Easter Bonnet

We were not aware of Easter Bonnet until we were asked by Anirud's school to get one ready for today. Today is the last day of the term, before the school breaks for Easter and they wanted every kid to be with a bonnet today. As it is, Easter Bonnet is nothing but a decorated hat, traditionally worn by women during Easter time.

Anirud's mom put up lot of effort in getting the hat decorated, while I contributed to the activity by supervising her. The result of 40 minute work was a nicely decorated, but girlish looking bonnet. As we were quite new to this concept and also since Google Images returned few pictures of boys wearing such bonnets, we excused ourselves for the girlishness bit. What mattered in the end is, Anirud liked it every bit and much to our relief, we saw few other boys at school having such bonnets.

Tennis

We enrolled Anirud for Tennis lessons at a local club. The lessons will be with a group of children of his age and that will be for about 30 minutes every week. It is not our intention to make him a Federer or Nadal (we certainly don't mind if he becomes one eventually ;-)), but our idea is to pull him out of the couch and make him get some exercise. One of the first lessons for this couch potato is to place the ball on the racquet and walk a certain distance balancing the racquet. He did pretty well on that, much to our surprise and that of the coach. So far, he has been there for 2 weeks and he seems to like it. If he continues to like it, we might think about increasing the frequency of lessons and see how he does.

Statue of Liberty

There stands the Statue of Liberty.

It was entirely Anirud's idea. He took few sheets of paper, stood on a stool with his hands raised and claimed himself to be the 'Statue of Liberty'.

Parents Day @ School

Every school term, Anirud's school organises a day where the parents can go in and have a look at what their wards are up to. As it is a school based on montessori way of teaching, on a typical day children are mostly on their own exploring with various stuff in the school (there are loads of things for them to look/feel and learn) while the teachers (directress, as they are called) gently guide them appropriately.

On the day when parents where invited, children were asked to show their parents what they normally do. Although his initial reaction to my presence inside the school was like 'what the heck are you doing at my place', he got over it and took me around to various tables and started to explain things with lot of pride. He struggled hard when trying to get the torch bulb glow by connecting the wires to the battery and eventually succeeded. As he normally likes any role play, he was more than happy to be a vet in the Vet's corner. He was very excited to show me so many things around that the way he moved around the place had an air of 'this is my place and I know what I am doing' kind of attitude.

I also got a chance to have a detailed chat with his key worker away from his earshot and was pleased to hear that he was doing well. She reported that everything is fine with him and also that he is good in 'trying' out things, rather than sit laid back. He seems to come out as a bright kid in generaland it was an interesting observation that he likes activities where he gets to use his hands a lot more (example - playing with a play dough etc). She did mention about the way he adores two other teachers - Miss Fiona and Miss Lucy, whose names we hear a lot when Anirud talks.

One little concern that came out was the way in which Anirud approaches other children. More often than not, when he wants to join other children in some activity, it seems that he just barges in taking them for granted. The other children, who are also 3 or 4 year olds doesn't seem to like that. All he needs to do is to learn the art of 'asking', which I am sure he will pick up gradually.

In all, the visit to the school gave us a feel good factor about what and how Anirud is doing away from home and we also had few action items on us as well.

Theory

Q: Anjaneyar with his tail on fire jumps in to the flowing river. What will happen now?

A: The river will have hot water.

Take a Guess

Before reading any further, take a look at this picture and try to guess what it is.

Anirud 'drew/painted' this and claims this blue-green mess to be an ambulance. Irrespective of whenever or however you ask him, his answer has been consistent. Also, he went over board by proudly displaying his work of art and asking his mom to point at the doors of the ambulance. Unable to bear that annoyance, she put her hand somewhere on the picture and said that this is where the door is. We are not sure if Anirud considers himself as an expert of art or an expert in ambulances, but it was certain that he didn't think of us as any of the above. Pointing at various parts of the supposed picture, he started explaining like 'This is door mummy. See, this is a wheel. This is the siren.....'. Ugh! We gave up. :)