On Traditions by IBH

(This is a guest post by IBH for Traditions– the theme for October)

I come from a family that is abounded with traditions and more traditions. With the festive season on, I would like to contribute my first ever post for DMC or for any group blogs.

*Every navaratri our Golu bommai display has had varied themes. Dad’s hobby of collecting bommais in his every business trips helped us in great deal with different themes. I should say, Appa takes keen interest in our golu arrangements.Appa comes up with the theme for that year and then start collecting the bommais accordingly. In the previous night of the day of arranging bommais, appa and amma takes out the bommai and start arranging according to the theme of the year. Of course, our usual bommais that are meant to be kept with the kalasam (pot with coconut) are arranged meticulously. The fun part though is the arranging of parks, waterfalls, groves (mango, coconut oh what not!) and such.Appa will make sure that it looks so real that our golu used to be the star attraction in our street.

* Tradition of not bursting crackers has been our tradition for so long that we have actually forgotten when we last burst crackers’, the reason being child labor and such .(I know there is always two types of argument to it but we stand by our tradition and its reasons)

*The tradition of wishing each other at 12 AM sharp for all functions, festivals, birthdays, anniversiaries and every occasion that calls for wishing each other. It continues till date and we have been wishing each other even when we live in different time zones and different spheres of earth.

*We always make maa-kolam for every function held at our place. My mom rocks at it and she creates the best maa-kolam ever.

*The best thing from my childhood that am missing right now is ‘Nila choru’ wherein all we cousins used to meet up at our grand father’s agraharam house and enjoy moonlit night dinner on the terrace. Our cook, Venkubhai paati used to make this scrumptious dinner of simple, vatha kuzhambu, rasam and ‘more’ sadam and feed us by making this big ‘urundai’ (ball of food) and go in rounds to put those urundais in our hands. The best part is the last bit of ‘aanai katti’ sadam that all we cousins used to fight for.Not sure if Kaju will get to enjoy the last tradition listed but I am making sure that she is going to continue the other traditions ( trivial but yet powerful in our family) and pass it on to her family.

Durga Pujo and the Annual Pujo Numbers

(This post is by Sandeepa and is shared in parts with Bong Mom's Cookbook)

While discussing Durga Pujo, memories, food etc at my other blog, I forgot to tell you the most important thing, the one thing I liked most about Durga Pujo since I was a little girl of six. It was a tradition if you let me use the term, every year since I was six.

Anandamela and AnandaBazaar Patrika this year

It is the Pujo Shankhya or the Annual Puja Numbers. Now Bengal being the literary state that it is, it has a very rich history of art & literature. So during Durga Pujo, the publishing houses like Ananada Publishers, Deb Sahitya Kutir etc. bring out special editions of the monthly magazines published by them.
These special editions are thick volumes with literary gems from all renowned Bengali authors. Packed with writings by the best authors, these Puja Numbers are something I and every Bengali child in their right mind would look forward to.

When I was a kid, my Ma in her effort to teach me Bangla would get me monthly subscriptions of the very popular Bengali children’s magazine Anandamela. During Durga Pujo this AnandaMela would come out in its special edition with colorful, glossy jacket and stories & articles in different flavors from all famous, almost famous, trying to get famous authors. It was the biggest treat a child could ever have.

Those days these were published and available in the market around Mahalaya and in our small town we would book our copy with the local paper wallah days in advance, in fact right after summer. So while Mahalaya meant getting up at 4 AM to listen to Birendra Krishna Bhadra, it also meant pestering the Paper wallah every day to see if the coveted book had arrived. I cannot quiet explain the excitement, the waiting, the longing for the book to arrive. Days were spent thinking what “Gogol”* might do and where “Santu”** might land up with “kakababu”**. The book would finally arrive along with My Ma’s copy of Desh or Anandabazaar patrika and many blissful hours would be spent in its magical pages.

Even now Durga Pujo for me is incomplete without Pujo Shankhya and I either buy them here or get my Ma to send them. With the Sharadiya being published way in advance these days, my ma easily finds someone to send me the copies and their arrival heralds the onset of Durga Pujo.

Along with shiuli and kashful, the Sharadiya Pujo Shankhya means Durga Pujo to me.

I do not think I will get around teaching my daughter to read Bengali or maybe I would, but if I didn't, I know she will miss out on the wait for these special editions which with their glossy jackets and mesmerizing tales carried the fragrance of Durga Pujo.


