Annie Oakley

Manisha read "Shooting Star: Annie Oakley, the Legend" (by Debbie Dadey) to Supriya. Supriya of course knew about Annie, thanks to that wonderful musical "Annie Get Your Gun". The movie has so many great tunes by Irving Berlin. Manisha and I went over the list of songs and we could remember each & every one -- and it's been more than a year since we saw it last! It turns out that the movie is fairly accurate historically as well. Definitely time to buy the DVD...

You have *what* in your kitchen?!

We've been doing some "science" lately, at least that's how it will typically get classified. (As an aside, Karl and I have been discussing what "doing science" means. I will write about it when it's cooked.)

Dead Turtle

Manisha found a desiccated dead turtle (or a turtle-cake, as Karl called it) in the parking lot of her company. Like a good homeschooler she brought it home for the kids to study. They had a good time inspecting it. Supriya wondered if the turtle had claws, so she examined it closely. Indeed it has claws and they are still pointy.

Naturally it sits on the window-sill in the kitchen (in a ziplock bag of course). Still it horrified some of her co-workers, "You have what in your kitchen?!"

Supriya: What killed the turtle? Did someone step on it?
Manisha: No, it's too flattened for that. Probably a car went over it.
Supriya: But car tires are so soft...?
Manisha: It's the weight of the car on top that flattened it...

Discovery Museum

Manisha took the kids to the Discovery Museum last weekend while I was away at the chorus retreat. We became members when it became clear that we will be going there often. They spent about 1 1/2 hours at the Science Museum and another hour at the Children's Museum. At this stage they are playing with assorted things with no clear favorites.

"Fresh from the Family Farm"

We got this video titled "Fresh from the Family Farm: Where our food comes from" (produced by ZMedia, Inc.) from the library, and it has become a surprising hit with the kids, especially Aseem. Maybe they are connecting with it because we are growing tomatoes in our backyard (in the wonderful Earthboxes) and the tomatoes are ripening & ready to eat.

Johnny Appleseed

I read the story of Johnny Appleseed to Supriya last night from "From Sea to Shining Sea: A Treasury of American Folklore and Folk Songs" (published by Scholastic; a very good book by the way). Today we watched the video "Johnny Appleseed", narrated by Garrison Keillor (American Heroes and Legends Series put out by Rabbit Ears). "Nice pictures" was Supriya's comment. I enjoyed both myself. I was struck by Johnny's vegetarianism and reverence for life (a little bit extreme for me, truth be told). Reminded me of Jainism.

The Art of Possibility

My barbershop chorus (Nashua's Granite Statesmen) holds the annual "advance" (we never retreat!) this time of year. I am just coming back energized from the overnight event. Our talented and charismatic director Steve Tramack has been reading "The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life" by Rosamund Stone Zander and Ben Zander, and he was all charged up.

We spent quite some time over the weekend watching their training video (which is actually made for the management training market) & understanding the concepts. Ben is the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, and he uses his conducting experience as a springboard for his coaching practice. His music-related ideas are of course very relevant to our chorus & they are going to help us in our quest for musical excellence.

One very important concept Ben talks about in the book & the video is empowering the performer. In the traditional model, the conductor of an orchestra is the omniscient being who has the masterplan of the symphony in his head, and the musicians in the orchestra are mere pawns, incapable of independent thoughts and contributions. Ben decided to upturn this model and let the players bring their feedback and suggestions to him on a regular basis. He let them "lead from their chairs" and own the music. As a result he found that he was able to create a more enjoyable experience to everybody concerned, from the audience to the players.

The book is also surprisingly relevant to education. I immediately sensed a resonance with our unschooling philosophy in particular. Substitute the word "curriculum" for "masterplan" and you will see what I mean. Many parents and teachers think that they are omniscient beings who have all the answers. After all, what do the children know what's good for them?! Manisha and I on the other hand think that our job is to empower our children so that they can live their lives to the fullest.

I especially like the question Ben poses: How much greatness are we willing to grant [the kids]? That to me is the billion dollar question and needs a great deal of thought...

Delivering Newspaper with the Hintons

We have become friends with Janet and Carlos Hinton, unschoolers who live in Chelmsford just a couple of miles away. For some strange reason their 13- and 11-year old boys (Alex and Antonio) have become buddies with Supriya and Aseem (who are only 6 and 4 after all). They love building stuff together, doing pretend-play, running around and generally hanging out together.

This past Thursday we accompanied them as they went for their newspaper-delivery. It was a hike in the pleasant fall afternoon from about 12:30 to 2, as the kids delivered the Lowell Sun to 41 houses in their neighborhood. Aseem and Supriya loved helping out the older boys. It was especially sweet watching Aseem holding the newspaper "properly" (so that nothing would slip out) and deliver it to the doorsteps. The boys were very gracious & let my kids help out.

At the end Aseem and Supriya got one whole dollar each for their hard work. Supriya was very happy. I don't think Aseem really understood that the piece of paper was actually exchangeable for candy! On the other hand I think the chance to help out & deliver newspaper were their own rewards as far Aseem was concerned. I think Supriya is beginning to get the concept that she too can make money of her own by adding value to somebody's life. A very educational trip overall...

