Water Bottle Flip

Didn't know water bottle flip was a thing. Learned this from Sue's FB post and decided this needs to be recorded here for posterity and for possibly reminding the children of their atrocious act towards the defenceless water bottle. .

Well, this bottle flip is weird and annoying to boot. I feel that somehow, the water inside after suffering several flips must have got spoiled or lost its taste. Weird but the husband agrees to this too. I guess we have become those parents who say - kharab ho jayega to the children for every little thing they do.
Be it door banging, touching the TV remote several, touching the mobile phone, changing the smart charger wires, flipping the switches a little too many times, sleeping on bed covers and not the sheet, dragging their shoes on the ground; the list is endless. I yell, 'don't spoil it' for anything they touch or do which is not ordinarily done by adults.
The children have grown and we have finally learned to invest in our house so the dread of the décor being spoiled rests prime in our minds.
The plastic mineral water bottles is not a new tool to the children. They have been using empty bottles as a bat during travels several years now. Soon they began to cut them out to make highly useless crafts. Then there was a phase in which they poked holes at the bottle cap and used them to sprinkle water on others and in the process spray the home with several droplets making me scream- 'ghar ganda kar rahe ho' in agony and frustration.
The children raid my bag everytime I come home from a flight, in the hope of finding a mini waterbottle to be used for drinking water as they played. I hate them bottles. I believe they are best discarded however the children do not agree to my sentiment.
So when the 'bottle-flip' happened, I gave it the royal ignore. As long as I didn't have to drink the water inside that would have surely separated into million sets of two Hydrogen and one Oxygen molecule at the merciless flipping and thus wasn't fit for drinking.
The flip, is a flick of wrist of semi-filled bottle and with enough practice of the wrist and not the bottle, it lands upright. The flip, is an in thing among children of this age and is accompanied by the most annoying gurgling sound of the water together with the bubbling of the surface.
The flip cannot be ignored because it is in effect, a sport among children of this age group.
The flip, can drive parents to screaming and snatching of the bottle, dumping the water in the nearest potted plant and crushing the bottle mercilessly and dumping in the dustbin.
The fear of the flip may cause a parent to discard the bottle right before entering the house or leaving the airport. A parched throat is preferable to the hideous sound continuous water bottle flip makes.
The lure of flip causes children to drink several gulps of water in an attempt to empty them quickly or too watch the parent gulping the water in glee. Warning- may cause children to snatch water bottles away from the parent even if he or she has not had its full because a certain mean sea level / mean water level needs to be maintained in the bottle.
The love of flip may cause a stash of plastic bottles to get accumulated in hidden spots by the children much to the angst of the parent.

A parent can just wait and watch for the flip to pass.
 

A Million

A few days ago Tejas wanted to know what comes after 1000. So we told him the counts - ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand, 100 thousand, 1 million....
Something that had taken me years to get comfy with. Finally at the age of 25 when I was involved in active projects I could convert millions into lakhs and so on comfortably.
So we told Tejas a million has 6 zeroes.

He has suddenly developed a fascination for the calculator on my mobile-an application with which I am never comfortable and use only under duress. I prefer calculating mentally or on paper than use the calculator on the mobile phone.

Yesterday Tejas asks me- Mamma what is Million plus 100. I gave the answer without thinking and then checked what he was doing. He was doing the arithmetic on the phone calculator. I asked him what is this figure. He says- million. I asked how do you know- because it has 6 zeroes.
I never thought he will remember something that I had told him more than a week ago.

Last heard, he was telling Ojas who had caught on - I told you calculator is very easy.

They are doing various large figure additions and progressively getting fascinated with the figures that turn up after each mathematical operation.

Finally Got the 15 Puzzle

After raising such a halla at not finding the 15 puzzle, I found it at Mera toy shop. The makers are Toysbox from Mumbai and they even have picture puzzles based on this- classified as Mind Puzzle.
Here Tejas solves this with lots of directions from me.

And I am stuck - but I learn today this series is unsolveable.

This is an online version of the game where the levels keep going up.

This one is just like the manual puzzle and it also scrambles and solves itself

An explanation on the way to solve. And another detailed one.

Here is the 8 puzzle solved

Below are some more challenges- I think the second one is unsolveable as per many sites.

Pic courtsey

n-Puzzle

I am looking for the n-puzzle. Pretty please. Someone tell me where I may get them.

This and the alphabet version used to be so popular during my time.

I was addicted to it. Would carry them around with me and would furiously work my fingers to slide them into place. These pieces came with patterns printed backside. And we would religiously solve them. Some were highly insolveable. Wonder if I can solve even the simplest one now.

Wonder if the archives of my home still have them or are they broken long ago or given away?

