Why Homeschool - Part I

Following a request from a large fraction (one) of my readers, I will try and explain how we came to the decision of homeschooling. Before I go into the reasons though, I think I should give a summary of how we got to this point. This is going to be long and probably boring, but since you asked, here it comes..

He is getting there :)

School readiness

Tomorrow is going to be a big day for our Appu! He is going to take a "school readiness" test, to determine whether he is going to join first grade this term. This is something that is apparently a fixture of the German school system (Rajiv is in preschool at the German School here in Chennai) and, as far as I understand, is a way to make sure that a child is not pushed into a formal school environment before being ready for it. Rajiv will probably not even know that he is being "tested", so there is no pressure on him, or at least that is the intention.

I really like the idea of evaluating the overall development and maturity of a child before making the transition from organized play to a classroom. As far as I understand the test is not about checking who already knows how to spell and add, it is instead about observing the children and making sure they are able to concentrate on a task, have adequate fine motor skills, feel secure enough to face a new environment and so on.

Appu can read very well and can do some simple arithmetic. He used to have a lot of trouble holding a pencil and in fact never even wanted to draw or color, but in the last few months he seems to have suddenly figured it out. Now he can write legible words in huge sloping letters and he even enjoys it, provided nobody is asking him to do it. He is curious - exhaustingly so - and likes to learn new things. He also has that annoying habit that little kids have of remembering word by word everything they hear. He doesn't mind spending the whole day at preschool now, but he does need a few hugs from his favorite teacher to get through the day.

Is Rajiv ready for school? If school was tailored to each individual there would be no need to ask this, but because that is not how it works I think it is actually a very important question. Rajiv's teachers think that he might enjoy a little more challenge, which is why they are thinking of making him join the bigger kids' class, but they are not sure he is emotionally ready. Neither am I, in fact. I think tomorrow's evaluation will be fine, but then we will have to talk more with the teachers and see if we want to just go ahead with it or maybe find some sort of middle path. This might be possible and is probably the main advantage of being in a small private school with very few kids.

Does it sound like I am overthinking this whole school readiness thing? I just think it is so important to get it right and I am glad that the school we have chosen takes this holistic (I hate this word, by the way) approach. Most of all though, what I am thinking is: I am officially the mother of a big kid now, a kid who might be starting School soon! Amazing..

Matisse

It's been a while since I last wrote and I have so many things I need to post about - like Rohan's birthday, that just went by! - that I don't know where to start.To get out of this negative loop, let me break the ice by sharing a couple of random pieces of information about my boys:

• Rajiv can recognize "The Goldfish" painting if he sees it and knows it is by Matisse. He also knows it is called "The Goldfish". But he always tells me it is a picture of a hat. Can you see why?
  
• I told Rajiv that I was born in Italy and so was he, whereas Rohan was born in Canada. Since then Rohan keeps saying "me too, meee tooo! I born Italy toooooo!"
  
• We tried to grow beans in a cup. We got two cups, one for Rohan and one for Rajiv, then we filled them with soil and put some beans inside. Rajiv's beans sprouted and grew really fast, so we transplanted them into a pot outside and they are surviving so far. Rohan's beans never sprouted. For a while I gained time telling him that they were hiding, but secretely I dug them up and they look just like when they were put in there, no change at all. Sigh..
  
• It's summer. Appu likes to wear big explorer's hats. Rohan tolerates the hat - sometimes - but what he really wants is sunglasses, because the sun hurts his eyes. Appu prefers to wear long sleeve shirts, even when it is so hot that most people would rather not wear anything at all. Rohan doesn't mind wearing shirts of whatever kind (but if they have a firetruck or a frog it is obviously much better), however he really doesn't like wearing pants or underwear or anything that might cover his lower bum. Mamma thought insists on the pants - at least outside.
  

******* 4! *******

Today is Appu's birthday. In case you missed the dragon reminder on the sidebar, I just thought I'd put it here too. He is four! He is a big big boy who can talk and argue, has his own ideas and can correct his mamma's English pronunciation. He likes numbers - yesterday I could lure him away from the tv by saying "Hey, I'm going to read a new math book, anybody interested?. He likes seeds and flowers and can recognize daffodils, tulips and dandelions.

