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..
Between my littles and me 