Singing to the Tune

The kids are yet to get their Shruti Box. I mean it has come to the shop and it just needs to come home. Meanwhile, I got them this cheap keyboard for meddling with.

Well, are they meddling or are they doing a medley who knows but as of now it is a very fun thing for all of them.

Tejas sings as I play

But Ojas wants to play as I sing!

Their current favourite song is yashomati mayia. More so because they visualize themselves as Little Krishna and all. I dread the day they will ask me to sing a Ben 10 song of such type.

Ojas can sing the first 4 lines on his own but the rest, he find them too complicated to remember.

Kaleidoscope Classic

A fun game that involves using 18 pieces of different shapes and sizes to be fit into patterns. I got this game 7 years ago and it has been most sparingly used and all of it in the first year of buying it. The intent has always been there but I dare not take it out in front of the kids. Well, not that I have lost anything. The website has archives of previous puzzles which I can access and solve at leisure. The website access comes with the kit purchased.

Recently I took this game out for the kids to play. Ojas has really taken to it and he has made atleast 2 patterns with minimum help from me.

This is the simplest pattern and I helped him with only 2 pieces.

and here's Tejas mastering Ludo.

Games We are Trying to Play

We got many board games gifted during this birthday.
My first response was "yay! what fun. Now we all can play happily for ever".

The kids were intrigued, eager and what not and were begging to play games like chess and other non understandable games instead of the simple ludo, snake ladder.
Well I complied and notice how the focus shifts to "I". No one else (read The Husband) is really willing to break head over board games.
I would have backed out too but their is a larger plan here. The faster they learn to play, the faster they learn to occupy themselves with the games keeping each other busy.

So here's the status so far.

Tic - Tac - Toe
A nice large board with noughts and crosses in plastic.
They can honestly beat me in the game provided they are using the cross and provided I am being a little dumb. Tejas can play the game for as long as I can ask him to but Ojas plays only until he has conquered it. I find it is quite a simple and easy game to engage kids and it ends fast so no boredom here.
Click here for a mathematical tic tac toe with an extremely dumb computer who doesn't make a line even when the opportunity is presented. and anothe rone in which you can configure the number of squares in the board

Snake & Ladder
They do have some idea of the game- up the ladder, down the snake they keep reciting but they love getting bitten by the snake and climb down the ladder after climbing them. Naturally, we live on ground floor so that is years of training to come down if they ever go climbing up the staircase.
They love to cheat- place the dice in such a way that they can climb the ladder if they so wish.
and sometimes they play with their individual dice- simultaneously, like a race.

Ludo
If they would stop placing the dice on 6, they could atleast play. They are more focused on getting a 6 and taking all the pieces out rather than actually playing. We will get there I am sure.

Chinese Checkers
A friend used to have this wooden board with perforations for pinning the pieces on the board. I used to love that. It was more satisfying to pin the pieces as we jump across rather than the flimsy plastic ones that are provided now. We have just started playing with not much of success. But then, it is only 16 days since we got the board.
Click here for an addictive chinese checker

Chess
This is the most challenging one more because I am quite basic in my understanding of the game.
I found this neat site that explains most of the theory and have good game examples for a person who is looking at just basic understanding.
What I am doing with the kids is explaining what each piece does and how each piece moves. Which are the 4 most important squares - and why they are in the centre- very much like their playground which is in the centre of the building. I have explained that the objective is to reach the other person's house as quickly as possible and if anyone is coming to their house they have to catch them. We have named the pieces and discussed how each piece moves and where each piece sits.
Yesterday we played a game with only pawns and we gained pieces as the pawns reached the other side.
I do not know how much they are going to understand but I am just fuelling the interest that was shown. If necessary coaches can teach but for now, I am not making it regimental.

Scrabble
I love word games. But scrabble is one game I have never played when I was younger. So anyway, I took this lovely scrabble for kids out for inaugaration and I found it had two sides- one with pre made grid and one has to just make the words as per the grid. The reverse side is a normal scrabble. We started fine but as soon as I got up to do something else, the kids had emptied the rack and filled up all the tiles and completed the grid. We turned the board and did the regular scrabble making words with kids selecting the tiles from the rack as per what words they wished to make. Well, House Rules!

The Caterpillar Who Could Not Fly

Since the school is doing animals and insects and creepy crawlies this month, I decided to reinforce what they learn with doing "animal" books and stories at home.
This one I made up as we went when we were eating(not).
The end result was to teach them how caterpillar becomes a butterfly. I also followed it up with this story on kindersite.
So the story goes this way...
A caterpillar was very very hungry so he climbed up on to a tree and sat on a leaf and began nibbling at it. Soon he ate up the part that was joined to the tree and therefore fell off the tree along with the leaf, with a loud thump as he hit the ground (loud!!).