He loves maps. He knows where to find North and South America on a map, where Canada and India are and he can find Australia too. He knows some places are very far away and you need to take two planes to go from India to Canada: the first is a "sleeping" plane and everybody is quiet - this was my stroke of genius, I admit - the next is a "waking" plane, where we have fun (you can imagine how much fun..). He also knows that when here it is night in India it is morning time. Now how many four year old kids can grasp that?!?

(Did I mention that bragging is not only allowed but required in birthday posts?)

He likes new clothes, as in clothes he hasn't seen before, they don't really have to be new. He likes to choose what pajamas he is going to wear and we now have a pretty large collection for him to mix and match. Some favorites are the very soft one, which is still too big but he can wear it if he doesn't run in it (or he'll trip), the Thomas one, the monster pajamas and his purple ones that say "Little Brothers Are Awesome" - not really for what it says, but because purple is his favorite color.
He used to love his super dog pajamas and the spiderman ones, but now they have become short and it's ok for Rohan to wear them because Appu is growing. He is four!

He is learning to read all by himself, by which I mean that I don't even try to teach him, but he is the one who asks how to read a word or stops while speaking to see if he can figure out what sounds are in a certain word. He likes to have books read to him too and is now ready for some longer stories, but sometimes what he thinks the book is about would leave you speechless.

He is not afraid of being in a dark room, but he doesn't like to enter the room if the light is not on. Smart, I say.

He can get dressed by himself, but he still has some trouble with zippers and buttons and sometimes socks can get tricky, but he always has the tag on the back. He also can help Rohan and he does a remarkably good job, if Rohan lets him.

He can pee standing up! And he loves to pee outside on the grass, by the way, laughing like a silly appu while I tell him "Careful! Not on the shooooooes!".

He can climb like a monkey and go fast on his tricycle.

He likes all sort of music and makes up his own songs too. If I show him a video of some musicians he wants to know their names. He told me that the CD we played last week in the car has the same song (one of Bach's cello suites) that we heard from a video in the computer. He likes to play music but is not a very disciplined student.. :) He has a nice bow hold and likes his cello but we don't practice much - my fault. However, maybe that's why he still likes it, because there is no pressure whatsoever - see? How to turn any parenting shortcomings into great insights.

You probably already know that he likes trains and the only reason why I didn't make this the first item in my list is that there is going to be a special train post soon. But I like how he plays with his little Thomas trains making up stories as he goes. I also must be the only mom (or not?) who has to sleep with several trains in my bed: the little puppies are allowed to bring two trains or cars each to bed and sometimes we still have yesterday's trains too.

He can fit inside his new carry-on luggage.

He can eat without making too big a mess, unless he wants too :) And he can carry a bowl without spilling the content. Sometimes he likes to blow on his own pasta, sometimes he doesn't and he needs mamma's help. He prefers English words and really would like to know how you say "rotini" in  English, but apparently mamma is part of a big Italian conspiracy and just won't tell him.

He likes to do work, like mamma and papa', with paper and pencil. When he grows up - like, now? - he would like to work at mamma's "ufficio".

I'm sure I left out some really important stuff, but I am also sure that by now you couldn't care less and your eyes are already crossing, so let's just conclude with a picture. Not the best or my favorite, just the most recent mostly in focus photo in my hard drive.

Happy birthday Big Piccolo Rajiv!

Preschool physics: experiments with magnets

Appu osserva che due calamite dello stesso polo, che quindi si respingono, si attraggono quando viene interposto tra le due del metallo - in questo caso una moneta. Naturalmente la sua descrizione del fenomeno e' in termini leggermente differenti :)

Maybe you remember that Rajiv learned how magnets can attract or repel when we gave him his first toy train, during our trip to Paris last year. Toy trains being the brilliant toys that they are, here is another important physics lesson:



Rajiv observed this himself, I just made him re-enact the whole thing for his dad's benefit and for the camera. Just so you don't think that he has a lab report due every evening :)

Calligraphy practice

Nelle prime foto siamo a Madras. I muri della camera dei bimbi sono stati dipinti con vernice da lavagna, cosi' si puo' scrivere sui muri - Rohan pero' non ha ancora capito che i pastelli invece non vanno bene.

Nelle altre foto siamo a Waterloo, nell'ufficio di mamma. Rohan cerca di incastrarsi tra il pavimento e la finestra (e' un concetto difficile da apprezzare se non avete visto l'architettura del mio ufficio..) e Appu continua i suoi esercizi di calligrafia. :) Scusatemi per la qualita' scadente delle foto, le ho fatte col cellulare.