*Gogol -- fictional character by Samaresh Babu, another legendary author
** Santu & kakababu -- fictional characters by Sunil Gangopadhyay, a very famous Bengali author

Traditions -- by Shobhana

(This is a guest post by Shobana for Traditions– the theme of October, chosen by Tharini at DMC.)

I was thinking about traditions – the kind that we may have followed in my family. One thing was that we didn’t have any particular traditions due to some reasons that I am not sure about. While still pondering about it, the idea clicked…this being the festival season starting with the poojas, diwali, Christmas, Ramzan, new year and the additional thanksgiving for people living outside of India and the SUN TV’s and such cranking up on the advertisements for clothes and jewels, making one ever so home sick, why not write about the clothes, especially the sarees, the silk ones in particular. Hah…nice one eh?

Anyways what really inspired me are the ads for the pattu sarees….so many new models and colors and designs. It is either RmKV, Kumaran, Pothy’s or Chennai silks or the crop of stores that seems to sprout up during the festival season and maintain a very low key after that, until the next season. With the ever increasing occassions for buying clothes such as Akshaya thrithi in addition to diwali, pongal and so many more the need to come up varying designs become a necessity. When talking to my sis in India who mentioned that they were all going to Chennai from Salem to buy clothes, it made me realize that the buying power of people has also gone up and that they are willing to travel far and near to buy something unique for this festival season.

The sarees that I remember seeing in my mom’s closet was the simple chiffon ones and some of the silk sarees that she had. These had simple flowers, lines, dots and such patterns on them…be it the chiffons or the silks. And the color choices were simple too….reds with blue borders, light blue with dark blue borders, yellow with marroon or green borders and so on…just the basic colors. But now….there is a different color for each woman on the face of this earth….for example the 50,000 color pattu by RmKV last year. WOW!!! Are there even so many colors?I kind of know only a few…am I missing something or have been color illiterate? I have made a mental note to check it out in person the next time when I am in India to improve my GK on colors.

And then there are the other choices…Jodi paatu (matching colored saree and shirt for the color twin couple), color changing saree (it presumably changes color when one steps out…what??), Durbar Krishna saree (with the pic of Lord Krishna on the pallu and decked with Swarovski crystals…supposed to bring luck to one who wears it), zip-n-wear sarees (you can buy one saree with 4 different pallus, just choose the one that you want for that day and zip it up), pocket saree, landscape saree, denim saree and the latest addition being the embossed silk saree. Aishwarya pookal, Hamsa damayanth, Imayam, 108 karnas…guessing what those are….these are more varieties of silk sarees. These trends are all aimed for the young adult in the late teens and early 20’s, though anyone else who wants to buy those are not stopped.

MRSA(methicillin resistant Staph aureus)

MRSA or methicillin resistant Staph aureus is a bacterial infection that is not very common but contagious. I read about this MRSA sometime back in ' Parents ' magazine. Over the pat one month I heard about two students who died of this deadly MRSA on a popular news channel.So,I just thought about sharing some info which I came across the net with other moms here.
Article from ' Parents ' Magazine can be found here
More info can be found from here .
Madhavi

Bring on the paints Amma!

[Posted by Rachel of http://www.tangerineskitchen.blogspot.com]

I had L last evening ransacking my kitchen. L seemed like she had lost something and she was desperately in search of god knows what! She preferred no help from neither A nor me!!!

So we let her be on her ransacking spree...after a few minutes there was an excited expressive sound!!! L's search mission was sucessful, because she had finally found what she had been looking for...Hmmm and guess what the treasure was..a plastic mesh (the one used to scrub dishes) ...a brightly coloured one that she had specifically picked up from the store when I was buying my monthly stocks...

Well this was bought two months back..I had forgotten about it and so had she..Wonder what reminded her of it yesterday of all days!!

Anyways she then wanted her paints, her own proclaimed palette (a lid of one of her kitchen set pans),her dhurrie..(she always lays her dhurrie and only then does she proceed with her articstic activities!!!)and not to forget her dear plastic scrub..L then specifically preferred to have a sheet only from my sketchbook..which is something very dear to me...anyways, after a lot of persuasion by L..I finally gave in..

She lay her drawing sheet (actually mine)on her dhurrie, dipped her mesh in all the colours and dabbed it on the sheets...After a few minutes she wanted the bottle brush, sponge, her tooth brush to do the same..

