Part 4 of many.

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We all would have colored, painted, made some kind of art as a kid. Many of us do it even now. So dip in to your memory bank or your current experiences and answer some questions.

There are just 10 questions. and you can choose to be anon. So don’t be intimidated. 9 questions are about you and the last question is for me. Indulge me please. Pretty please with a cherry on top ???

You will see only one question at a time. I have provided some answers. For folks who want to tell more there is a text area. After you answer click on next. Please make sure you answer all 10 questions.

Survey will be open till Jan 18, 4.00PM PST.

Get…Set…Go

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Contd: Survey results

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Part 3 of many.

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A child comes in to this world all geared up for survival. Think about it. Who taught this itty-bitty thing to latch on, to suck from the breast, to root, to paddle while in water, and imitate walking? All this within minutes after birth? The only explanation is new born brain is wired to handle certain reflexes. Few other things the newborn brain is designed to do is to communicate, to absorb language and to bond. These are the essential tools for survival.

If one looks at language development, music development and art development in children, it follows the same pattern. Language for example, children start with receiving language before they start talking. Talking comes in a certain order. They start with cooing, progress to babbling, figure out everything has a name and hence understand symbolism, start to say single words, move on to telegraphic speech and then comes the talking.

Children view art as a form of communication, especially in the first three years. They understand the concept of communication – thinking up something and expressing it to other people. Then they understand that communication can be using words or physical body movements like pointing gesturing etc or using paper and pencil/crayon. (The beauty about art as a tool for communication is that children use it to communicate to themselves at times. They think of a visual idea and many a times putting that visual on paper clears a lot of things for them) By this time they are masters in cause and effect, otherwise they wouldn’t know that pencil causes an impression on paper. They are developing hand-eye co-ordination and fine motor skills, otherwise they cannot manipulate the pencil to make marks on paper. We are talking about a 12month – 18month old child now.

Just like talking there are stages in drawing. Once there was a nice lady called Rhoda Kellogg. For 18 years she collected one million drawing sample of children in a certain age group. She researched the scribbles and concluded that

• Children first explore the art material, euphemism for your child eating crayon or grinding pencil. Or like in our house, a person who shall not be named painting their younger sister’s freshly tonsure head with red paint. And another person who shall not be named allowing their older sister to paint her head but insisted and rolled on the floor crying that her face needs to be painted too.
• Then they scribble. Children have 20 basic scribbles. Not all children use all the 20 scribbles, but they favor certain scribbles based on their intelligence style.
• They extend their scribbles, like making X and something resembling shapes. Invariably all children draw the circle as their first enclosed space. Happy face and sun figure in most of the children’s drawings. Then they combine shapes and such. This is when they draw ‘the house’ with one triangle for roof and a rectangle/square for the bottom. Even though they live in apartments with flat roof, they draw A-line roofs in their drawings!!
• Then they repeat and repeat and repeat, till they refine their style, placement, materials and they evolve their own individual style. By this time your child is six years give or take.

Are you blown away? Did your jaws will drop? Mine did when I first read about it

If one were to debate if art is nature or nurture, I would say both. When it comes to art, there are two things there is appreciation and there is creation. An artist is a person who has the ability to appreciate what she sees, figure out what makes the maximum impact on her, break it down in her brain in to simple elements and create it using a medium. The first part, appreciating what they see and capturing the main elements of the images that make the maximum impact on them comes naturally to young children (6 and under). Plus they are process oriented. Hence my belief that children are born artists (NATURE). As they grow up, they either grow in to people who create or grow out of art. This solely depends on their experiences with and exposure to art in the first six years (NURTURE).

So, should I run and sign up my two-year-old for art classes? What is art exposure? What do parents do to encourage and inspire their children? Will keep y’all posted. Before that indulge me in this survey pliss.

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[tags]is art nature or nurture, Rhoda Kellog, patterns in children’s drawings, children use art to communicate[/tags]

Technorati Tags: children use art to communicate, is art nature or nurture, patterns in children's drawings, Rhoda Kellog

Part 2 of many

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Art is open-ended. What is beautiful or meaningful to one person makes no sense to another. Personally, I love Raja Ravi Verma. My next best would be the impressionists. I love them all, I love the concept, I love the play of colors, I love the way the artist looks at light and dark. Recently I have been introduced to pointillism and all I can say is WOW, what a vision. This is in the late 1880?! I consider this some kind of rudimentary vision which later got extrapolated to the pixel concept now used in TV monitors.