Magnet Pattern Blocks

The magnet pattern blocks are in their jar right by the refrigerator and occasionally the kids (Supriya mainly) will get inspired to make patterns on the fridge. Supriya made these five today starting with the rocketship in the upper-left corner. The next one clockwise is a pattern with no name made by Manisha, followed by Supriya's creations, the King and the Queen (such complexity!). The last one is the Royal Cat...

Doing the Monkey-bars...

I wrote recently about Supriya's great upper-body strength and how she can go on & on on the monkey-bars. Well, we were at the playground yesterday, and I said to her, "Show me how many times you can go around the monkey-bars." The picture gives you a good idea of these monkey-bars. They have 16 bars. Supriya went around the circle 5 and a quarter times -- a total of 84 "steps"! And even then she stopped only because she was bored and not tired.

Waterfall Theme Park

Our friends Karl, Diane and Noah Hanf invited us to go camping at the Crawford Notch Campground (which, incidentally, is run by a homeschooling family) last September. They have found the perfect campsite, right on the Saco River with gorgeous views of the mountains. We had a great time there last year. We have already been there twice this year and there is one more weekend to go again this season.

It's the perfect place to go as families. We adults hung out doing grown-up things like gabbing, cooking and consuming adult beverages, while the kids played by themselves. This year they spent a lot of time playing on the little slope by the riverside. They were busy constructing something that came to be known as the Waterfall Theme Park.


It began as a little hole a few feet up the riverbank that the kids filled up with water and watched it overflow. Then the hole got deeper and got lined by stones to become a "pond". Then a canal got dug for the overflow to flow down through. Then they built a bridge over the canal. The kids spent countless hours working on this co-operative play, all by themselves with no fighting. We got invited several times to see important milestones -- e.g. when you could hear the sound of the waterfall. An unschooler's dream come true!

Building with Legos

I came upstairs with my cup of tea in the morning, and my kids were hard at play. Supriya was busy at work with her Duplo bricks, and Aseem was playing Spy Fox Dry Cereal on the computer (which is a little too hard for him, but he does not give up easily!). Supriya's creation, by the way, is an office building with computers and a car-stand.

I love to see this kind of self-directed play and the utmost seriousness I see on the kids' faces as they engage in it. Indeed, play is one of my topmost values.



Supriya -- and Aseem to a lesser extent -- have been playing a lot with the Duplos of late, so we decided to buy a tub of Lego bricks. We ordered this 50th anniversary limited edition tub with 1000 pieces, and it arrived today. Supriya spent more than an hour playing with it, making various creatures (a dog and a giraffe) and a swimming pool etc. I am looking into getting Supriya involved in the Junior FIRST LEGO League.

Reading Go-Fish Update

Yesterday we picked up that deck of cards after a long hiatus and
started playing. We have not done much reading in the meantime,
and I did not know where she would be. To my pleasant surprise she
had a decent handle on many words, and seems to know many words by
sight. She read "road", "power", "in", "out", "of", "to", "and"
and "up." It is clear that she is at a much higher place
perceptually -- that is, the words are not overwhelming her & she
is not taking random guesses. What's more, she has retained the
concept of alphabetization, which I did not expect.

Reading II

(I wrote this exactly 9 months ago, on 11/23/2004.)

Our friend Marianne Lucas introduced Manisha to "Games for
Reading" by Peggy Kaye. One game in particular caught Manisha's attention. The game is to get the child to write one word a day on an index card. It is important that the word is chosen by the child. Pretty soon the child will develop a whole deck of cards of familiar words that they wrote.

That's not how it worked with Supriya. The first time I introduced
the notion to her, she was thrilled. We wrote one word, and I
expected her to stop. But, no, she was intrigued by the idea and
wanted to keep going. We kept finding words for her, not difficult
at all since we are all inundated by text. She kept writing. By
the end of that "session", she had written more than 10 words.
Many of them were multi-syllabic words, which were to create some
problems for her later on. I also noticed that as she wrote more,
her handwriting became really even and neat.

It would be a nice anecdate if we were to stop here, but Supriya
had the bright idea of playing Go-Fish with there cards. She
wanted to play with cards that she had created. Manisha and I
could see where this was going and we were thrilled. So Supriya studiously copied each one of the words she had already written. By now we were already at 15.

We played Go-Fish a couple of times with this deck. This is where
Supriya started running into the problem of reading the big (and
even some of the not-so-big) words she had written. How do you ask
for a card if you do not know how to read?!

She would pick a card that said "Padki" and I could see the look
of concentration on her face. Pretty soon it would be followed by
the look of puzzlement and then she would just start guessing the
word. "Do you have "POWER"?" she'd ask. "Look at your card again
and try to sound it out," I'd say. She saw the first P and just
take a random guess.

