Tower power

That’s the science project assigned to Adi by her class teacher. This is her first science experiment. Every week two kids from the class were selected to present their project and this week was Adi’s turn. There was no chance to squeeze our brain as the topic was given and step by step procedure was also explained in the Science textbook. Can it get any better? Though we would have had some fun if there was some thinking and creativity.

With this project all she had to do was to record her observation and execute the experiment in the class.  She bought home the textbook and scoring sheet last weekend and since then our discussion has started on how to present the project. The scoring sheet had categories defined with ratings from 4 to 1 (highest to least). The girl was targeting to get 4 in all categories so worked hard on the presentation.

The project was to explain why water towers are constructed high in cities. How does the height help in flow of water through pipes to homes and businesses?

We bought a big poster board and decided to have sections like question, hypothesis, materials used, method/procedure, results and conclusion. She had to explain the details for each section in writing. I helped her with the outline of the board and sentence formation for each section. Rest all was taken care by her.  It was she who decided to use different color construction paper for each section and to use a white sheet on the construction paper to write the details. We also decided to make a water tower with newspaper and stick it on the board as a model.

That’s the girl at work. She had worked on this poster board for more than 7 hours perfecting every detail.

Poster board – end product. Apologies for the poor quality picture.

It was her idea to cut out the wiggly papers and write title in bubble letters. The sheets are

green – materials used
blue – question
purple – hypothesis
orange – method/procedures
yellow – result
pink (last one) – conclusion.

She first wrote the details in pencil, corrected the mistakes and then traced the words with markers. She even had to redo some of the papers and did them with no fuss.

Next, she had to execute the experiement at class. The execution procedure was to place a baking pan in a flat table, connect a transparent flexible plastic tube to a funnel, request a friend to hold the funnel and tube, pour water through funnel, raise and lower the funnel to show the water flow in the tube. As the funnel is raised higher the water will flow faster and squirt out of the tube into the pan. This explains why water towers are constructed higher. It is to have faster flow of water through the pipes.

I didn’t think much through this and was prepared to just buy all the materials but M came up with this brilliant (!!) idea of using a bottle instead of funnel. That way she can close the cap and handle the bottle with water and tube by herself and it will be less messier also. It becomes simpler, fill the bottle with water, have the tube connected via the bottle cap and just invert the bottle whenever you want the water to flow through the pipe. We loved the idea and that’s what exactly she did. M bought the plastic tube from Home Depot and helped to fix the tube to the bottle cap.

That’s the girl trying out the experiment at home.

We had dry run of the complete presentation at home and she did well. We also gave her idea to involve her classmates in the experiment by inviting them to try it by themselves. They can raise and lower the bottle to see the water flow in the pipe. Looks like she did so and all her classmates volunteered to try their hands.  I think her teacher was impressed with the class participation and guess what’s the score? Adi managed to get 4 for all categories and scored 100.

Scoring sheet:

My contribution was minuscule to this project and all the credit goes to M and Adi for his planning and her execution. If she had used funnel then the execution would have got messier and her classmates would not have tried it as that involves more than one person’s help like one to hold the funnel and tube and another to pour the water et all.

On a different note, she did well on all subjects in review exam.

Kudos to the daddy-daughter duo.. I was happy as I got a topic for the marathon 🙂  Talk about priorities 🙂

 

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Winter Recital – 2012

As a tradition of this blog, posting the two dances that Adi performed at Winter recital on Dec 2012. I just noticed that I didn’t post the videos of 2011. So, here they are

For past years performance please visit 2010 and 2009, 2008, 2007

2012 – class performance – Its the most wonderful time of the year

2012 – dance class performance – nutcracker

2011 – class performance

2011 – dance class performance

Indian school syllabuses

ETA: Just now read LLT’s latest post. What a coincidence.. Sailing in the same boat as her 😦 

I have been analyzing about the school syllabuses followed at India for a while now. No, there is no concrete plan about R2I yet but isn’t it better to analyze ahead.

So far it looks like there are IB, IGCSE, ICSE, CBSE, Matric and state board syllabuses.

I am interested in knowing more about the pros and cons of CBSE vs ICSE vs IGCSE syllabuses.  Below are the details I have collated so far.