Modern/abstract art, I simply don’t understand. I have always thought, a child could make it, what is the big deal. But one of my classmates, with a masters degree in art, explained to me that it is the process, not the product. During break time, we were discussing Jackson Pollack’s abstract expressions in particular and I said, “Jack the dripper??? Come on, my three year old can do it. I can do it. Drip, spit and roll in paint. Hah!” and my classmate said, “But did you do it? Did you have the guts to exhibit your three year old’s painting? A painting is an expression of a thought or the artist’s perception/reaction to a mental image. Pollack captured it in a way that no one had done before. He deserves credit because he was the first to think about that particular expression and had the guts to back it up.” Post that conversation my attitude to modernism and abstract expression has changed from condescension to respectfully saying, ‘two thumbs up, but not my style’. Jeez, I don’t want the enormous responsibility of looking in to some one’s mind. I am not quite ready.

But modern art does have its merits, purely from my POV. I have found from experience that children are likely to be less intimidated by modern art. They find some sort of kinship with the artist. May be it gives them the same, ‘hey, I can do this’ confidence?! May be because before six years of age children are still pure and process oriented?! I was blown away once when Chula (she was 4-ish I think) drew the drawing below and explained to me, ‘This is you amma and this is you dancing. The dancing you is moving, just like the picture lines in my class room is moving.’ The picture in her classroom she was referring to is a Kandinsky.

So what is art for a young child? It is nature, it is communication. It is a basic instinct.

Part 3, if art is nature, then why aren’t we all artists? Click here.

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[tags]what is my art, preschooler art, child art, art product vs art process, is art nature or nurture, raja ravi verma, pontillism, impressionism, kandinsky, pollack, abstract expressions, what is modern art, do young children prefer modern art[/tags]

Technorati Tags: abstract expressions, art product vs art process, child art, do young children prefer modern art, impressionism, is art nature or nurture, kandinsky, pollack, pontillism, preschooler art, raja ravi verma, what is modern art, what is my art

Part 1 of many.

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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.

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[tags]art, art for young children, art for adults, my experiments with art[/tags]

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

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

[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[/tags]

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

By observing Chula and Mieja, I have a rough humor development chart.

They both laughed for nursery rhymes like ‘Chubby cheeks dimple chin…’, ‘This little piggy went to the market’…. and ‘Round and round the garden’ around 2 months – 4 months.

Then they laughed for peek-a-boo, between 7 months to a year.

Then the ‘oopsi doopsie’ phase – If I drop something, either on purpose or by accident, it evoked peals of laughter. This started around a year or so. There is a subtlety in this phase. It initially starts with laughing only after the completion of the event and matures to start giggling at the anticipation of the event. Chula and Mieja are now in the latter stage.

Kumbal-oda Govinda (Meaning: following the crowd)– Sometime around 20 – 22 months, Chula used to watch Barney and laugh when she hears or sees other children laughing. It would be a verbal joke, and she would still laugh. It was interesting to observe her do this because I was curious what provoked her to laugh. Questioning her did not bring me any clarity because she did not understand what I was talking about. So I concluded that she laughed just to be a part of whatever was going on. It also reminded me of my childhood. Around 6-7 years I used to watch ‘The Lucy Show’ in television. With the American accent and all, I had no idea what they were talking about, but I would still laugh and my parents used to pull my legs. My father would ask me to explain the joke with a twinkle in his eyes and I would draw a blank . My mom also observed Chula laughing for Barney and remarked, ‘Just like you did…’

Last month we were at a birthday party. The host hired a clown to entertain the kids. The clown had some slapstick routines, every time he bent down to pick some thing from his case, he would make a loud offensive fart noise. And every time he did that my Chula laughed her head off!! The other kids laughed because the noise was socially inappropriate. Chula still does not know that it is not ‘proper’ to make bodily noises in public. She still does not know the difference between ‘pleasant’ smell and ‘unpleasant’ smell. She takes a deep breath, fills her lungs with pleasant/unpleasant odor and says, ‘Hmmmm, ahaaa, smells like good amma’. Then why did she laugh? I asked her some simple questions and the conclusion this time was that the surprise caused by the impromptu action made her laugh. She still didn’t get the adult version of the joke. This was around 33 months of age.

