My ideas of a culturally consistent lunch boxwent down the drain long time back. I compromised and send pasta and sandwich for lunch 3/5 days. But while eating at home, I wanted to stick to the traditional kootu, sambar, morkuzhambu, poriyal types. When Chula and Mieja say no to South Indian food, I get agitated because I equate it as ‘no to food’ = ‘no culture’ = ‘people in India criticizing me as parent’ = ‘failed parent’.

(2)Children have to eat what was cooked for that particular day. Something that I clearly remember from my childhood is my father’s voice booming, “This is not a hotel. This is a home and you may not ask for a particular food in the very last minute and expect your order to be serviced.”

(3)I label children. There…. I said it and it is out in the open now. While I am at it I must also admit that I also judge adults. With adults and the children in school, these labels are okay because the relationship is non-personal in a certain plane. Actually at work these labels make my reflexes sharper and I am more efficient. Where as I treat my children as extensions of myself or even worse as versions of myself, UTBT Version2.0 or something. So I tend to be hard with the labels because the latest version must be devoid of all bugs, it has to be perfect right?!

(4)In my previous post Yaadayaada commented that I have patience and I made some generic quip. Actually, I do have patience. Unfortunately it is misplaced patience so it is hard for me to be consistently patient. Most of my patience is quantitative and not qualitative.

(5)I don’t know to ask, even if it is myself, for food.  I eat when it is convenient not when I am hungry. I have always thought of it as flexibility, but no. It is my disability to perceive that food is for hunger. So inadvertently I have modeled to my children that food is a leisure activity. If you are too busy involved in some activity, food can wait. All along I have been thinking that they get in to one activity after another to avoid food. But it is not the case. They haven’t given enough importance to food to make a plan to avoid it. They have a list of exciting things in their agenda and food break is just an inconvenience. I have to thank COS for this thought process.

(6)I feed them because it is in my to-do list. I look at it as a chore to be done before I have to go on to the next bullet item on my list.

(7)Last but not the least, I over analyze things. Some thing you all are aware of by now.

So the problems are/were not enjoying the food, tantrum for poori or something exotic in the last minute, food shoved in while the said children were distracted with TV etc.

Some of the problems self solved and I had to put my foot down for certain things. Watching TV while eating went out the window and in to the trash during summer vacation. For a while TV lunches/dinners were perfect because they would eat by themselves. Then it came to a stage where I had to pause the TV if they forgot to take the next spoonful or if they just sat with mouthful of food forgetting to chew or to swallow. Before I knew, I was feeding them with TV on. If I am doing the feeding, I might as well do it without TV! So I said no TV while eating. Initially there were cries of disappointments, but it quickly died down because we started doing family style sit down lunches/dinners or picnics in our backyard(it was summer an was perfect for picnics). Chula and Mieja are used to family style eating at school. The kids set the table with table cloth, placemats, napkins diluted apple/orange juice, water, silverware, plates, centerpiece from their garden, salad from their garden, bread and invite other children to eat. So we did the same at home. They would set the table/picnic mat, run out to the garden and get some flowers, place them in a vase for enjoying while eating and we would make some lingonberry juice(from IKEA, yum!).

This culture of the whole family eating together has primarily taught me to respect my food. Hopefully it would do the same to my children. I am trying to model that food is a not just an extrenal need, but to some extent a bonding process that brings the whole family together. This addresses introspection#5.

Also they started getting involved in food preparation over the summer break. I would plop one child on the counter or put a step stool over the sink. They helped/watched/played but whatever they did, they did get a vague sense that food does not magically appear. It takes time and effort to cook. So Chula now changed her request from, “I want poori now” to “Amma, can we make poori for dinner on Sat?”. This works well with my introspection #2 and tantrums for exotic food.

With respect to introspection #1, I had to make compromises. I still offer them South Indian food, but the twist is I offer it like they like it. They like their rice plain, white with ghee on top, no nonsense mixed in. So plain white rice it is with veggies on the side and a teeny serving of sambar kind of stuff in the teeniest cup you have ever seen, also on the side. This plate comes with the condition that they cannot say no without tasting the food. They have to take one taste for every birthday they have celebrated so far.