CBSE

1. Helps if the child plans to take standardized entrance exams for professional courses at India as the exam patterns are based on CBSE syllabus.
2. Relatively easy.
3. Conceptual learning is not as intensive as other syllabuses.
4. Focus on English is comparatively less.
5. Less expensive
6. More focus on second language (Hindi, French)

ICSE and IGCSE

I couldn’t clearly identify the difference between these syllabuses except that IGCSE follows the curriculum set by Cambridge university at UK – http://www.cie.org.uk/

1.  Internationally recognized. I guess child will be able to pursue under grad outside India without preliminary exams.
2. Relatively tough with more projects and practical/conceptual learning.
3. The curriculum is 1 or 2 grades higher than CBSE. Like whatever an IGCSE child learns in 6th grade will be learned by a CBSE child in 7th or 8th grade.
4. Focus on second language depends on the school.
5. English standard is high.
6. Easier to switch to CBSE later as curriculum is less challenging in CBSE.
7. Expensive.

I am now at an even more confused state with all these analysis.  I understand that its better to consider other factors too like

1. distance of school from home (keep it as minimum as possible)
2. school atmosphere (should be friendly and encouraging to the child)
3. parents vs teachers communication (should not be restricted)

As LLT rightly said “How can I decide about the 10th or 12th grade now when I have no clue about how the primary education is going to be? when I have no clue about what stream the child will develop interest upon?”

Looks like its not very easy to switch schools often at India (owe it to the so called capitation and other non-refundable hefty fees). After all we are not millionaires or billionaires 😦

So, assume you have few schools in your list that you are happy with based on above factors but each of them is following different syllabus. Which syllabus would you choose? Your suggestions please..

Help me to save some hair 😦 😦

Of God, Dory, Trophy, Tree, Ornaments and Honors

Okay this is going to be a picture post of not so related incidents happened in last two months …

God – One weekend evening after we returned home from a Ranganathar temple Adi decided to draw pictures of six God’s of her choice and create her own temple at home. She also packed prasadam (laddu and murukku from the temple) to give us when we visit her temple.  She drew the pictures by looking at them from Internet and had spent more than an hour of dedicated effort on these pictures. The very effort by the little girl made me hunt for laminating options to save the pictures for many many more years.  I analyzed the Laminator machine, self laminating sheets in the market and finally settled on transparent sheet protectors that was cheap and worked well for us. The God’s have now joined others in our pooja room.

That’s the girl in action looking at Kindle and drawing with utmost dedication

Over to the pictures…In this process she also learned what weapon each God holds and what is their vahanam (vehicle)..

Dory – We are the temporary care taker of Dory as our neighbors have gone on vacation. We were thrilled as they trusted us to take care of Dory. We are doing a good job so far changing its water every 5 days and feeding regularly. I spend few minutes every day sitting at the recliner watching Dory. It gives peace..

Trophy – The girl won a participation trophy on a Chess tournament that happened last month. She played three rounds with different kids and won this trophy. We went to the tournament only because her chess master said all participants will get a trophy. Yep we are cheap but the girl desperately wanted a trophy what to do? But, she played pretty well for the first time. Her moves amazed us. She looked very serious and for the whole game she had both her hands on the forehead pretending to think very deep for every move. You see, she was working hard for the trophy 🙂  The tournament was on a Friday evening. As usual, we were late for the tournament (blame it on the detours and traffic) and got lost (in spite of having GPS) while returning. We had to take many local suspicious roads to reach our neighborhood and needless to say it was a scary to ride on those roads at late night.  It was 10:30 pm by the time we reached near our home and luckily most of the Indian restaurants around were open late. So, we stepped into a Hyderabadi restaurant, hogged on the food and reached home past midnight. She will be completing the current chess session by this month and I have left the decision to her about registering for the next session. I am satisfied as she now knows the rules and how to’s of the game.  Its totally up to her to take it further.

Tree – Our tree is up for this year. The father and daughter duo set it up during Thanksgiving holidays. The girl has written her letter to Santa and has changed her preference for few gifts in the list. As I told her that it is not necessary for Santa to gift all that she wants and he might choose to gift only 1 or 2 (you see our pockets are very tight) as he has to make gifts for the kids all around the world, she has now modified the letter to mention her preference 🙂 The other day she saw the picture of one of her wish list item in her father’s phone and showed it to me secretly.  As of now, only I know what she wants but how come her father had a picture of that item?  Her suspect is growing day by day and M is only generously feeding her doubts. Sigghhhh !!!!!

Ornaments – We attended a holiday party at a camp Adi attended last summer. They let the kids make different types of ornaments, holiday cards and then there was a sing-along session. It was total fun singing holiday songs with the group.  On crafting, Adi choose the one that needed more patience and focus. See for yourself.. I made two bracelets. You see the one in her hand? I made that for her.

