I just realized that the last post I put in here was in February, when we were just wrapping up upper KG and were welcoming the summer holidays. A lot has happened since then. Anoushka went through summer vacation - attended her yearly tradition of summer camp at Planet Kids, went to Nisha Millet's swimming camp for 15 days (didn't much take to it though), and then did something we were very proud of - stayed with her grandmother in Mangalore for all of 20 days without us. It was unbelievable. Here I was, all teary eyed when were driving away and she looked at me and said, you are still here only? Aren't you going?
Anyways... summer holidays were a blast for her, but knowing my daughter and how out of sight out of mind she is, I decided to give her a little summer holiday homework to do, though none was prescribed by the school. I know this sounds really mean of me, but trust me, it helped. I also think its all about the presentation when it comes to kids these days.
What worked to my advantage was that she was with her grandmother who is all for making studying fun. So everyday it was a game of teacher-teacher, where the student was given a small bit of homework - reading or writing from the books she had just completed, exercises that I had created for her, and activity books related to her level of studying. Activity books are something the pipsqueak has always loved, so that worked well for me too.
I also managed to figure out some fun games to introduce a few concepts that were going to be there in first standard - addition and subtraction. Since little miss is yet to figure out that a calculator can do work for you - I used it to my advantage. I would type out simple sums on the calculator and ask her to tell me the answer and then see if it matched the answer the device would give us. She loved the game. Works for addition, subtraction and multiplication.
Another thing I thought might help is to get the little one to type out small words on the computer. Words that I would dictate to her. To give her the feel of a computer and perhaps have fun while doing boring dictation.
And now coming to the beginning of first standard - We got a truckload of textbooks and notebooks at the time of admission. But what made me really happy was that we were given a choice of language - we could take either Hindi or Kannada and this would continue till standard 4th. Only in the 5th, will the other language be introduced. Of course, it is not going to be easy to handle Kannada then. But I have a plan in place for that as well.
Looking through the books I couldn't wrap my head around how much there seemed to be - Maths, mental maths, Computers, Science, Grammar, Language and then some more. But what I did notice was that the books were not the hard-core text kinds. Almost everything was picture heavy and aimed to teach like an activity book. For a student like my daughter that would bode well.
And so on June 3rd my little one officially entered Standard 1. A new school building, a new van and set of friends, a new teacher, a new environment and new timings. I honestly didn't know who was more nervous me or Anoushka. Turns out, age is catching up and my nerves are getting the better of me.
Anyways... summer holidays were a blast for her, but knowing my daughter and how out of sight out of mind she is, I decided to give her a little summer holiday homework to do, though none was prescribed by the school. I know this sounds really mean of me, but trust me, it helped. I also think its all about the presentation when it comes to kids these days.
What worked to my advantage was that she was with her grandmother who is all for making studying fun. So everyday it was a game of teacher-teacher, where the student was given a small bit of homework - reading or writing from the books she had just completed, exercises that I had created for her, and activity books related to her level of studying. Activity books are something the pipsqueak has always loved, so that worked well for me too.
I also managed to figure out some fun games to introduce a few concepts that were going to be there in first standard - addition and subtraction. Since little miss is yet to figure out that a calculator can do work for you - I used it to my advantage. I would type out simple sums on the calculator and ask her to tell me the answer and then see if it matched the answer the device would give us. She loved the game. Works for addition, subtraction and multiplication.
Another thing I thought might help is to get the little one to type out small words on the computer. Words that I would dictate to her. To give her the feel of a computer and perhaps have fun while doing boring dictation.
And now coming to the beginning of first standard - We got a truckload of textbooks and notebooks at the time of admission. But what made me really happy was that we were given a choice of language - we could take either Hindi or Kannada and this would continue till standard 4th. Only in the 5th, will the other language be introduced. Of course, it is not going to be easy to handle Kannada then. But I have a plan in place for that as well.
Looking through the books I couldn't wrap my head around how much there seemed to be - Maths, mental maths, Computers, Science, Grammar, Language and then some more. But what I did notice was that the books were not the hard-core text kinds. Almost everything was picture heavy and aimed to teach like an activity book. For a student like my daughter that would bode well.
And so on June 3rd my little one officially entered Standard 1. A new school building, a new van and set of friends, a new teacher, a new environment and new timings. I honestly didn't know who was more nervous me or Anoushka. Turns out, age is catching up and my nerves are getting the better of me.