As to introspection #6, all said and done, for a mother feeding the children IS a duty. It would be ideal if it is not a chore. Right now I am not doing anything to address it directly, but hoping the other things will indirectly contribute to this.

I am working on making my patience qualitative and consistent and on taking things on their face value. If they say no, it is just a no with no strings attached. It is nothing personal. I simply have to travel back in time and remind myself that I have had days when the food simply wouldn’t go through my throat and the mere thought of it made me gag. As to the appreciations from people from India, well, I know that my close relatives have confidence in my parenting skills. So, I must not bother about the ramdom comments from people who meet me in passing. Sometimes people say stuff just for the lack of things to make a conversation. In this ear, out that ear, makes the world a much better place at times.

If the food is on the plate for more than 45 min, it is dead. It is my cue for asking them to clean up. I try encouraging them to finish their plate, but if it is not done, its better to end it in the best of terms. I get “Hey, I called it quits” kind of silly closure.

Lastly the bribes. Of course there are bribes. Sometimes I read a book for them while they are eating. Sometimes I tell them stories. Sometimes I tell them that we are going to eat how I ate when I was a child and was no summer vacation and mix the food, make it in to balls and put it in their palms and add a story to go with it. This spiced up with plenty of “Oh! my goodness, you muscles look very strong. Did you finish all your veggies by any chance?”, “Oh! your eyes are so shiny, look at your skin it is glowing, did your hair just grow?”….and the likes of it.

 BTW, should I categorize this as mommy development instead of child development???

 

Technorati Tags: children eating, preschooler eating, children love for food, how to improve the eating habits of you toddler, picky eaters, children eating nutritious food, cultivating good eating habits, making eating a happy experience

It is a classroom setting. There are about 8 children between age 14 months – 28 months, boys and girls and of different ethnic backgrounds.

On the table is a warm, ready to eat main course, cooked by one of the parents – a simple nutritious meal consistent with culture of the family that cooked the meal. The second course is a salad with two raw vegetables of different colors, some of which are picked from the school’s organic vegetable garden and prepared by the children earlier in the morning. Dessert is organic fresh fruits – two fruits of different colors picked by the parents from a local health food store. There are two pitchers one with water and one with milk.

In the cupboard next to the eating table are place mats, plates, bowls, spoons, forks and glasses for drinking. One teacher is standing next to the cupboard. The other teacher is standing next to the bathroom sink monitoring the hand washing routine.

After washing their hands the children come and pick up one of each item from the cupboard in order – placemat, plate, bowl, spoon/fork (as directed by the teacher depending on what they are eating) and lastly the glass. They carry these items one thing at a time, coming back to the cupboard for the next item and if there is already a child in front of them they wait patiently till the other child is done.

After set up, they sit at the table with their hands on their lap. Because they are taught to keep their hands on their laps when there is no food in their bowl. As soon as there are four children all set up and ready, the teacher fills their glasses with water and serves them one small portion of the main course telling them the name of the main course and from whose house the food is from.

The children eat the main course. They are served the main course till they express interest in their food. When the children are done they put their bowl to their right side and wait for the salad. Most of the time the whole table is done with the main course at the same time. There is also very little food wasted. The teacher then serves the vegetables naming each vegetable. Milk is served with the vegetables. The fruits are served in the same manner.

The teachers constantly ask questions like, “Would you like some more rice?” or “Would you like milk or water to drink?”. The children respond with a polite “Yes please” or “No thank you” and if they are done quickly they ask, “Can I have some more rice please?”.

If there are very young or new children, there is a teacher sitting directly behind them helping them scoop the rice, assisting the child to eat and settle in to the calmness. For good eaters, believe me, it is not even necessary! The children use the tools they are born with namely their fingers to scoop the food from their bowls in to their mouth.

After they are done eating, there is a whole clean up routine they are adept doing, but our main focus is how much these children love eating, so let us not go there.

This is the description of a typical lunchtime in the room I work. Any one who has witnessed the lunch routine would attest that not one word is exaggeration. The children are calm, they are secure that they will get what they want and not one extra morsel will be shoved down their throats. Even picky eaters whose parents worry that their child never eats vegetables starts eating raw vegetables within four weeks of being in the program. In fact he/she demands fresh peppers or raw carrots. It is such an awe inspiring experience to any one who witnesses the lunch routine in our room.