Honor roll – She managed to secure first honors roll for first quarter in 3rd grade. She is doing pretty well in 3rd grade. I am more than pleased with the way she is progressing in her academics. I only wish and hope as a mother that she keeps up with this in the coming years.

Did I say picture post???

Third grade updates

Yep you read the title correct. Adi has skipped a grade and moved on to third grade this year. It all happened before I could wink my eyes. We have plans to R2I soon. Soon could be anywhere from six months to one and a half year. So, when I was enquiring about age vs grade terms at India I heard from multiple sources that Adi has a possibility to do third grade for her age so we thought why not give it a try if she can handle it.

The preparations started during early summer holidays. I spoke with some of her school parents to collect the syllabus for second grade, taught them to Adi, made her do the Brain quest second grade workbook,evaluated her confidence with second grade stuffs, convinced myself that she is comfortable with second grade syllabus and then decided to go ahead with third grade. We didn’t tell her anything until her school principal agreed for the move. When I approached them, her principal agreed with no issues as Adi was a consistent first honor roll student in first grade. Thanks to them.

It has been more than a month in third grade now and the girl is doing just great. Her daily work for home gets posted in school site in the morning every day. That helps me to plan ahead and we spend from 30 mins to one hour in the evening (Monday to Thursday) together to do and review those work. As per her school’s policy parents have to sign the homework. Her evening routine goes like this. After reaching home, get refreshed, watch 30 mins of TV with snacks/milk, do homework, eat dinner, play with appa (only if she is lucky and there is more time), brush, read and go to sleep. She understands the importance of academics and doesn’t expect me to be at the back of her for the homework time as it was till last year. Once, TV time is over, she comes to me with her book bag and laptop. I have added a bookmark for her homework site in our laptop. We sit together, she opens the browser, navigates to the site, reads the work one by one and does them. I just sit next to her with my own work to assist her in case of any doubts. Once she is done, I will review the work and sign it. At least I am happy she understands that amma is not against her playing and that she gets lot of free time if she finishes her work on time. I have rewarded her enough to make her realize this. Sometimes I let her plan the evening. Like, if she really wants to play then I let her play, she fixes the time and gets back to her work on time. Sometimes when I ask her to take it easy she replies with a serious look “Ammaaa are you kidding me? I had to make up for one whole year”..  I am not worrying much as long as she is aware of her responsibilities.  She has to deal with her teacher if she has not done her work and she understands this quite well. Her maturity amazes me at times. So, over all its going fine so far. Touch wood…

She has got four big text books this year for Reading, Math, Science and Social studies. Her teacher sent them home to cover and this girl understood it as “cover”. That she has to finish reading the whole book and drove us crazy over the weekend. She took a bottle of water, went into her room, closed the door, asked us not to disturb and read all the stories in English text book at one stretch. No one was ready to listen to me that by “cover” her teacher would have meant “wrapping”. This girl created such a ruckus that Amma was in tears to see her grand kid like this and gave me ear full. She was repeatedly telling Amma like “Ammachi I have to finish all these four books in this weekend”. You should have seen the drama between the two. My god. I right away emailed her teacher, confirmed that she meant wrapping and restored peace at home. Again, I spoke with her teacher in front of her as first thing on Monday morning and sorted it out. This girl I say…

Regarding after care classes we have registered her in art/dance/music along with chess this year. So, she gets to attend one class every day during the three hours (3-6pm) spent at after care. She is happy about this setup as she gets to meet her second grade friends at these classes and also gets time to play with them during after care.

We attended “back to school” night last month and her class teacher is very friendly. She explained to parents as what to expect this year and we got a glimpse of the class.

Leaving you all with some pictures and Adi’s classic

A day before school reopened I told Adi “Pappa you have to do good this year. I know its going to be tough but we will deal with it together. You should give your best. See only because you did good last year the principal had agreed to move you to third grade”. talk about positive vibes and all that. Little did I realize that I will burn myself. She thought for a while and said “Okay amma I will do my best but just because I am doing well you should not make me skip fourth grade and put me to fifth grade okay?”. Now, who would have thought like this? I promised her that this was only to keep her in par with Indian standards and we will never go through this again. My heart sinked and I was in total dilemma all though September but not anymore. She has got settled and doing quiet good as I expected.. Hope she will be soon ready to handle the Indian syllabus which I heard is quiet high in standards compared to the syllabus here.. Touchwood touchwood…

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Inspiring – We are one

ETA: This is my 250th post. Just noticed after publishing. An Apt one to make it for 250 🙂

The girl has been practicing this song for the past few weeks with sign language.  The first graders are singing this song today for eighth graders at their graduation. Every time she sings this song I feel good especially when she holds her hands together and say “We are one”. The lyrics are too good that made me share it here.

