Lush Life

I was mentally revisiting all the stuff on this blog that I have written about. I was struck by what a rich life Supriya and Aseem are living: hiking, roller-skating, swimming, riding bicycles, drawing pictures, playing with friends, reading, singing, gymnastics, watching documentaries and other movies, knitting, sledding - the list goes on and on.

Manisha and I grew up in India and we had generally good memories of our respective childhoods. We played with our neighborhood friends a lot, and we were outdoors a lot. But we had a small fraction of the material abundance these kids have and probably even less in terms of mental or cultural abundance. There was no TV. The world was limited to our local neighborhood. In contrast, Supriya and Aseem are citizens of the world. They live in the richest and most open country in the world. More importantly, they are living in the 21st century. They are aware of so much more than we were at that age. It's a lush life indeed. With all these glorious possibilities available to them, this is also probably the best time to be an unschooler!

Fawn Lake Hike

Karl, Sadie and I, with the 7 kids in tow, went on a hike around Fawn Lake today after the Fabulously Fun Friday at the Bedford Library. I have a picture from a year ago of a whole bunch of kids on this exact same log and even the kids remembered that! It was a sunny but cold & windy day. The adults and the older kids had a great time; the littler ones not so much due to the cold. Spring is definitely in the air, with many more hikes to come... 

Spy Kids

Supriya has watched all three movies in the Spy Kids series over the last month or so. She loves the movies and all the action - not to mention all the silly jokes. The movies are about a sister-and-brother pair who save their spy-parents in the first movie and become enlisted agents themselves in the next two movies. I can literally see her feel powerful herself as she watches these two kids & their gadgets. I can definitely relate to it. I have enjoyed many action-hero movies - from James Bond to Bruce Lee to Amitabh Bachchan to The Matrix. I remember that visceral feeling of power as I left the movie-theater! I wrote a while back about the book "Killing Monsters", and I am seeing how it really works right before my eyes.

Roller-skating

We have added one more activity to our routine - roller-skating, or rollerblading to be precise. This is a alternate weekly Christian skating event in Leominster. All that means is that there is loud Christian music playing in the background. I've been there twice and I have yet to make out the words to most of the songs, except for the occasional "Jesus". Supriya is doing just fine, 'blading along at a good clip and even gliding well. I have brought out my 10+ year-old rollerblades ("Made in the USA", no less!) and am re-discovering the joys of moving around on tiny wheels. I fell once this Tuesday, my first fall ever, which made me realize that I need to get wrist-guards and elbow-pads.

What we really like, however, is that Aseem is having a good time skating. He wears the skating attachment that goes over his sneakers and skates holding hands with someone older. It was me the first week and his special buddy Alex this week. He is getting the hang of it. He is quite kinesthetic in his own way, and Manisha and I are glad to see him enjoy skating.

This week the place was mobbed. So now there is a move afoot to add non-religious skating on the off-Tuesdays. Many of our friends appear to be interested in going on a regular basis, which adds the social angle to the event. We are definitely going.

Manisha Adds

Manisha adds this to the previous post:

I've nothing to add, but a little tidbit from yesterday. I read the alligator book [from the Nature's Children series] to her. Somewhere in the first few pages is a picture of alligator with mouth open. She wanted to know if an alligator loses teeth and gets new ones throughout it's life like a shark does. We found the answer at almost the end of the book - yes it does. I'm amazed by the bits of information stored in her mind.

Supriya and Documentaries

Supriya likes watching documentaries of all kinds. She loves the "Reading Rainbow" videos which we get from the library. She loved the three musical biopics we got from Netflix - De-lovely about Cole Porter, The Jolson Story about Al Jolson and Yankee Doodle Dandy about George M. Cohan. Then there was the Elvis video we had borrowed from the library. She watched all of these over and over, soaking it all in.

We have watched several "science" documentaries recently, from the Genographic project to the Blue Planet DVDs. Our latest discovery is that our digital set-top box downstairs gets the Science Channel. So today we watched the first part of Carl Sagan's Cosmos. A lot of the material is beyond her current abilities, but she was getting the story (I think).

There is something about the documentary format that grabs Supriya. They present information in a story form. They give great visual context to the information and they don't take anything for granted. All of these shows were very well-produced and they made the material very interesting and accessible. And that accessibility is the key point in this context. Supriya has learned and retained a lot from them - all out of her own interest. The documentary format really works for her. I guess we will be getting more of them from Netflix and the library.

Counter Added

I added a SiteMeter counter to this blog over the weekend. It's very easy to do. I am very pleasantly surprised by the amount of traffic here. I expected barely one visitor per day. I am actually getting 10 times that. Makes me feel responsible to my loyal readers!