Finally she wanted to frame the work of art and hang it right in the place where an art done by me is hung!!!!

This made me wonder how come i never thought of this activity when i was at a loss of ideas to keep L occupied.

I think this is an interesting activity.. It does help them in identifying colours...I even saw her mixing colours..

Just a few pointers when you get your child to do this ..Make sure he/she is wearing old clothes, and newspapers are spread out on the floor..In doing so..after the kids are done with their activity,, all you need to do is to clear the newspapers..

From a budding chef's kitchen

[Crossposted at My Two Cents]

Note: I posted this on my blog some time ago. Thanks to Sandeepa who reminded me to post it here for Kids Food Festival :)

Lately there have been more updates about M than there have been about S and while that is natural, it isn't fair. So here is a tid-bit about S.

She created this snack ALL ON HER OWN!! She took foods that she likes - bread, butter, sugar, chocolate syrup, chocolate chips and bananas and put them together to create a yummy (her words, not mine) snack! I leave you with a mouth watering picture of the same. :D

For the record, I have tasted it sans the chocolate chips and chocolate syrup (did I ever tell you I HATE chocolate flavor - except in a cake??) and it indeed was very, very, very delicious. S is proud of the fact that this is a very healthy recipe because it has whole grain bread and a fruit! I really loved the look of pride on her face when she presented this snack to me and later when I photographed it.

Hope to keep this interest alive and maybe she will be competing on "Top Chef" one day.... :D

KUMON: How and why it works for us

[Crossposted at My Two Cents]

(Note: I haven't been able to post for this month's theme or for the Kids' Food Festival. Things are sorta crazy at my end, so please bear with me. I read all the posts, but don't get to comment on all of them for the same reason.)

Some time back I wrote a post on how parents sometimes push their kids unnecessarily to achieve academic excellence. In that post, I also mentioned KUMON - a chain of individually owned math and reading learning centers. One reader left a link in the comment section for an article that discusses a few drawbacks of the KUMON way of teaching math. I read that whole article twice - I swear! I agree with parts of it and there are parts (regarding trigonometry and calculus etc.) that we haven't gone through yet so those don't apply to us. Yet. I highly recommend that you read this article if you are thinking about signing up your kid(s) at KUMON. I am not going to discuss the article here. I am merely writing what works for us in the KUMON method. I am not saying it will, or should, work for other parents too. Every kid is different and what works for S might not work even for M, a few years from now. So, please take everything I am going to write with a grain of salt. Research the options out for yourself and then decide.

S started KUMON math program in August 2003, just before she started Kindergarten. I came to know about it through a friend who sent her son to a center for a brief time. S was a quiet kid from the beginning and we thought being good at something, like math, will give her self-esteem a boost. In the long term, we HAVE been proven correct. Also, I had heard that due to various factors, girls here lose interest in math and sience by the time they get to middle school. I was determined to prevent that from happening to my daughter. I wasn't going to let math become a "monster" to be afraid of. So, this is why our KUMON journey started.

Soon after she started, S began struggling with the homeworks. She would do all correctly, but would take 45 minutes or more to complete each homework. We began worrying if we pushed her in it too early because there is no way 45 minutes of homework is going to be good for a 5 year old. Thankfully, the owner of the franchise that S attended agreed with us. She said it should only take a child 5-7 minutes per homework, and no more than 10-12 minutes even if they take too long. So she reduced the number of pages that S was getting per homework. Once the load decreased, S also began taking more interest in doing her homework again. So, it has been this way ever since - we reduce the number of pages in her homework if she starts taking too long to finish and slowly increase it again once she finds a balance.

Another thing we always made sure of was to never push S into finishing a level fast. We let her take her own time and even let her repeat a level if she takes too long in that level's test (the objective is to complete one page in 1-3 minutes). After all, she is the one who will benefit if she masters the concepts at one level before advancing to the next one. Also, having to repeat a level has never been associated with failure in Kay household. It just indicates that some more time is needed to master the concepts. We do, however, try positive reinforcement to keep her motivated. So, every time S completes a level at KUMON, she gets to buy a board game or a book of upto $15 dollars in value. We are very rigid in enforcing the "board game or book" part. No soft toys, no video games or anything of that sort. She really looks forward to these opportunities. She only gets this gift if she has finished the level for good and doesn't have to repeat it. There are no penalties for repeating a level except that she has to wait longer to buy her gift.