If you still don’t believe it, I wouldn’t blame you. Because the very first time I was in the room during the lunch routine, I refused to believe what I saw, inspite of being there and fully knowing that children that age are too egocentric to put on a show for the benefit of other people.

It was everything opposite to what I have experienced in regards to feeding my children. My experience with the children in my class only shattered my belief that it is easy to make the child an independent eater when you are serving them western food. When you are serving typical South Indian food like rice, sambar/rasam/kootu with a vegetable and curd rice to top it off, I always thought that the children needed assistance. But the kids in my room were able to handle any kind of food, no matter what they were served they were adept at eating it. The reason being the love for food.

When it comes to the feeding routine at home, I had my own theories, mostly based on the way I was bought up. Two of my personal values that influences lunch/dinner at home are making sure that my children get a well balanced meal and not wasting even one morsel of food. Couple of things I didn’t want to carry forth from the way I was bought up are running around behind the kids and feeding them (I didn’t mind feeding them, I just wanted them to sit at the table and eat) and dumping all the left-over food from my children’s plate in to my plate. If my value was not to waste food and if I was not going to eat the left-overs, guess where the food went? Yes, in to my children’s system. Because of my value #1 of providing them a well-balanced meal I did not feel guilty by shoving food in to them. This coupled with not knowing exactly how much food they need per meal and life getting busier and not having hours to finish a meal only made life worse for all of us.

I had known a change was in order for the past year, but the dinner on Aug 30th,2009 was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. I had made gongura+paruppu masiyal, rasam and paneer+red and green capsicum sautee to be served with white rice and yogurt. Chula was picking on the food like it was her punishment. She had swallowed one spoon in 45 minutes – this inspite of her having an active day with lots of fresh air and running around. So I took the plate from her, asked her to finish her grapes and go to bed. Of course I didn’t do it calmly and gracefully. I made quite a scene that she cried herself to sleep.

Thinking hard that night I found that I don’t have the energy to battle two children three times a day. I didn’t have the heart to let go either. To be truthful, I had let go out of frustration quite a few times before, but I always came back and started from where I left off. So I have to hold on without being overly passionate? Honestly I don’t know what to do, but I am hoping that this awareness brings about a significant change my attitude and reaches out to the children.

I know that it is not the food but the experience with food that matters. I also know that its is going to take time for all of us to establish trust in order to create a calm and peaceful dinner/lunch time. All I pray is for patience to get through this time. Hopefully announcing my resolve to everyone I know, I don’t know, barely acquainted and to googlebot, which seems to hit my blog more often than any living person, will keep me from going back on my promise to myself.

To healthy, happy meals and good memories.

PS: Even though I am not required to, I cook for the children in my class once a week, just a simple rice and kootu or vegetable kichdi, just to watch them enjoy the food I made. I can’t even put in to words how much satisfaction I get when all the food I cooked is gone and the little ones are still scraping their bowls asking for more. The next time I make a little extra, but it is still gone 🙂

Technorati Tags: children eating, preschooler eating, children love for food, how to improve the eating habits of you toddler, picky eaters, children eating nutritious food, cultivating good eating habits, making eating a happy experience

“…and then he was dead.”
“The knife cuts your hand your blood will pour out and you will be deaded.”
“Shoot you.”
(mimicking karate chop with her hands)“chop, chop, chop you. Cut, cut, cut you.”
“What is dead?”
“Kill kill.”

Well these are some pearls of wisdom that are dispersed by Chula and Mieja now a days. My first reaction was shock. I had never talked about the concept of death to the kids. Even while I tell them Hindu mythological stories demons always receive time outs. My MIL has never completed a mythological story, she gazes at me uncomfortably when a god/goddess is at the verge of destroying an asura and stops the story abruptly. When the children ask questions about R’s father who passed away when R was 15, the answer is either, “He is with Ganesha” or “He is floating in the universe watching what we are doing.” My aunt tells them only stories like Avayaar or Karaikaal Ammayar because these stories have no violence. The school they go to has peace education as a part of its curriculum. The school has strict policy against characters of any sort in their lunch bag/shoes/clothing/personal item. Super hero play is highly frowned upon. In spite of shielding them from violence, the girls getting this kind of language blew me apart.