Appu writes on the walls of his room in Chennai. The chalkboard paint was a good idea - the only problem is convincing Rohan that it is only for chalk - and by the way, papa', how is it going erasing all the crayon marks?

Uh-oh.. Suddenly some trouble with the A?

No problem, the A is easy, I'll show you. Then you write the rest. Well done!

The next photos were taken yesterday in my office. Rajiv and Rohan were delivered to me at 4:00 for the weekly "wine and cheese" family event. By the time we left I could have murdered the first person I met on the road, but we started out quite nicely as you can see, playing quietly in mamma's room.

I like how in this photo it looks like Rohan is lowering himself in the construction site in front of my window. Please don't worry, he really is not.

And here Appu is learning a valuable lesson: writing your name on the board is ok, but make sure you go around the math.

By the way, I took these photos with my phone and it just occurred to me that this is the first time I do that. How uncool is that? I mean, do you know of anyone else alive in this century who can say that? However, the quality is quite pathetic and plus, I think I am usually much more likely to have a camera with me than a phone. Add this to the uncool factor :)

Photos you have missed - part 6 - the final chapter :)

Foto della mattina di Natale e foto della nostra gita a Toronto nei due giorni successivi. Le prime foto sono dello zoo, dove Rohan e Appu hanno trovato le loro due anime gemelle in due cuccioli di orangotango. Le altre foto sono del Science Center, dove Appu si e' divertito a giocare con le dighe e molto altro. Anche Rohan, dopo un bel sonnellino in braccio a suo papa', e' sembrato sodisfatto del nuovo parco giochi.. :)

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Here come the Christmas photos, with only one month of delay.


The first photos are from Christmas morning. I really had to push them to open the presents at first, but then they understood that it was supposed to be fun and played along. Appu of course immediately took complete control of the situation, but we managed to save something for Rohan to unwrap too.



Of course some of the presents were new trains and here they are trying them on the track. Unfortunately, the Thomas train carrying a snowman that Santa had hunted down on ebay for weeks doesn't seem to fit under all the tunnels, so it wasn't as much of a hit as Santa had dreamed. Sigh..




The next photos are from our trip to Toronto, a last minute idea to get out of town around the holidays. We left on Christmas day and spent two nights at a hotel (known in Appu's language as "the biggest tower").

One day we went to the zoo. It was cold, but some of the animals didn't mind and other were kept warm inside. We saw a rhino indoors and as you might imagine his presence really fills the room. Hard to feel fully at ease... :) We saw a beautiful tiger (below) and wolves and polar bears in the arctic section.


But our favorite were hands down the orangutans. There were two little ones climbing around and playing like toddlers. The moms (you see one in the photo) were sitting quietly on the side and every now and then the kids would go to them, drink some milk and then go back to play. Just like Rohan and Rajiv :)
I am sorry for the quality of the photos, the (not so clean) glass between us and the orangutans made it difficult to take good shots in a hurry.





The next day we went to the Science Center. It is a lot of fun for kids and they also have a specific wing for children under six where they can play with stuff that in principle could also lead to an understanding of some science principles. We didn't even try to put it that way to Rajiv of course, but he sure had a lot of fun! His favorite part was playing with canals and dams in the water.




Rohan took a long nap in the carrier with papa', but after that he enjoyed himself too.




Then we concluded our trip with a stop at the Mississagua Ikea store on the way back, as a Christmas present for mamma :)

Appu impara a leggere! (In inglese...)

Rajiv has known his letters and the sound they make for a while now, mostly thanks to an annoying electronic toy. However, he just wasn't interested in putting those sounds together to make words. I tried to introduce the idea a couple of times, but he just wasn't ready.

And now, suddenly, he really wants to learn! In the video he is reading from a book that I made for him more than six months ago. He loves that he can more or less read it all by himself. Of course the pictures help and by now he must have it all memorized, but you can see that he is really trying to figure it out by himself.

Anyway, mamma is so proud :)

Note: At Appu's request, I wanted to record the reading of the whole book, but Rohan had some computer trouble and then I finished my memory card, so the video at some point just ends.

Week twenty four

This has been another horrible week for me, in so many ways. I will surely talk about it in future posts but right now I prefer not to talk about it, so please respect that in the comments.