The bird laughed and the butterfly suppressed a giggle. (Don't question the fault in logic- ordinarily the bird would have eaten the caterpillar- Do birds eat caterpillar? Anyway, for the purpose of this story, let us assume the bird was not at all hungry and her birdies had flown the nest so no hungry mouths to feed)
The caterpillar began to sniffle and cry for not being able to fly.
The butterfly felt sorry for the caterpillar and said- if you eat your food and eat all your greens and become healthy, big and strong, you will be able to fly.
Note-at this point I tried to shove food into the kids' mouth so that they can also aspire to fly.
Ojas said I don't want to fly.
Tejas ran around the house flapping his hands saying see I am flying.
To continue, the caterpillar followed the butterfly's advice dilligently and went on eating all the leaves - kutur kutur kutur kutur...
Soon he became big and strong and healthy & fat and after eating so much he felt very very sleepy. So he took out his black blanket called a cocoon and went off to sleep.
After a long while, he woke up and found that someone had torn his blanket. Then he moved his hands to stretch himself and found that his hands had become like wings. Beautiful wings of the colour ...
At this point I asked what colour the wings will be- they answered green and orange- I think because their new umbrellas are green and orange respectively.
So the caterpillar called out to the butterfly and said thanks for asking me to eat. Now I can fly like you.
The butterfly said- not only do you fly like me but you have actually become a very pretty butterfy!

Moral of the story-
1. eat your food if you want to grow strong, healthy and big and be able to fly
2. eat your greens

And oh, after finishing the food, Ojas asks me- yes he had told he does nt want to fly initially-
Mamma.. I am not able to fly. I finished my food na.
Talk about false promises.

Kreeda - Parama Pada Sopanam

We had fun playing the Traditional Style Snake & Ladder gifted by Rohini

A lovely collectible game painted on a thick cloth with metal dice set and wooden "gotis" housed in a cloth pouch, and a printed list of rules which are different from the usual snake & ladder.
Some links on the history of the game

1. history of the numbers

2. Interesting posters from various countries

3. Mathematics of the game- Markov chain

Crinkling, Crunching, Crushing

The other day Kiran was mentioning a few pincer grip activities and I frankly did not give it much thought.
This weekend, as we sat together to do our home work (notice the we- it includes me and sometimes the Dadda). and I always thought we are done with home work- the dreaded monster that is remembered on Sunday afternoons regularly and thereby is solely created to create a sense of doom in our hearts every Sunday afternoon.
Coming back to Ojas & Tejas & their homework, we had some cutting & pasting work to do and while Tejas was very eager to do the cutting himself, Ojas showed no such eagerness. Towards the end, he realized that cutting paper is also a right that can be exercised and therefore he insisted that he should cut the pictures. I noted that he had difficulty in coordinating the scissors.
I immediately recalled Kiran's set of exercises and did the following
1. Paper cutting- Ojas showed initial signs of difficulty but was quite deft later. We also bought a pair each of colourful scissors scissors with good grip in the evening. Reminiscence alert-
when I was in Prep class, the teacher brought many pairs of colourful tiny scissors for class activity. Since there were many pairs, I was hopeful we would get to take them home (I had small desires even then). I never got them scissors and I am still in love with such colourful scissors..End of reminiscence
2. Paper crumpling- I did not know they gave so much satisfaction!
3. Squeeze Balls
4. Coin Sorting- the side effect/ benefit of this sorting and piling exercise is that the kids have taken out their coin boxes / piggy bank that so long were used only as boxes that can be locked & unlocked. They take care to lock their piggy banks in the night before sleeping by the way.

Conquered

The wooden puzzles from Pondicherry that we all love so much...

A 20 piece & 26 piece set of shapes that form these birds...Ojas & Tejas have finally managed to piece them together by themselves. Not an easy cake, I end up frustrated at times and have to refer to the handy pic on my mobile for solving it quickly at crisis occassions.

I love the way they call out the parts as they piece them together- No foot, now tail, now the piece that is similar to the piece on the lion jigsaw and so on...

Flying Colours

Ojas & Tejas have passed their Nursery with flying colors! They are excellent in all respects and need to work on their story telling skills! And the teacher has recommended lot of reinforcement during the vacation on stuff like- follow the path, connect the 2 links, join the dots. So this is what Mamma did with them these holidays-Study of lifecycle- Plant feeds on rain, caterpillar feeds on plant, fish/ chicken feed on caterpillar and Ojas/ Tejas feed on fish/ chicken

And there was this discovery day organised at school to showcase what has been learnt during the year.

Magnetic Board with a Book

Check out phidal site the learning series magnetic board which comes with a book that tells you a tale along with teaching you how to draw step by step. Really helps a mom like me whose drawing skills are the pits.