The thing is, how much ever you strip their environment of realities such as death and violence, they some how get an idea that cutting, chopping, killing, death exist. They hear it used by other kids who in turn have heard some other child/older sibling use it. They are so fascinated by this new concept. They aren’t sure if people at home are aware if things like these exist. They test the waters by letting one or two words slip and judge the reaction of the adults. If the adult freaks out, they make a mental note of the reaction and they decide to investigate it by themselves behind the adult’s back or they deliberately use it again and again till they fully understand it. Chula would go with option I and Mieja would most definitely choose option II.

I remembered reading about a Reggio Emilia teacher who introduced a gun curriculum – gun/rifle/shooting for preschoolers, because she noticed increasing gunplay in her classroom. She brought an old gun/rifle to classroom that the children touched and handled, pictures of the internal mechanisms of how a gun works etc. The teacher allowed the children to explore and learn about guns in a safe and supervised environment. After a month, pretend gunplay went down. After much deliberation I decided to try something new. When I heard words like shoot or kill or dead, I asked Chula/Mieja what they meant by that. As I guessed they didn’t know much.

“Dead is dead amma”,

“Kill? To be deaded?…..I don’t know….*giggles followed by more giggles*”,

“Cut? Your hand will get chopped and it will fall off and your eyes will also fall….may be we can throw all that in the garbage can.”,

“When your hands get cut a new hand will grow, just like your hair and nails. We can keep chopping them, its okay.”

So when I hear violent talk, I respond to it in a calm tone,

“Why do you want to kill me? I will go away and will never come back. Is that something you would like?”(Yes, they do want to kill me at times, looks like it is something they like. When I say I will never come back, it seems to open endless possibilities to them 🙂 ) or

“Yes, when your sister’s hand gets cut, the blood vessels will get cut and there will be lots of blood. We have to go to the hospital immediately. Your sister will be in unbearable pain and appa and amma will be very sad. What do you think of it?” or

“That would hurt my body” or

“It hurts my feelings when you pretend that you are shooting me”

Few months back we found a dead mourning dove under our lemon tree. I took the girls and showed them the bird. I pointed out that the bird was no longer moving. I told them that it could never see its mommy/babies. The girls observed that the bird is not chirping, they also pointed out that its feathers were starting to disintegrate. Chula noticed that ants were eating the carcass and wondered if it would hurt the bird. We talked about the dead bird for a good amount of time. R took the bird and threw it in the garbage can while the girls watched. Over the next few days there were questions like,

“I see a bird in the tree there, is it the same bird we saw under our lemon tree?”,

“Can the dead bird come as a new born baby in the nest in front of our house? (There was a family of dove reproducing in a nest in our front porch)”,

“Where is the dead bird now?”,

“Okay the bird is dead. What happens then? Okay it is with Ganesha, what next? Okay, its spirit is floating in the universe, what comes next?”,

“When you are dead you go to Ganesha. So aren’t you doing a good thing by killing? You are sending people to Ganesha.”,

“How does a bird’s spirit look like? Will it look like the bird? Will my spirit look like me?”

so on and so forth.

But how much ever one tries, can death be full demystified to any one especially to preschoolers?  🙂

Technorati Tags: death, sorrow, loss, explain death to preschoolers, children talk about death, what do children understand about death

Just for the heck of it, I typed “size” in google search. People are concerned about the size of their class, keyboard, home, car, body part ( top most concern ai-yai-yai-yai-yai 🙂 ), font, tire, database and the list goes on and on. But no mention about the ‘size’ I have on my mind.

When I was pregnant with Chula and Mieja, this is something I obsessed about every single day. My first two pregnancies came to an abrupt end in the first check up at nine weeks and at both times the doctor said, even before confirming a heart beat, ‘It is small. The sac is small and so is the fetus.’ So something in me started associating big baby = healthy baby.