Our First Tick of the Season

We went for a hike - the first of the season! - near Noah's house last Friday. It was a great day, sunny and warm. I guess it was a little too warm because last night Manisha discovered a tick in Aseem's hair (and I can't think of any other place he could have gotten it from). I pulled it out alive & kicking. (Here it is next to a dime.) It did not look like it had sucked a lot of blood, although there was a bit of swelling in Aseem's scalp. 

A Monster by Aseem

Aseem drew this a couple of days ago. It's just about perfect - bold colors, strong lines, balanced composition. I love it.

More Art from Supriya

When Supriya produces a piece of art that is very good, I say to her, "That's great; I'll put it up on the blog!" So she was doing some art with oil-pastels yesterday and asked me if I will put those pieces up on the blog. I clarified to her that I will put up all exceptional pieces that she creates. She understood. This one certainly qualifies. 

"The Blue Planet"

Supriya and I just got done watching one DVD in "The Blue Planet" series (produced by the BBC and narrated by David Attenborough). It had two episodes, "The Seasonal Seas" and "The Coral Seas", totalling more than an hour and a half. We sat there riveted through all of that. The DVD is very well-produced and has spectacular visuals. Definitely recommended. Now I must get the rest of the series also.

Apparently Supriya knows a lot about marine life, from documentaries, visits to the aquarium and even "Postcards from Buster". She has soaked up a lot of info. Now she wants to go and visit a coral reef!

Learning Mandarin

I have always toyed with the idea of getting to know Mandarin because of its exoticity. Today I came across a 2-tape set of beginning Mandarin at the Bedford library and I went for it. The tonal nature of the language is very intriguing. Although I had no trouble imitating the shorter words, the longer words were a real stretch. Supriya was in the back-seat of the van eating her sandwich. She was very amused, both by the funny sounds of the language and by my attempts at imitating them. She also tried imitating some of the sounds. I don't know how far this will go, but it's going to be a lot of fun while it lasts!

More Reading

Between last night and today, Supriya read "All By Myself" by Mercer Meyer (one of our all-time favorites in kids' books), you guessed it, all by herself. It's a very short book, and she was able to read most of the words, sound out some and decode the rest by the context. Now she is beginning to think of herself as a reader.

"Homeschool Radio Shows"

This is an interesting website. We have signed up for their "Living Book for the Ears" program. They send out mp3s of stories every week. Supriya just listened to "Toby Tyler, Or Ten Weeks With the Circus" (about a boy who runs away with the circus, set at the turn of the 19th century; almost 30 minutes) on the computer and enjoyed it.

Supriya's Early Birthday Present

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago and never got the chance to post it:

Supriya has been drumming quite well in the van, and so we decided to get her a drumset for her upcoming birthday. I was visiting the Guitar Center (which sells all kinds of musical instruments, not just guitars) with the kids, and the kids spent quite a while playing on the drumsets there. They happened to be liquidating their inventory of their store-brand starter drumsets. So Manisha and I decided to buy it for Supriya as an early present. I assembled it last night in between watching the Winter Olympics. Today both the kids were banging away on it in the morning.

Both Supriya and I are having fun drumming. It's a very primitive sensory pleasure and I am loving it.

Aseem's Drawing

Aseem's creativity has taken a quantum leap in the last ten or so days. From completely random squiggles he has gone to drawing characters. They all are the cartoon stick-figures as in the first picture (which is a chick inside a shell). Each "person" (such as a pig or a baby or daddy) starts with a circle for a head, two big eyes, two sideways arms, and two legs.
The last couple of days he has been adding hair. Here's his "portrait" of me. I don't know where the blond hair comes from, but I am really proud of what he has accomplished in the past two weeks!

Aseem started drawing this third picture with the big circle. I asked him what it was and he replied that it was a swimming pool. He proceeded to "add" water to the pool and then added the two multi-colored chicks who were going to swim in that pool. I love watching his imagination develop. It is such a privilege to be able to watch this whole process unfold.

In typical Aseem fashion he has gone from 0 to 60 in 6 seconds - after being stuck at zero for what seemed like an eternity. It's a real pleasure to watch him blossom like this.

Spring is Here!

Or so it felt in the afternoon. It was a balmy 40 degrees today. The kids and I decided to go out in the backyard and Supriya asked me to bring out the bicycles. She has grown taller in the last 5 months and now the bicycle is just the right size for her. With those couple of inches added to her height, she can get on and off as well. She went round and round on her bike in our tiny little backyard. She used both brakes, the backward-pedal and the hand-brake.

In the meantime Aseem was going round and round in smaller circles as well on his little bicycle with training wheels. He has grown in ability as well and can now steer and pedal at the same time! They spent a good twenty minutes on the bikes. I am sure they will be biking a lot more as the weather warms up.