Every year, when we mention that S is in the KUMON math program, her teachers ask us the same questions. How do we keep her interested (because it does tend to get repititive)? And since she is clearly ahead of grade level in math, how do we keep her interested in school work? For the first question, our answer is "Because we never gave her an option. KUMON homeworks are not optional, and she knows that. And, since she can herself see the progress she is making, she willingly does it now." As for the second question, we have noticed that the math that she learns at school is usually complementary to the math she does at KUMON. So, since KUMON math program doesn't really have many word-problems, the school curriculum helps her practice that part. KUMON math does not cover money math concepts while her school curriculum did. And, school curriculum also helps her revise the parts that she did long time ago at KUMON and has forgotten by now. For example, when she was doing multiplication in KUMON, her class teacher was still teaching subtraction. That helped because S was beginning to lose subtraction skills for lack of practice. And this year, she finishes her math classwork and then goes ahead and does extra with her teacher's permission. Which, in my opinion, shows a "will to learn" - a very important ingradient of success.

In my opinion, this is also teaching her a few other things. One - you have to do what you have to do. Meaning, even if you already know multiplication (or any other skill that is currently being taught in class), you have to do it as part of the school curriculum. You CANNOT get out of doing it just because you already know it. Two - never be smug about your math skills because though there are things you are very good at, there are some other skills that you need to work on, just like other kids. (Example - her struggles with money math last year) Three - practice makes perfect. This one she has experienced for herself and now realizes its importance (I hope!)

Almost everyone in our social circle, who has ever sent their kids to KUMON at one time or the other, has mentioned to us how their kids used to get "bored" with math at their school because they were ahead of the rest of their class. Most of them cited "boredom" as a reason for dropping out of the KUMON math program. I don't know why. As I mentioned earlier, it hasn't happened to S. And if it has, she hasn't mentioned to us - which is just as good because we would still have made her do it. "Bored" is a word I don't entertain. No way, no how! I know, I sound like a tyrant. Heck! I am a tyrant when it comes to studies. I know that is THE ONLY TICKET TO SUCCESS my daughters have. S does mention it when KUMON begins to become a burden of sorts. Then we let her take a break for a week or so. Every year, she gets a break form KUMON for one week each in summer and winter. And sometimes an extra week here or there if we feel (or if she says) it is becoming too much for her. That, I guess, prevents it from becoming a huge burden. By now, KUMON is a way of life for her. She remembers to do the homework every day without us having to remind her. I hope this will continue into her middle school and high school years. Because the skills that KUMON is teaching her reach far beyond just success in math. The discipline will definitely help her in other avenues in life. The skill to understand concepts on her own (of course she takes our help when she gest stuck) is going to prove important later in college. The perseverance she is learning in understanding tricky math concepts will pay off later in life.

Coming back to the article - I agree KUMON is not perfect. Nothing is. But we work hard at making it work for us. Like everything else in life. Nothing comes your way custom-made and ready to fit. You have to tuck here, nip there.

The author of the article suggests that parents should do every homework themselves along with the kids. I agree, but not completely. You don't need to do every single homework. You do need to know how to solve those problems and be able to explain to your kid(s) if the need arises. Having solved the problems yourself a few times does come in handy when you have to explain it to someone else.

We had signed S up for KUMON's reading program as well and she attended it for over 3 years. But then we learnt about SCORE's writing program. We liked the program and wanted to try it out. S loved it and even made some remarkable progress in her writing skills. but we had to take her off of the program. There were a few reasons. One - they weren't offering Writing as a stand-alone program. They wanted us to opt for the whole Math-Reading-Writing package. Since we were already very happy with the KUMON math and reading program, we decided not to join SCORE. Two - and this one was a biggie for me, I am not sure if other parents will feel the same way as I do - the SCORE program is COMPLETELY computer based. I mean, even the "writing" that S did was on a computer. Now, call me old-fashioned, but I believe a child should learn how to write well before graduating to typing. And, with all the typing, S was losing her handwriting skills fast. At KUMON, she is required to write everything - math answers as well as answers to the questions in her reading material. I like it that way. As I said - nothing is perfect. You have to work at making things fit you. We tried but we weren't able to compromise on these two issues regarding the SCORE program. I think we might give it another try a few years from now when S is done with KUMON (one can hope, right? :P)