At birth Chula was 6 pounds 11 ounces, 19.5 inches. A normal weight considering how petite R and I are. Owing to her serious spit up episodes and me believing Enfamil’s unrealistic suggestions, Chula was force fed and she was big. When Chula was six months, another desi mother whom I was seeing for the very first time at the park, blatantly asked me, “What do you feed her. She is huge”. This was her opening conversation, no niceties such as hi, hello, which apartment do you live! Oh….how I cursed that woman 🙂 I seriously considered getting the dirt that she stepped on and do some old fashioned hocus-pocus to remove her evil eye on my child. At Chula’s 12 month well baby check up, the doctor said, “If she continues growing like she is right now, she will be 6 feet by the time she is 15,” he paused, looked at R and I and said, “but that may not happen. She most probably has your genes. She will slow down.”  And she did at two years!

Mieja gave us a scare. At the first check up at 6 weeks, the doctor couldn’t see a sac, he thought it might be another ectopic. Two days later we saw a small sac, two days after that we saw a tiny fetus and four days later we saw a heart beat. During the 18th week ultrasound, I could sense the doctor wondering about Mieja’s size. When I pressed him, he said, “She is a good two weeks smaller than her 18 week size. Other than that she is perfect. Why don’t we schedule another ultra sound for 30 weeks and see how she has grown?” And at 30 weeks, she was still two weeks behind. I was busy running around with Chula who was only a year old, I had only put on 12 pounds in 30 weeks, can you believe that?! On top of this Mieja came 15 days early. I was thankful that she was 5 pounds 11 ounces and 18 inches at birth. Whew, that was a relief….I was sure that I would pop a lizard.

With all this history every well baby check up, I would anxiously look forward for the height and weight check up and consider the markings on their height/weight chart as an yard stick to my parenting skills. Even now, I obsess about size, but not in the manner I used to. I see size affecting caregivers in a different aspect.

At home, Chula being and looking like a normal 4.5-year-old looks much bigger than Mieja who is three years and four months, but can easily pass for two. When the sisters stand together there is a good 12 inches of height difference. That coupled with the last child always being a baby in the parent’s eyes, Mieja gets babied a LOT. The same thing continues in school too. Mieja started school when she was two years and four months. When she started, she was the youngest AND the smallest in her class. Currently there are other children a good eight months younger than Mieja, but she is still the bottom 5 percent of her class size-wise. The little devil knows her potential and takes full advantage of that. She would open her eyes wide, shake her arms up and down and say, “But….but, I don’t know how to do it. Can you do it for me?” and the unsuspecting victim would end up doing every thing for her.

Okay, I am digressing, my point is, yes there is one, children come in different sizes and shapes owing to their genetic pools. I have to constantly disregard their size, bring the age of a child in to focus before I ask the child to do anything. School can be tough on children who look a lot bigger than their size. Adults around them, including their parents can at times place age inappropriate expectations on the child. So the mantra now is, “Don’t believe what you see. How old is this child? Not yet two, though he/she looks like 3.5. So asking this child to wear this pair of shoes with this kind of loop straps…. forget it. Okay, that one is two though he/she looks 14 months. So may be its time this child can get dressed independently.” And so the obsession about size continues, only now that I am forcing myself not to rely only on what I see 🙂

Technorati Tags: caregivers of young children, age appropriate expectations, developmentally appropriate practices in early childhood

Cross posted here.

For previous posts in the cooking with kids mini-series:

KOOTANCHORU
THE SCIENCE BEHIND COOKING

Here are some pointers on how to cook with kids.

• When you invite your children in to the kitchen your main motive is must be inclusion and having fun. Learning will automatically flow from the conducive environment you are creating. If you start with, “I am going to TEACH this child geometry through toast making”, you will end up frustrated. Not to mention burnt toast.

• Pick simple recipes. This way you don’t have to put off cooking with your child till the child is a certain age. Some simple suggestions are spreading butter/cream cheese on bread, tearing lettuce, scooping melon, shredding cheese. Remember the idea is having fun, not creating a culinary wonder.

• Break down complicated recipes in to simple steps and involve kids in things like washing and cutting the veggies. Especially the vegetables like cauliflower, mushroom, beans, cucumber etc are easy to cut. I save the sturdy take out knives for this purpose. Safe on little fingers, sharp enough to slice through the vegetables.