By the way the dad/daughter duo have now moved on to be Simba/Kiara from Mufasa/Simba. I didn’t blame them until the dad said I am the hyena 😦  why me?

Highlighted the lyrics that touched me (I ended up highlighting all the lines so took off the highlight).

As you go through life you’ll see
There is so much that we
Don’t understand

And the only thing we know
Is things don’t always go
The way we planned

But you’ll see every day
That we’ll never turn away
When it seems all your dreams come undone

We will stand by your side
Filled with hope and filled with pride
We are more than we are
We are one

If there’s so much I must be
Can I still just be me
The way I am?

Can I trust in my own heart
Or am I just one part
Of some big plan?

Even those who are gone
Are with us as we go on
Your journey has only begun

Tears of pain, tears of joy
One thing nothing can destroy
Is our pride, deep inside
We are one

We are one, you and I
We are like the earth and sky
One family under the sun

All the wisdom to lead
All the courage that you need
You will find when you see
We are one

The kids are watching this movie (The Lion King 2) on Friday with Popcorn and that marks the end of this academic year at school. She is set free for next 3 months 🙂 🙂

School updates and a rant

Keeping up with the tradition the girl received the “Most caring/loving award” this year too 🙂

Read the 2011 story here. Its no way different this year.  She is still the girl who throws all sorts of tantrum at home, refuses to cleanup but gets the most caring, loving, best helper, cleaner, scrubber and what not award from school. I go back to square one with the same question again “Is it normal for kids to behave this way?” though this time after lot of thinking especially after my recent posts I confess that at my childhood days I was almost like her throwing all the tantrums to amma where as trying to be in good books of every other possible outsider.  So, I don’t blame her. The genes are playing at full swing.  But, I blame myself for a different reason.

She was awarded this certificate at school assembly on Friday along with the First Honors award she received for academics.  Did I tell you guys? She scored A+ grade in English and A grade in all other subjects for this quarter so she was eligible for First Honors. We received the report card few weeks back and were informed that the award will be distributed on last Friday at third grade assembly.  As any other proud parents we attended the assembly to see the girl receiving award and took some pictures and I left to work right after her class has been awarded. Blame it on my meeting that was later postponed to today 😦  Adi had received the Student of the Month award after we left. The first thing she asked when I picked her up in the evening was “Mommy why didn’t you stay back? why did you leave in the middle? You know I got another award today. I was looking around for you guys when I got the award”.  I felt terribly bad and cursed myself enough. The very thought of her searching around for us in the crowd while receiving the award added more fuel to the fire.  I slapped myself in front of her and ranted enough that at one stage she started consoling me.  I told her that I am not going to have my dinner as a punishment and she was very sweet to say “No amma. don’t do that other wise you will feel very hungry. You just skip the evening snack okay?” 😀

She declared Friday as her lucky day as she got two awards, her name was selected in the lucky draw that happens at her class every Friday (the one in which she was expecting her name to be drawn for past few months) and had an impromptu play date with her swimming mate. Separate post to follow on the play date.

Over weekend we made her first formal project requested by school. A poster about Augusta Savage.  In order to honor the African American history month each kid at Adi’s class was assigned and asked to make a poster of an African-American woman who had struggled and excelled in their career.  We googled researched about Augusta Savage and made this poster over the weekend. For the records I drew lines in poster for Adi to write neatly.  She wrote the letters with pencil and then traced it with black pen. Still we scraped the first poster as she didn’t leave enough space between words and made few spelling mistakes (though she copied the sentences from my rough work). We bought the poster sheets on Saturday. Started the project on Saturday evening and finished on Sunday evening with all shouting and whining. I mean she whines that her hands are paining and asks for a minimum half hour break for every two lines.  How am I expected to react? I succumbed/screamed/lectured depending on my state of mind.  Thinking about it now I HATE myself for all that shouting and the recent post by SnS filled me with more guilt.  This is not to offend you SnS. I definitely need some clarity in this topic and totally appreciate the effort you have taken to address it so well in your post.

