little one

Finally on stage

The little one, had figured out that doing any extracurricular activity like music, dance etc. is a lot of hard work and the rewards for going on stage are not proportional to the work. She could throw a tantrum for not being tall enough to get on the Harry Potter ride and get a game console. Compare that to working for a whole year and getting on some annual day program for which you get a new pencil or eraser.. it was no contest!

She pretty much said "No" without a second thought to any classes that invovled the word "practice". 

Recently though, her close friends were all roped in to do a school performance for the International festival. A fun looking Dandiya dance.. so we convinced her to go. In spite of missing many sessions with her flu, she made up for it by doing a nice job of dancing on stage. More than that, we now know the girl has moves. We did not know she could shake her hips like that or have such expressions.. 

Here is a picture taken by her teacher. We are truly blessed to live in a place where an International festival is organized where kids show culture and dancing from across the globe to their classmates. There were Kung fu demos by little kids that were simply amazing, Gangnam style dancing, Japanese dancing, Chinese dance, Persian songs, Bengali poetry.. it was refreshing to see this!

Now that she has been on stage, we told her "You are going to dance class" and before we finished the sentence the answer was "NO!".

USB stands for..

One of the new pre bedtime activities with the kids is "Playing" Snapcircuit!

When we were little, our favorite playing was a "mechano-set", which was a bunch of steel parts with screws, nuts and bolts and we could make mechanical models of automobiles, airplanes etc.

Somehow we never got introduced to the electronics plug and play games. Now that I get to relive my childhood with the girls, this is really fun for me as well as for them.

Trying to teach them I = V/R and forward vs. reverse bias on an LED is fun. They like to do more of the mechanical

follow the book

make the circuit look like the picture

turn on slide switch and see what happens

method while I insisted on making them read the instructions first, then build the circuit and read the explanations for what they just did. After figuring out that they were in a rush to finish "making" all 300 circuits, put the brakes on.

Now the bedtime quiz is not what we call "Tamil Mirugam and Ragam" (the bedtime quiz was a hodgepodge of questions that were either about Tamil-English and vice versa translations, animal trivia or Carnatic Music Raga identification) anymore. Every alternate day is Snapquiz!

Questions are like :

What is S1 and what does it do?

What is an IC?

What is the unit of measuring resistance?

If you increase the resistance in this circuit from 100 Ohms to 1000 Ohms, what happens?

etc.

Both the kids are now very receptive to the Snapquiz and are answering the usual questions very fast. Now the question bank is increasing slowly. 

Recently I asked them "What does USB stand for?" after the little one mentioned that "all power comes from USB's!". Guess she is used to charging all the devices she uses using an USB cable and she thinks the B in USB stands for some battery!

Jr.s' answer? "Use it. Succeed with it. Bring it everywhere!" . While that was the most creative BS way of saying "I don't know!" she did crack me up and got a lot of hugs and kisses for making us laugh.

Then when they heard the correct answer was "Universal Serial Bus" the little one goes "What does USB have to with Cheerios?"..

We have ways to go and there will be many more "snapquizzies" in the days to come to figure out the relationship between Cheerios and USB.

Art Lesson

A conversation at bedtime..

 

Jr. : Daddy I forgot the name of that famous Italian painter..

me : Michaelangelo?

Jr. : No. Not him. The other guy.

me : Da Vinci

Jr. : hmmm .. does he have a longer name?

me : Leonardo Da Vinci

Jr. : Yes. Him. (and goes on to tell me about some painting of his I havent heard of)

Me : do you know one of his most famous paintings?

Little one : Tell me.

Me : Mona Lisa.

Jr. : Is this the one which is a picture of the lady staring at you?

Me : Yes. it is the one where she kind of looks sad and happy at the same time...

LO : Daddy, I know. She is also holding a fruit in her hand.. that one.

Me : (Intrigued by this as the LO is the one that is going to be an artist if ever one came out of this house..) You sure? I have looked at the Mona Lisa so many times, but didnt know she had a fruit in her hand. Always looked at her face and eyes. Will go google it and see if she has a fruit in her hand..

LO : Why do you have to google it? That picture is there on your bedroom wall, isn't it!

Me : (literally rolling on the ground laughing.. seriously I fell off the bed)

That is Raja Ravi Varma's painting called "Lady with Fruit"!

Time to teach the kids some basic "Famous Paintings 101" or take them to the local Museum in SFO!