This got me quite interested in (1) What is sense of humor? (2) How does sense of humor develop in children? Are children born with it or do they acquire it? (3) What is the connection between intelligence and sense of humor? (4) Can it be conditioned? If so what can a parent do to encourage the child’s sense of humor? (5) Is there a universal pattern in the development of humor in children? (6) How does humor help a child?

I did a bit of research about this. People like Aristotle and Darwin did quite a bit of research and ended up just touching the tip of the iceberg. So I am definitely not doing full justice to this topic.

In simple words, humor is the ability to appreciate the unexpected.

Is humor nature or nurture? My understanding is that humor is acquired. Because, infants simply do not have the verbal and cognitive ability to process jokes. The baby laughing when tickled is just a response to physical stimulation. As they grow a bit, they see the adults laughing and mimic them. Then they see they can please the adults by laughing and they laugh. Then they realize that some thing falling down and the mother making a funny ‘oopsie-doopsie’ or a parent making a silly face is an unexpected action and they laugh in response to that. Humor development is strongly associated with the brain’s ability to process and support the processed information.

We do not see animals laughing. Nope I stand corrected, apparently it is proven that even rats ‘laugh’ when their ribs are tickled! But that is just a response to a physical stimulation. What I menat is animals do not perceive jokes and respond to that with laughter. Well, I am not counting chimps, they do seem to have a concept of humor, mostly slapstick. So sense of humor must be a sign of intelligence right? Looks like we human beings come with the biological capacity to laugh, make jokes and understand jokes. Our brains are ‘wired to take pleasure from humor and laughter’. There are three different zones in the brain, each with the synaptic information to process different kinds of jokes (semantic jokes, phonological jokes, and slapstick jokes). By correlating this information with the study (if I may call it so!!) of my daughters, I conclude that the zone for slapstick develops earlier. For the other kind of jokes the brain has to be mature enough to grasp the humor. So is a child shows the ability to understand a phonological joke or a semantic joke before she is expected to, it is logical to assume that her brain is quite mature for her age. Also to see through the current disaster, pick the sliver lining and make a joke about it requires complicated brainwork. So I am convinced that humor is definitely a sign of intelligence.

Yes, humor can be conditioned. Parents with good sense of humor have children with good sense of humor. The more humorous situations a baby is exposed to, the better his sense of humor.
At the risk of sounding too Baby center-ish here are some practical tips

Play with the baby.

Laugh with the baby.

Plenty of interaction with the father (The logical reasoning behind this sexist statement is that the mother has more parenting responsibilities and is always a serious task master. But the father tends to be the good cop and his mood is more relaxed. For example, when the baby is scooping her peas and throwing it all over the room, instead of worrying about clean up and nutrition, like the mother does, the father laughs and makes jokes.)

Listen to your child’s stories.

Encourage her to be creative.

Read humorous stories.

Use humor as an alternative to scolding.

A much as I would like to take credit for this humor development chart for children, it is NOT MINE. I found this section on the web. But I misplaced the link and I am not able to trace it. If some one finds this link, I will be happy to give credit to author.
**Begin quote
Here are the general stages of development for what makes children laugh. Keep in mind, though, that it’s impossible to be specific about each child’s development, and stages typically overlap.

6-12 months: Takes delight in caregiver’s unexpected actions. Example: peekaboo.
12 to 15 months: Graduates from reacting to something funny to initiating it. Example: putting a cup on Daddy’s head and calling it a hat.
2 years: Makes “mistakes” to show mastery of a subject. Example: You ask her to show you her nose, she points to her knees.
3 years: Distorts known features of words, ideas, and objects. Example: asking for a dirt muffin and worm cheese; slapstick and potty humor.
4 to 5: The pre-riddle stage, when they have the form but not the content.
Example: “Why does the chicken cross the road?” “To go to bed.”
6 to 7: Riddles and knock-knock jokes.
End quote**

This making mistakes to show mastery of a subject is how rubber duckie and donut originated! So Chula, Mieja can’t wait to hear your knock-knock jokes!