SnS – I can’t agree more with your point and would love to implement it but how is the million dollar question as one size doesn’t fit for all. Doesn’t our reaction depends on the opposite party’s action or the history we hold with that person. No one would like to shout at first sight or rather at first incident. I believe that shouting happens only when you get frustrated and give up on the other person though I totally agree that this is not the right solution. Shouting happens when you feel helpless. Shouting happens when you feel trapped. This is just my two cents based on my personal experience. I am basically not that shouting type but sometimes I feel that I am forced to raise my voice otherwise I have he fear of not being heard. I am clueless on how to handle these situations. I don’t mean to hurt you or anyone else here. Hope you understand.

Alright where was I oh yeah the poster, it is done and ready to go to School this Wednesday.

 

Another interesting thing I did this weekend is to revisit the photo collections. Adi’s class teacher had asked for 6 to 7 pictures of her milestones to create timeline.  After a long time I browsed all the pictures from the day she landed on this earth to till day to gather those 6 to 7 pictures. It took almost two hours but was totally worth it.  Her first day, first walk, first tonsure, first bike, first day of school, first snow, Adi in pattu pavadai (silk skirt), in halloween costume, birthday snaps of every year.. A trip down the memory lane filled with mixed feeling and emotions especially when I saw my mama (amma’s brother who passed away few years back when I was at US)  on one of the picture…

 

 

Winter show and treat

I know I am late but need to record this in this space as a tradition.

2009 & before 

2010

Adi’s Winter recital happened on Dec 6th and the girl was rocking on the stage as usual. She was part of two performances and at the end her classmate’s dad came to us and said “you guys have a dancer in your family” 🙂 🙂 Well I wanted to shout as my gene, my gene.. For those who are not aware I have learned Bharathanatyam for few years, did my Salangai poojai at Music academy, Mylapore when I was at my first job with few more kids (yes that’s the crazy part of me.. Imagine a working girl dancing with fellow 2nd,3rd,4th grader on stage).  Given a chance I will go back to my dance lessons anytime.. I lovvvee them.. So do you agree its my gene? 😉

Dance class performance

First grade class performance

For the records Adi still believes Santa. We convinced her that Santa used the same gift wrapper as we have at home just to confuse her. She was convinced more by the note left by Santa. He wrote that all in cursive and she strongly believes that we both don’t know to write in cursive. Reading the note she said “Now I know that its really Santa who gave these gifts because you guys cannot write like this”.. Whatever my trick worked ;).. Couple of times I told her “You see that’s why I bought you this gift and when I bit my tongue for saying it loud she innocently corrected me saying amma its not you its Santa who gave me the gifts” and I hurriedly replied with a big “yes, yes” nod. I must confess that I have a bigmouth.

She also asked Amma why didn’t you get any gift from Santa? Are you on his naughty list? What to say 😦

We visited Pittsburgh perumal temple during the long New Year weekend.  It was 7 hours drive from home and we stayed at Pittsburgh for 2 days and did local sight seeing. The trip was great and adventurous with some unexpected pleasant and unpleasant twists and turns. Details coming up in next post..

And for the virtual treat here is a double layered strawberry flavored cake which I baked for Christmas.. Please to enjoy this until we meet in person for the bigger treat.

I assume this was the bite taken by you all 😀 😀 😀

Updates updates updates

Update 1 – Last Friday the assembly at Adi’s school was conducted by first graders. The assembly theme will be in line with school’s theme for that academic year.  This year theme is “Made in America”. The kids from first grade sang/danced for few songs and performed sign language for a song. Girls were asked to wear red dress for the occasion. Though I had a simple backup red dress my hunt for a better dress didn’t stop until we found a beautiful one just two days before the show. Needless to say the kids performed amazingly excellent 🙂

The show was from 1:30pm to 2:30pm. I took permission from work and reached her school early and spent some time at her class with all kids. I read the book “How Ganesh got his elephant head?” to them and there was so many questions about the story. I politely skipped most of the questions.. What can I do? I was helpless with questions like Is this a real story? Why did God take off the little boy’s head? Isn’t he supposed to save us? Does Shiva have the serpents on his neck even while sleeping? Why does Brahma alone has four heads?

do you pity me now? 😦

Update 2 – Adi had started semi-private swimming lessons from last week. She and a boy of her age are having the classes with an instructor.  The first session went on for one hour and she learned blowing bubbles and breathing techniques that she is lagging. The instructor was awesome. He taught this technique using a game by name “Submarine”.. That is to see whose head stays inside water for longer time.. Adi is improving but just that one class was enough for me to realize that private lessons are way better than group lessons in terms of learning.. I will post the progress after few months.