Infact they have 2 types of board 1 is the type in which the board is made up of tiny dots and the one shown above is like a plastic sheet- this as per me is much more conducive for children.

As you Reap...

So we learnt how to sow seeds in pots.
First take a pot....
Rather, first make a pot...And then we prepare the pot and sow the seeds

Thereafter, the next day, we destroy all but one pots and Mamma carefully places that one away from prying eyes.

Gone are the pipe dreams that the kids would learn to nurture their own plants.

But they did remember the process...which is more important than the results in Management jargon anyway!

Hop Scotch & Five Stones

A few girls in our complex were getting bored... too bored to play, ...I tried to motivate them to play some games out of my childhood...
As kids we never got bored with friends around. We were always at something depending on the season.
More often than not it was Hop scotch. Btw, is this game dead now? Nobody plays it anymore. And we had multiple versions of it, the circle, the 10 section one or a square with 9, 16 etc sections and there was also a single row one. And then we played them in the sand or the cement floor. And we played them in groups of 2 to many and if there was no one else with us, we played alone!
I wonder if I could skip like that anymore. As one finished 1 sequence, they were entitled ownership of a section and the rest were supposed to skip over that without resting their feet on that- Wonder if I can manage that now- something I could do expertly and with a lot of agility!
During the lunch breaks we used to have our fill of the game and if we were "lucky" some of the younger teachers would join us...They must have been in their 20s! Teachers at such young age and we were in complete awe of them!

And what about that engaging game of 5 stones or 4 stones & a marble? We were addicted to it- summer vacation was spent collecting the round-most stones for playing five stones (the flat ones were collected for playing hop scotch or kit kit as we used to call it). The stones were precious- stored safely when the game was not in season. Funny I don't see anyone playing that!

We had this game of taking a wool and making formations out of it - a game played in pairs only. Winter was the season for that - nicking a piece of good knitting wool from our moms and playing it at every available minute!
Why don't kids play these games now?

Are we channeling our child’s creativity?

‘No’, ‘Don’t’, ‘Stop’, ‘Sit quietly’, ‘Out of the way’, ‘Don’t mess’
Familiar words aren’t they? How many times we let kids be just that and not try to make them behave like semi adults? Rarely!! We are either over protective of the kids, our material possessions and our sanity or too tired to clear the mess after them or plain impatient. And the more we try to prevent them from doing something the harder they try to make sure they do the same.
I did exactly like that and one fine day realized that I am transforming more and more into a tyrant mom rather than the cool, hip mom I always intended to be. And I was not helping one bit in maintaining decorum as the double trouble found had their own methods of getting their way. Somewhere down the line, after motherhood, the real me got lost. I was no longer the same "Itchy Aunty" for whom the kids in the complex used to wait so that they could ask silly pun-lined quiz or tell PJs or discuss the curent story book they were reading.

Time to chill!

Principle 1
If you cannot beat them then join them
They love opening the drawers. I emptied the lower drawers and filled them with their toys and locked the others. Win-win situation.
Sometimes they cry when they can’t get things right like buckling/ unbuckling the belt. Lend them a helping hand.
Principle 2
Don’t stop or mollycoddle, attract with distraction
Take out puzzle or a toy and start playing with it as if it is the most interesting thing in the world, preferably turn your back against them. You bet they will sneak up behind you and join the fun
Principle 3
Time Out
No mine is not -stand in the corner. They will probably think it is some other game. Mine is “time to show belly button or chubby cheeks”. They just drop whatever they were doing or whatever tantrum they were throwing and play along.
Principle 4
Out
Put on their shoes and send/ take them out and have a nice time pointing at various stuffs.
Notes for future
Creative Play when they are bored
1. Scrap Book/ Collage making- mess up with pictures, cutting, pasting and cataloging.
2. Greeting Card making- we could even get the good ones scanned and printed
3. Story telling/ writing/ read and explain the story to me- an aunt used to ask my cousin to write his own story and he used to be quite imaginative for his age
4. Play with Clay
5. My favourite- jigsaw puzzles, jumbles, word games, building blocks, 20 questions, dumb charades
6. Drawing, Painting, Coloring book
7. Kinder – Garden- Nurture a plant, even if it’s a money plant in the bottle or a 9 o’clock rose in the pot. The easier the better.
8. Simple tasks- re arrange the cupboard/ book rack/ kitchen shelf in a self planned order- all whites together or all English books together etc. There is something extremely therapeutic about cleaning and re organizing.
9. Count up your collection in the piggy bank, buy something out of it.
10. Go shopping
11. Monopoly
12. Music- sing, play or listen
PS to self-Don’t forget the activities need to include you or hubby or both