Sense of humor helps children the same way it helps an adult. Every one loves, accepts and are friends with a person with a good sense of humor. Apart from the social aspect, humor helps people get through the dull, boring, hard, hectic, painful, lousy, anxious, uncomfortable, dark phases of life. Jokes, especially phonological and semantic ones, will help cildren understand the subtility in language. Personally I developed my tamil by reading jokes from Ananda Vikatan/Daily Tandhi. Of course, all of us have heard about the bit laughter + endorphins = healthy body/life/mind.

Some more interesting information:
Coming back to one of my all time favorite topics, gender differences, sense of humor starts off the same in children of both sexes. Around 6 years or so, owing to the differences in brain development and the way the information is processed, there are certain things that are more appealing to boys than girls and vice versa. Girls like verbal humor, boys like physical, slapstick and off color jokes! Since society accepts boys making physical jokes, better than girls making physical jokes, the pattern gets set.

Resources:

http://www.boston.com/yourlife/family/articles/2005/08/04/laughing_now_might_help_your_children_to_be_funny_later/

(If the full link is not displayed, click here to read the article.)

http://www.kidshealth.org/parent/growth/learning/child_humor.html

http://www.wireheading.com/intracran/funbrain.html

http://www.scholastic.com/earlylearner/age3/learning/qc_humor.htm

http://www.sesameworkshop.org/parents/advice/article.php?contentId=48260

Technorati Tags: humor development, humor development chart, humor development in children, humor development milestones, is sense of humor acquired?, is sense of humor nature or nurture?, sense of humor and language development

I have to confess, there was an ulterior motive in the Green Eggs and Ham book review. I started writing this post and decided that the review is better off in a post by itself.

Every time Sam offers the dog(!??!) green eggs and ham, the dog keeps adding the variables and says no. The effect is a cumulative story.

Yes, yes, I am coming to the point. I am working on Chula’s potty training. No, no you all read it right. I am the only person working, she is NOT. May be she is working against it…who knows?! I decided to not send her to day care and have her at home and work on the PT before my next quarter begins. I told her, no more diapers, only underpants, no poo-poo/pee-pee in the diapers, only in the potty, if you have to go tell me and I will take you to the potty.

Its been 5 long days and the whole thing is such a flop. I had the sticker system, she just does not care about it. The first day she was very proud of her stickers, ‘Appa, lookie look I made three poo-poo/pee-pee in the puuty. I got three stickels’ she showed him excitedly. From then on the sticker became two, one and today there were none.

I waited this long hoping that if I start late I can finish soon. But looks like Chula is going to take her own time. She made pee-pee in the chair. I told her, ‘Chula no pee-pee in the chair, only in the potty’. She made pee-pee on the floor, I told her, ‘Chula no pee-pee in the chair, no pee-pee on the floor, only in the potty’. Then she made pee-pee on the center table(If you are wondering how on earth, on the center table?, we have a certain model in which the top lifts off. Its perfect for little craft activities or TV dinners. She was sitting and during her breakfast eating and coloring on a shet of paper ) and I told her , ‘Chula no pee-pee in the chair, no pee-pee on the floor, no pee-pee on the table, only in the potty’. Of course there were numerous pee-pees in her underpants, and I told her ‘Chula no pee-pee in the chair, no pee-pee on the floor, no pee-pee on the table, no pee-pee in underpants only in the potty’. Just like the dog in Green eggs and Ham my list kept growing( and this is how Dr.Suess was dragged in to Chula’s potty training.)

Today I put Chula in her crib for her afternoon nap. I just strapped on a diaper incase she pees in her sleep. Apparently madam wanted to pee, remembered that I told her no pee-pee in her underpants, so she decided to take off her clothes, take off her diaper, squat in her crib and relieve herself. I walk in to the bedroom and this stark naked child is sitting in a corner of the crib and is giggling like Dolores Umbridge. Selective hearing and selective implementation. She remembers ‘not in the underpants’ part and decides to chuck the ‘only in the potty’ part!!

(Ofcourse it is now not in the crib, not on the chair, not on the …..blah …blah …blah….)

I wanted to record this because, sometime in the future, I will look back at this post and laugh my head off. Till then there is loads and loads of mopping and teeth grinding to do.

Updates: We are 9 days in to potty trainning now, no underpants, bare butt kind of works. Thanks Boo for the tip. Looks like with underpants she still thinks that it will hold whatever comes out. Without anything, she comes running to me yelling, ‘Come on mommy we need to go, poo-poo is falling out’ . So we are headed in the right direction. Hope the streak continues.