For her next set of additions, I picked some basic words like IN,
OUT, OF, TO. She has a decent picture memory of a few of these and
she was happy to add them to her deck.

By this time we are at 50 cards, 25 pairs, and each game is
lasting more than 20 minutes! Today I introduced her to the idea
of alphabetization. She is getting the idea, although she has to
sing through "A B C D E F G..." to do it. But hey, it's the first
time she is doing it. I am having a great time watching her learn
and grow.

Reading

"Chickens"

Manisha was at the Parlee Farm in Tyngsboro with the kids. For Aseem
the primary attraction was the animals there. The kids spent a lot
of time looking at the animals and feeding them. Manisha gave
Supriya her allowance. Supriya said she wanted to feed the
chickens and headed straight to the feed-bin labeled "Chickens"
(the others being "Bunnies" and "Goats"). Manisha asked her how
she knew that was the right one, and Supriya replied, "That's the
only one that begins with a C."

Boston

Supriya and Manisha were playing with the globe and looking for
where we lived. Manisha pointed to Boston. Supriya located Boston,
and actually sounded out the word.

Supriya is not reading chapter books yet, but she has all the
tools she needs to read. Now we have to wait for her to get
inspired and then she will be reading at full speed before we know
it.

Logical/Mathematical Reasoning

Here's a problem: find the missing number -- (10, 6, 1), (20, 15, 5), (30, ?, 10).

The answer given in the book is 25 (the first term is twice the
difference between the next two). I came up with two answers: 25
and 24. There are (at least) two ways of looking at the series. One
is the relationship within each triad (like the book does). The other is seeing the triads as 3 intertwining series. So you have (10, 20, 30), (6, 15, 24) and (1, 5, 10) -- constant difference for the first two and difference increasing by 1 for the third.

So my next triad will be 40 (30+10), 33 (24+9), 16 (10+6). With
the book's answer there is not enough information to form the
next triad -- except the first term. It could be (40, 35, 15) or
(40, 34, 14) or (40, 33, 13) etc.

I think this gets to the root of the issue: the process of logical/mathematical deduction is more important than getting the right answer. And it takes quite some time to understand how the person deduced that answer. It took Manisha and me several minutes of discussion to get to the core of the problem -- that I was treating them as three different series rather than seeing how the terms were related. I remember having done such series in GRE (she does not).

Note to self: don't jump to conclusions when next time Supriya
says 3 times 8 is 18...

Lighting of Fire

There is a wonderful quote attributed to W. B. Yeats: Education is
not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. That just
about summarizes our views about education and why we have chosen
unschooling for our family.

Actually I'd go one step further and say that our primary
responsibility is to help our kids find their own fires and then
to make sure that adequate fuel & air get supplied to keep that
fire burning. (I am actually paraphrasing something Deb Lewis
wrote in one of the unschooling email lists.)

We have been getting very consistent cues about Supriya's fires
since she was very little. Go anywhere -- from playgrounds to her
gymnastics -- and she would soon be making friends (male and
female, with a distinct bent towards older boys). She is very
friendly and generous. As the pictures show, she is also a talented
athlete/gymnast/acrobat. She has taken to swimming this summer.
In addition, she is a gifted singer, although she is still shy about
performing in public.

Aseem, on the other hand, is highly introverted. You will find him
playing by himself at playgrounds. The computer is his best buddy,
and he really enjoys playing games on the computer. He is also
very friendly once he gets to know you. Aseem enjoys building
train-tracks and helping Manisha & me with kitchen stuff like
peeling cucumbers and cracking eggs. So now our challenge is to
find opportunities for both kids to stoke their respective fires.

Supriya the Gymnast II

One more picture showing off her acrobatics.

Note the camouflage pants (with 6 pockets and detachable legs who can resist them?!) and the incogruous pink rain-boots...

Supriya's Art

In general Supriya's imagination and talent seem to be more along 3-D than 2-D. She enjoys building structures with Lego blocks, working with clay (like the sculpture in this picture) and building sand architecture. At a recent camping trip, she & her friends built a "waterfall theme park"! I hope to post a picture of that soon.

I am getting inspired myself to get back to painting, and that in turn is inspiring Supriya. Here's an abstract piece she created a few days ago with oil pastels.

Supriya the Gymnast

Supriya has high kinesthetic intelligence. She is always on the move, climbing everything in sight. She has tremendous upper-body strength. She can go back and forth on monkey-bars for quite a while. In fact, I have seen maybe one child do what she does over the last couple of years I have been at playgrounds with her.

Here she is doing the monkey-bars. Notice how she skips one bar and grabs the next one.

Welcome!

Our family is officially embarking on our unschooling adventure this Fall. We plan to use this blog to essentially maintain our kids' portfolios online. "We" is Manoj Padki and Manisha Kher and our two awesome, beautiful, cute, 'dorable, energetic, friendly, generous (well, you get the point!) kids, Aseem and Supriya. We live in Lowell, Massachusetts, a city that is known for its support for homeschooling. We are plugged into a supportive and active homeschooling community, and we are excited about this adventure!