Update 3 – Last week we had report card night for first quarter. She got the lowest grade in Math. I couldn’t believe my eyes.. A product of two Math majors (Is this why they say “vaathiyaar pillai makku?” (Eng: Teacher’s kid will be brainless).  To be honest both of us were a little upset but we didn’t show it to her. The feedback from her teacher on Math is that she has a race with one more kid to finish first and in that hurry she misses to read last line of the question or misunderstands the question…   Its not that she doesn’t know its the concentration and review that is lagging. May be over confidence too… that “I know I know I know” attitude :(.. I spoke with her gently about this and she agreed to improve in next quarter. All that I told her was “Its okay if you don’t know but please don’t mess up with what you know”… What can you say when a girl who can do 54+15 with ease messes up with “5+ 3 as 7” and justifies that she thought it is 5+2…

Overall feedback was the same as K-grade. It says “She is an excellent kid but her social nature is challenging her ability to finish her own task” that means “She is off to help her friends in need to finish their task before she is done with her own task”.. Enough ranted about the report card. Let’s see the progress in next quarter.

Update 4 – She gave her carnatic vocal debut performance in an event named “Diwaleen” (Diwali+Halloween) organized by an arts company at our county. It was a super duper hit and she did an excellent job. For the past one month we have been practicing every day at home like waking up for “Shyamalae meenakshi” and going to bed with “Vara shiva baalam”.. Practice definitely makes miracle. She sounded so confident while performing at the show.

Here is the audio version

Shyamalae Meenakshi

 

Vara shiva balam

And this was her costume for the event with rainbow pattu pavadai  🙂

Update 5 – She had thanksgiving multicultural feast at school today. Her school is closing on Wednesday afternoon for thanksgiving this week. So this is going to be a long long weekend for her. I made the easy peasy coconut burfi and diamond biscuits for the feast. It didn’t turn out so well. I spent more time in adjusting the dough for biscuits and yesterday turned out to be a tedious day. For records we ate lunch at 4pm. Whatever I contributed something for the feast and few kids tasted it. That’s it.

Phewwww it looks like am done with the updates for the whole year..

Farm Visit

2010 visit is here

This time mommy took a day off and volunteered be a chaperone so she gets to do a picture post :). Needless to say Adi was super excited about me joining her for the trip. A week before the trip the first thing she asked me every evening was “Amma did you check with your manager about leave? What did he say? “.  Though her teacher introduced me as “Mrs.Ani” to the kids most of the time they called me as “Adi’s mom”. You should have seen this girl’s face when they called me as “Adi’s mom” for help. It was full of pride 🙂  I had eight kids to take care of and every other minute it was like “she pushed me, he pinched me, she is not leaving way, he is taking my stuff, I need to pee, I need snacks..” I was about to do a “sashtang namaskaram” (falling on feet) to their teacher. Hats off to her for handling them with so much patience.

We left the school around 9am and it was an hour and a half drive to the farm. Adi sat next to me holding my hands tight 🙂

Virtual farm trip begins

Getting on to the bus

Corn fields on the way

First thing first – So right after reaching the farm we had lunch at picnic area that had some wooden tables. (it was brown bag lunch packed from home).

Followed by pee time. Unfortunately there were only few portable toilets and the line was long.

Farm without farm animals? No way.. So we saw Goats, Lambs, Chickens, Donkeys, Horses, Cows (What you see them on road sides at India? We had to travel more than a hour to see them 😦 ) and I felt pity on seeing the kids getting too much excited for a Lamb or Goat.

On the way to apple picking

apples here , apples there, apples apples every where

Adi – busy picking the right apple for daddy

On the way back from apple picking. The kids were grouped into two and it was heart warming to see them holding on to their partner’s hand all through day.

Next was hay ride to visit the other side of the farm for potato picking and pumpkin picking.

Potato picking

Dig dig dig to get fresh potatoes.

Pumpkin picking

Greedy Adi but later she picked one that can fit her size.. Almost all the kids did the same 🙂

 

 

Strawberries (Unfortunately there were no berries. The season is over 😦 )

Brocolli

Migrating brids

and finally back to bus with hefty bags (every person carrying a bag full of apples, bag full of potatoes and a pumpkin)

The End (Hope you are liked the virtual farm trip) 🙂

P.S: For the records potatoes were roasted for dinner on the same day, apples were eaten raw and they tasted so good, pumpkins are waiting in the corner to get transformed into jack o lanterns.