So let's move on to the kids, which is why you are reading this anyway, right? :)

To start, Rajiv has been promoted from "butterfly" to "dragonfly". It's a big thing, it means he now gets to hang out with older children at daycare and I am sure he loves that.

The daycare sends a daily update by email, just a couple of sentences about something that the child did or said, or learned. Today's update says:

While playing a game, Rajiv heard the instruction that he had to touch something in black colour. Some of his friends touched their hair. Rajiv realised that he could not do that, so he ran after his friend to touch her black hair!

Sometimes these updates leave me speechless. Who is this amazing kid that pretends to be my son?? But seriously, fancy Appu knowing the color of his own hair... or Appu playing an organized game, for that matters! I am soooo proud of him!

In the meantime, Rohan's main occupations are drinking liters of toxic pink stuff (antibiotics, they tell me) and trying to crawl. The latter is a source of great frustration for him. He can position himself on hands and knees, but then no matter how hard he tries he is unable to move forward. He rocks on his knees trying to jump forward and a couple of times he actually managed to swing his legs ahead between his arms, like a gymnast. I don't see a future for that technique, though.

Another small but important milestone: I am now carrying Rohan mostly on the hip, like a big boy! And I do carry him a lot, because he is often crying these days. Part of it may be the frustration from his failed crawling efforts, sometimes the floor might be too hard for him, who knows. He also has a cold and an almost healed ear infection, and a tummy surely bothered by all the medicines. And he is also teething, but you knew that already...

Week twenty one

Appu compie oggi due anni e mezzo. Aguri! Rohan purtroppo invece e' ammalato per la prima volta e continua a tossire, povero.

Today Appu is exactly two and a half! And quite appropriately I have a lot of things to say about him this week. Let me collect them in a list of

proud moments:

While I was packing on our last day in Paris, Rohan started to cry. I was folding some cothes so I tried to calm him down with my voice while I quickly finishing what I was doing, but to no avail. Appu, who was sitting nearby watching his cartoons (what's new) turned away from the screen (!!!) and gently patted Rohan on his back saying something mysterious in a soft voice. My boy...

He finally learned to sing "Head, shoulders, knees and toes" with all the accompanying gymnastics. In fact as I was showing him the moves slowly repeating the words he said "sing song!". Hey, forget the song, HE TALKS!!!

Most spectacularly, he officially learned to count. Not always correctly, but he got the concept, which was of course the toughest part. I guess we can thank all his "educational" cartoons for this, so I can feel just a little less lousy for allowing him to watch them all day during our trip.

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Unfortunately we are all still a bit beaten up by the mixture of germs collected in France - in fact it seems nonna Laura can thank us for a nasty cough too - and Rohan is the one who is feeling the worst right now. He coughs and coughs, this is the first real illness and he has trouble lying down. Combine this with jet-lag and you have a recipe for kids awake at 3 AM, super cranky dad with running nose and headache and mom who honestly just doesn't know how to handle this. At least mom gets to sleep in with said jet-lagged kids in the morning. Yay! :)

Week twenty

(Am I counting right?)

Just because we are spending our days in a small badly lit flat watching Dora The Explorer all day, it doesn't mean the kids have stopped their growth. So here is the usual (bi-)weekly update.

Rohan is moving more and more and if I keep postponing writing about it soon I'll have to tell you that he is crawling! But not yet. He is trying to move forward, but he only manages to slide back farther and farther from the desired toy. He tries to push up his butt and then propel himself, like so,


but not much luck yet. He is however able to grab what he wants if given the chance. That has really just happened over the course of this trip, it is true that at this age in two weeks you might get a completely different baby. Look at him!




He has full workouts with frequent milk breaks and he is also trying to sit. He can sit for say one second, but he doesn't give up.



This is mostly a Rohan post, but I want to say something about Rajiv too. First, look at this picture:


When Appu saw it he saddened and said "he's crying", but actually our little hero was not crying at all when the picture was taken. He was saying "pasta!" with the attitude of a guy who is not going to wait one more minute for his food. And he is pointing at the plate, demanding to be fed.

But the proudest Appu moment was when I managed to teach him a very important physics lesson. There are in fact two kinds of magnets, even though they all look the same. Sometimes they attract and stick together ("tac!"), sometimes the repel. But if instead of screaming and smashing your toys on the floor you try both sides of a cart to see which one will stick, you might be able to make a train.