Waiting to potty train till the child is 18 months or older does seem to help.

Funnies: She now sits in the pot and asks every one under the Sun she has ever met if they make their you know what in the potty or in their underpants.

When I am using the bathroom, she stands outside the bathroom and is cheering and clapping for me.

I want to discuss a few popular streams of preschools in this post. Most of the information will apply to families living in the US. Which doesn’t mean that the others must not read this post. Even if you do not have school age children, please do read on, because I would love to hear your opinions on this subject.

Through out this post I will be using she/her, as required. It sounds too formal/politically correct to keep repeating he/she, his/her every time I make reference to a child. Just like the word man means both man and woman, my reference to she means both he and she. Yes, I am partial towards ‘she’ because I have two girls

It seems like only yesterday hubby an self were breaking our heads to pick a day care for toddler, already it is time to start thinking about preschools! After a few months of thinking, visting, revisiting ideas, it will be that time to start acting!

We are all parents, so we all know clearly well, what a preschool is. No definitions required. The general norm, irrespective of which part of the world you live in, is to send your child off to preschool when the child turns three. Most of the preschools in US, require that the children have completed two years, nine months and are potty trained before they take them in. Some of the smaller preschools might be a little lax on this rule, they might take the child in as early as two years and six months and are okay if the child wears training pants.

A child’s brain grows at a tremendous pace till the child reaches 6 years. When the child is approximately 5 years, her brain is supposed to be more or less the size of an adult brain. The idea of sending the child to preschools is to make use of these essential years. Attending preschool or getting the benefits of a preschool education at home gives the child a head start through out her life.

Every child is different. So the method the child must be taught must differ too. We have to have an understanding about the types of education and the temperament of the child, in order to pick the best preschool for the child.

Now, to the two main methods of education – which in simple terms can be called as the child-centered method and the teacher-centered method. For the most part the Montessori style is a child-centered approach, but since there is a lot of unique stuff to be said about this style of education, I am putting in to a separate category.

A child-centered method is one where the basic goal is the wholesome and autonomous development of the child. The individuality of a child is celebrated. There is no segregation in terms of subject, it is believed that all the subjects are inter related. This method is based on the assumption that every child is growth seeking and has the intrinsic motivation to learn, which is true. Only as we grow, we start piling up negativity, laziness and become bums. There is no preset curriculum for this method, there are rough guidelines, but what the child learns is totally up to the child and the teacher. All the activities are chosen by the child. The child gets to decide when, what, how she wants to learn and when she wants to play. Interaction, between the kids and kids adult interaction is highly encouraged, because this method believes that is how children learn. Most of the preschools in the US and around the world were based on this method until the Asian influence seeped in, me thinks .

The only place where I have seen this type of education practiced in its true essence is the lab schools aka the childcare centers affiliated with an educational institution. Every educational institution, which has a child studies department, has its own child care facility. They organize the children according to their age groups. The children age group 3.5 years – 5 years have a preschool program. The environment is set up every day and the children can do anything they opt for, throughout the day. It might sound and seem like all play, but they do teach cool stuff. The couple of weeks I was there in my lab school, the kids were taught about photosynthesis, life cycles of a butterflies, silk worms, democracy and career options when they grow up.

But, couple of negatives about this style of education is that,

the child has to really show the initiative. I mean, they do teach stuff, but if a child wants to play at that time instead of learning, the child is not forced. As long as the child does whatever she wants to without disturbing the rest of the group, that’s is fine with the class teacher. There is no pressure what so ever on the child to learn.

There might be some home environments where the parents might not be able to give education the required importance, ignorance or lack of time, what ever the reason may be. Such a home environment combined with a kid who does not show initiative is a messy situation.

This style of education is a choice only up to a certain level. After that the child is thrust in a different kind of learning environment which takes serious adjusting on the child’s part.

The kind of kids who will thrive well in this style: The beauty of this is, it will fit perfectly for kids from opposite ends of the spectrum. Kids who are social bees take naturally to this style. But it doesn’t mean that a very shy toddler will not do well. This might be a good chance to draw your toddler out. Kids are known to interact easily with other kids than with adults. Also if the child is from a family where the adults believe that children are supposed to run around and have fun, go for this. After preschool, make a slow transition to an academically oriented school.