• Slowly build up from the basics. For example show them how to spread jelly/cream cheese on toast. Follow it up letting them do the spreading on their own. Then introduce a picture recipe like this. Later discuss the process with your kids.

• If there are siblings and you are working together on a recipe, assign each child a specific role like mixer, washer etc. Trust me, cuts down on lots of squabbles.

• What you make in the kitchen with the kids does not always have to be an edible recipe. You can try play dough recipes or bubble recipes.

• Encouraging children to invent their recipes can be a good thing. I allow a highly restricted version of this. For me the first priority is not to waste food. So I let them combine and test only a limited set of ingredients, which I know for sure will produce and edible concoction.

• Last but not the least, follow safety measures and hygiene.

Some cook books I enjoyed

If you are thinking of a gift to children in the 3-6 age group, these books are excellent.

• Pretend Soup And Other Real Recipes By Mollie Katzen and Ann Henderson
• Cool Kids Cook by Donna Hay

If you are fretting that your child does not eat vegetables, Jessica has some recipes to ‘sneak’ veggies in to your child’s diet.

• Deceptively Delicious By Jessica Seinfeld

If you are thirsting for more information on the science behind cooking, look no further.

• The Cooking Book By Laura Colker

Technorati Tags: preschool kids, cooking with kids, pointers on cooking with kids, how to cook with kids, resources for cooking with kids, child development, cook to learn, science behind cooking

All the pictures from this post are from google images.

There I was sitting with my research for the sequel for KOOTANCHORU and realized that Dipali, Art, PG and Sue have already listed the major concepts in the comments section.

Dipali says,

“Great for mathematical concepts like weight, volume, division etc. Starting from purchasing of ingredients- costs of different things. Scientific concepts:The change that heat brings about to raw ingredients. How different ways of cooking can give a different end product with the same ingredient. Textures, odours, sizes, shapes- there’s a whole world of things to be learned and taught:)
Haven’t even scratched the surface yet!”

Artnavy takes it a step further and expands into the concept that food and culture go hand in hand. She says,

“u can teach about flavours- festivals- what the Gods like
temperature- ice- water – steam- pressure etc
weight colour texture shapes
vitmains- calories etc
of course satisfaction/ harmony./ organising skills/ leanring from mistakes and the whole team thingie are all a huge part of it”

PG’s point resonates with me when she says,

“In today’s times it is so important to realise the importance of healthy eating which is only possible through learning cooking. To learn about the basics of a balanced diet. And learning to develop taste for good food, I think, is very important for a healthy lifestyle too.”

Sue is looking in to the present as well as the past when she says,

“Great for teaching kids about household safety — how to handle fire, knives. Also great for hygiene. Also, the basic cleaning up most cooks do is great practice for when the kids have homes of their own.
They also learn how to store foodstuffs, grow herbs, mix and match tastes and smells. If you let them wash their own aprons and washcloths, the older ones learn basic hand laundering and stain removal skills. They may sound unimportant but they make such a big difference to one’s adult life!
Oh and if they cook in an assembly line — say for sandwiches or salads or whatever — it’s a good lesson in every role being an important one, no matter how small it seems.”

The learning that occurs in young children can be classified in to three main categories – social, physical and logico-mathematical. Cooking is a scientific process that effectively covers all the three categories.

For example take the process of making a basic scrambled egg recipe with your child. The steps would be as follows:

• Take x number of eggs.
• Break in to a bowl.
• Add a dash of salt and a dash of pepper. For the heck of it add a drop of food coloring. Even adults love green/orange eggs right?!
• Beat well with a fork.
• Heat a tava.
• Add oil.
• Add eggs.
• Cook and enjoy.

Every family has its own style. Some might add raw onions, fried onions, a bit of salsa, veggies, cheese..etc. Every family personalizes the basic recipe in to something that characterizes their style. Heck, some families eat eggs only on certain days based on religious restrictions. We are now talking about the social knowledge that is closely associated with food. We convey our macro culture as well as micro culture through food.