A teacher-centered method is a style educating the child by teaching the child conformity. The children are motivated to learn through external means – test, assignment kind of stuff. This style is based on the theory that the environment shapes a person. The characteristics of this style of education is its emphasis on product over process, separate subjects, fixed curriculum for all the students and imporantc of an authority figure(namely the teacher). Interaction between the teacher and the children is encouraged, but there is a limit on the interaction between the kids. Every school in India is based on this style, so I don’t think we need any further explanations.

The kind of kids who will thrive well in this style: Kids who thrive on structure. The amount of openness in the activities that can be done over whelms kids many times. The kids might start one activity, suddenly jump to the next and will end up not learning anything properly. All kids are fickle, but there are varying levels in the fickleness. If you feel that the child needs some kind of conformity in order improve her concentration, jump right on to this style. If you are an Indian parent who is thinking about moving back to India and is looking for a temporary pre school please do the kid a big favor and enroll her for this style. Because in India, as far as I know, most of the schools are too academically oriented. Otherwise there might be a small possibility that the kid might have to repeat the kindergarten program once again in India. If at all that is the case, parents take a chill pill and let the kid do it. Don’t think of it as a year wasted, think of it as a life long investment. You can potentially crucify the child’s self esteem by letting her feel that she constantly needs to catch up in school.

Montessori style: Dr.Maria Montessori started this style of education in Italy at a time where education was only for the rich boys. Girls, poor children and children with metal and physical disability were considered ‘not fit’ to be educated. At a time like this Dr.Maria Montessori came out this unique way of education, the main goal was to give the poor kids a way to sustain their lives. Have you heard the adage, “Give a man a fish to eat, you fed him for a day, teach him to fish you feed him for his life”? Dr.Montessori essentially came with a method of teaching the kids to fend forthemselves for the rest of their lives.

So when you look at a Montessori program, you have to keep in mind the reason Dr.Montessori came up with this style of teaching. In a Montessori there is very little interaction – between the kids/between the kids and the teacher. The children are encouraged to work on their own, the teacher ‘guides’ them. First and foremost, the children are taught how to take care of themselves – basics like how to wear their shoes, how to dress them selves, how to clean their environment…kind of simple activities. Lots of stress is placed on nature, most of the materials used are natural. In the present days, the Montessori programs are highly watered down versions of the original method.

The kind of kids who will thrive well in this style: Kids who love independence, interacting with nature. If you have a special needs kid (like ADD), go for this method, because there is low teacher: student ratio in a Montessori (might vary from program to program, check with the provider about this information).

I know toddler will thrive well in an academically oriented program, but I just want her to get the benefits of a much more relaxed curriculum, after all this is the age to run around and have fun. So I am still dilly dallying. Hubby has his heart set on a full blown, completely academic program.

Will also do a post (sometime soon) about the choice of schools, when to apply, how to apply etc, but that will be more focused to the California bay area.

I had chicken pox when I was 11 years old. I remember my mother getting worried. On the other hand I was kicked that I got to stay at home for two weeks. I was missing the revision exam, how cool was that?! Chicken pox was associated with Mariyamman, so my mom tied a bunch of neem leaves outside the house, we turned away visitors, the house was cleaned twice every day, my clothes were washed separately, I got bland yucky tasteless food, my mother didn’t season any thing she cooked (even for others) for two weeks, I was given tender coconut water twice a day, no milk product of any kind for two weeks, plain boiled veggies like greens and squash, I was allowed to have a shower only after the blisters started to dry (imagine not having a shower for five days in the middle of april?!!), bath with sesame oil, neem paste and turmeric powder. My mom didn’t do her usual daily pooja because Mariyamman is already angry and she didn’t want to offend the goddess at home by praying to other Gods. And no medication of any kind, again Mariyamman gets offended.

A week back my 11 month old infant was diagnosed with chicken pox. If I could look at a mirror when the doctor said, “Sorry, it looks like chicken pox”, it would have had the exact same expression my mother had when I was down with chicken pox! Some things never change. Anyways the doctor said that good thing was chicken pox is much milder in babies and now she has life time immunity against chicken pox. Doctors directions were usual diet, apply calamine lotion if she gets itchy, give her Benadryl (antihistamine) if she is extremely itchy, Tylenol if her fever is troubling her, bathe her with baking soda, make sure that she stays quarantined till the contagious phase is over.