Physical knowledge is not just spatial awareness that can be learned through jumping and running. But it is the learning that comes with doing things physically. By touching, tasting, smelling. If the outcome is directly related to the action and can be varied by varying the initial action, the learning is rich. What better field to test and experiment that cooking? Very true in my kitchen. To hubby’s utter displeasure, I change my recipes every time. When I say rasam, he is not sure what he is getting till he tastes it. For more sad stories contact R@don’t_screw_up_my_fav_food_#$%&*!.com

Logico-mathematical refers to the math and science concepts that can be learned through cooking.

When you interpret a recipe for a child like this, imagine the symbolic association the child forms! She learns that picture=word=thought=print=language.

One learns to count, not just on paper, but in the real sense, “One means one of an object, two means two of the same object”

One learns to compare. Half cup is more than a quarter cup, but less than one cup. Plus they get a meaning full introduction in to part-whole relationship A.K.A fractions.

Through their senses they learn what it really means by solids and liquids.

Older kids learn to estimate. If I need one person needs two eggs, how many eggs do two people need? This forms basis for set theory, ratio, proportion, one-to-one-correspondence, multiplication and addition.

 

Cooking needs to flow in a certain order. So children learn about sequence and concept of time.

They observe transformation. When we warm butter it melts and later solidifies back to butter. When we heat butter, the fat separates and forms clarified butter. Now it will not revert back to butter. When we heat eggs, it curdles.

They learn how things work. Just look at the different kitchen tools in this picture. Isn’t it amazing that every utensil has a specific work. Now, we can’t flip an omelet using a soup ladle can’t we!

And you know what, this is just the tip of ice berg!

Next post: resources and practical how to’s.

On a totally unrelated note, how many of you think about Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina when you break eggs? “It’s all in the wrist”. Thousands of eggs in the past 15 years and I think about this every single time. See cooking brings back memories. May be trivial but will most certainly fill you with happiness 🙂

Technorati Tags: early child education. child development, kootanchoru, cooking for kids, cooking to learn, preschool curriculum, kids

How many of you people have heard this term before? It is very prevalent in kids growing up in rural Tamil Nadu. In an attempt to make their dramatic play realistic, kids bring in real ingredients and cook a meal. One child brings in rice, another brings in daal, another the veggies. They mix all this in a pot, add a little water and put it on top of a small fire made from wooden sticks(suLLi) and cook it. The resultant mixture is called kootanchoru. The name symbolizes the team work that went in to the dish. It can be roughly translated to ‘community lunch’ in English, but is one of those Tamil words, no matter how well one tries, cannot translate in to another language and capture the complete meaning of the word.

Having spent what can be called my childhood, in a concrete jungle, I never made kootanchoru. My first and only kootanchoru was when I was knocking at the door of adolescence. I was 13 and we had moved to what was then the suburbs of Chennai(Now this suburb is swallowed by the ever-expanding Chennai and is one of the prime centers of the city!) A good 18 years, later, I still vividly remember the details. A lazy Saturday afternoon, three teens, making a small fire under a mango tree in the backyard and cooking rice in a small ever silver utensil. At the end of the process, the utensil was so black from the soot and I still remember the said friend’s mother rolling her eyes. We found the smoky flavor of the rice unbearable and didn’t eat even a morsel of it, but I still remember the experience.

Some thing about the different textures, the independence, the creativity involved, problem solving, team effort and most importantly the stimulus to the sense of smell involved is unique to the process if cooking. Hmmm, sense of smell, tell me about it. The part of the brain that is responsible for sense of smell is also in charge of memory and feelings. That explains why I end up smelling tea/idlis steaming/yummy tomato chutney when I think of my grandma’s house!

Anyhooo, all this memories about kootanchoru came flooding back when I had to do a presentation on cooking experiences for children. The main difference being, the general norm in India was ‘LEARNING TO COOK’ and now experts in the field view it as ‘COOKING TO LEARN’.

Any one has ears for more details on how cooking can be a learning experience and what are the concepts that can be taught by cooking, give a holler. *Pointing fingers at people who think that this is a cheap ploy to get more comments*, ‘Yes, I am an extrinsically motivated person. Now stop that train of thought and hit the comment section.’

early child education, child development, kootanchoru, Cooking for kids, Cooking to learn, pre school curriculum, kids