Though there was no treatment for the cause of chicken pox both in India and in USA, I couldn’t help noticing how different the approach was here when compared to the approach in our country. In India, chicken pox was considered as something connected to religion, in USA they treated it as a contagious virus.

I had to decide what I must do to take care of my little girl. So I tried to analyze the logic behind the practices in India. I am pretty religious, but I didn’t want to follow tradition blindly.
Neem leaf, turmeric – they are considered disinfectants, also soothes the itchy feeling.
Neem leaf tied outside the house – just to warn people to that some one at home has a contagious virus.
Washing clothes separately, not letting other people visit, frequently cleaning the house – to maintain hygiene
Tender coconut water – cooled the body
Low calorie tasteless food, no milk, boiled veggies – When you are sick you have low appetite. Also the body has to spend lots of heat digesting food high in fat. The cause of Chicken pox is considered to be the result of the body getting over heated. So why make the body work harder to digest high calorie food?
No shower – you don’t want to break the blisters. The blisters might get infected and are contagious if they are oozing.
No seasoning, no pooja at home – I have no clue why? May be make the food so bland that Mariyamman gets sick and tired of the bland food and leave. No pooja for the other Gods….well I frankly think that Mariyamman must share more.

So I followed the things that made sense to me and altered the things that I didn’t agree with. This is what I did:
• I applied Caladryl clear calamine lotion on her blisters. It did help with the itchiness.
• I was determined not to let her temperature raise more than 99. So I gave her Tylenol as per needed.
• I was able to get tender coconut in Chinese supermarkets. So I gave her about 4-6 oz of tender coconut water everyday.
• I made her sip water every chance I could get.
• I gave her a diluted version of her regular diet. Formula, rice and lentils, mashed vegetables and yogurt. I diluted the full fat yogurt and also the formula, so that she didn’t have difficulty digesting the food. At the same time I didn’t want her to end up too weak and tired after the illness had passed.
• I mixed one cup of baking soda to a bucket full of water and bathed her. This was when the blisters were fresh. Baking soda alleviated the itchy feeling.
• Once the blisters started to dry, I applied coconut oil or sesame oil on her body, gently rubbed the oil off with a mixture of dry neem powder (available in Indian stores) + turmeric powder + powdered moong daal and washed it off with water.
(I grind some moong daal, sift it in a sieve and have the fine powder in a container. I mix it with turmeric powder and bathe my daughters. It is a pain to clean the tub, but I don’t care, what is the hurry to use soap?)
• I made sure I wasn’t carrying her when I was cooking.
• All of us at home washed our hands frequently.

My baby girl is doing so good so far. The doctor said that sometimes the old blisters dry out and she might break out with new ones a few days later. We have one more week to go, I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Ms.Mariyamman, I haven’t offended you right? If so take it out on me, not my baby girl. It already tore me to see her break out in 40-50 of red blisters within a matter of two hours. I certainly was no fun watch her curl up on my chest with a tired expression in her eyes.

PS: There are blisters even on the scalp. So do not comb the baby’s hair. May be gently detangle hair with fingers. We had recently shaved her head, so I didn’t have that to worry about.

Both my children suffer from loose stools every time they cut a tooth. They just have frequent BM, but are active in general.

If your baby is having loose stools, more frequent than normal, but is not in any major pain or discomfort there are a few traditional cures for the problem.

What to give

Tapioca Stew(Javvarisi kanji in Tamil)

If the tapioca is small, then you can use it directly. Otherwise soak them for an hour or so.

Boil two cups of water.

Add ¼ cup of tapioca pearls.

Let tapioca cook completely. By now the tapioca must be translucent.

Add salt as required and remove from heat.

Drink as is or dilute it as required.

Ajwain(Omam) tea

Boil 1 cup of water.

Add ½ omam to the water.

Let boil for 5 more minutes.

Remove from heat.

Let cool, filter and drink it.

If possible drink it first thing in the morning. My toddler kept insisting, “Amma I want white water. No yellow water amma.” So I had to sneak it in.

Don’t do this for more than three days. Omam heats up the body, might result in dry cough/irritation while urinating or dry, red eyes.

Limit the use of omam for kids younger than a year.

Roasted channa daal

Eat as is.

What to avoid
Spinach or any iron rich food.
Excess of dairy