Comic By Janani

Today I wanted to share a comic my little one created. In our childhood, my brother had a huge collection of ‘Rani comics’ and we would be fighting for it. Now, my little one has only two comic books in our story book collection but, wanted to make one on her own. 

She loves drawing and she wanted to make the comic based on a story that I narrated.  It was ‘Long Bony Finger’ by Gargi pant and you can read the story here.

This is what she made. I loved the way she created the characters and planned the frames. 

I read Mickael Corley's post on making comic strips and I loved it. So, I wanted to convert my little one’s work into comic strips. First, I began to ink her drawings and dialogues. When I started doing this, my little one’s enthusiasm grown and she included and redrew few more scenes. I created the border template in the strips, cut the frames from her comic and paste it in the template.  

My husband made this soft bound and labeled it. Her first comic is all ready!

Fall in Love with Tie and Dye

It is all started in one fine evening - we tie-dyed some white fabrics and we had lot of great time together. It’s fun, easy, and the final outcome is fantabulous.   We started with acrylic paints and continued with artificial colors and natural colors.

Whatever is the dye - whether it is acrylic paints, natural colors or artificial colors, the first step is to prepare the fabric.  I cut an unused Dhoti into small squares and folded them.  Actually, creating different patterns depends on how the fabric is being folded. For different folding techniques check here.We can make stripes, bold concentric circles, spirals or something new. Yes, you don’t need to worry about the final pattern. However you fold, you’ll create something new, unique, and colorful patterns.  Excitement guaranteed.  

To Tie and dye with Acrylic paint:

1.      Fold the fabric according to your preference and tie it up using rubber bands or knots as shown. Wet the cloth and dilute the acrylic paints. The paint can be applied using a brush as we did or you can fill diluted paint in a squeeze bottle and apply it.  Let them set at least for half an hour and then remove the knots/rubber bands. Now you can wash the fabric and dry it.

                                                                           For Spiral Shapes

2.      This is acrylic paints sun prints.  Wet the fabric, paint it and place leaves, flowers or foam shapes, keys or stencils as shown and dry it completely in sun light. Kids will be surprised when they pull of the shapes.

To tie dye with natural colors:

I wanted to try some natural colors and I used turmeric power - definitely a foolproof one. Put a table spoon of turmeric powder and a tsp of salt in boiling water. Put the folded and tied fabric and switch off the flame.  Let it sit for couple of minutes and then wash the cloth and dry it.

I also boiled some onion skin and pink radish skin.  I used unfolded white cloths as  I just wanted to see the color it brings.  These are the results.

To tie dye with artificial colors:

Just like turmeric powder add a tbsp of dye powder and salt in the boiling water and then pour it on the tied fabric.  Let it sit for couple of minutes and then wash the cloth and dry it.

Acrylic tie dye is best for kids under 7 as the other 2 methods need boiling water. Tie dye is the craft that will never get old. Creating the unique patterns and colorful deigns is easy and I am sure your kids will enjoy a lot.

Spelling Tips

Teaching spelling is really a challenging task. If children simply memorize the word by copying the word repeatedly (Rote memorization), they will forget it easily. Giving dictation on random words makes them frustrated. I learnt some meaningful spelling activities from themeasuredmom and that helped me a lot. Here is a list of few things what I follow.

1. Teach them the phonemes to identify the different sounds involved in a word.

2. Teach them the spelling rules such as,  

1.    Silent ‘e’ alters the vowel sound.

Example: mad – made, fin-fine, tap-tape, hop-hope, man-mane.

2.     ‘ck’ follows single vowel to make ‘k’ sound whereas, simple ‘k’ follows double vowel or consonants.
       Example: Duck, Lock,Neck,Pack,Sick, Book,Beak,Seek,Week/Weak,Ask

3.    We often put double ‘f’, ‘I’,  ‘s’  after single vowel at the end of the base words. 

Examples: Ball, Tell, Tall, Wall, Moss, Cliff, dull, mall, pull.

4.    Never ending letters:   ‘u’ and ‘v’ never comes at the end. We always add a silent ‘e’.  ‘I’ and ‘j’ also never comes at the end.  Replace ‘i’ by ‘y’ and ‘j’ by ‘ge’.

Examples: Value, Blue, Glue, Argue, True, Valve, Love, Give, Solve.

                    Happy, rally, Silly, Bridge, Fridge, Judge,

3. Sort the words according to the spelling patterns and teach them. Word sorting helps them compare, analyze and recognize the spelling.

For example, I started with a simple word ‘and’ then I continued dictating words like band, sand, stand, wand , brand, gland, random, standard,  and understand.

Similarly you can sort words like, cake, fake, make, shake, wake, Lake in a group and Apple, people, purple, couple, maple in another group.

We can even involve our children in these sorting activities by giving them a set of words and ask them to group it. We can play cut and paste, cross it out and Bingo.

My little one loves to write with a water filled glue bottle.

Instead of sitting down with paper and pen, she will run here and there in the terrace and write the words. It is fun to watch these water words which evaporate quickly.

Our unit study on States of Matter

 In our science unit, we are learning about states of matter this month.  First, we learnt about how matters are classified as solid, liquid and gas.  After a small explanation, examples and this video I asked my little one to help me to make a states of matter tray. My little one collected objects as samples for the three states.  While collecting the samples, she was repeatedly complaining that most of the matters were in solid states and liquid states and she hardly found matters in gaseous states.  She brought the shampoo bottle, hair oil and her body lotion for liquid states. She asked me to pour some milk and cooking oil to keep it in the tray.

 First, I asked her to blow a balloon to keep under the heading ‘gas’. Then, we decided to keep a ‘bubble’.

Next, we demonstrated how the matters change their states according to temperature. I kept some coconut oil and water in the freezer to show how the matters freeze at low temperatures. Then, we took the frozen ice and coconut oil, chocolate and some wax and put it in the gas top to show how they melt when the temperature increases. We also boiled a little water to show the evaporation.

Our third demonstration is the ‘rain in the jar’ what we already did during our weather unit study.  It’s a cool experiment that incorporates all the three states.

But, still I haven’t yet introduced the word ‘molecules’  and l thought of explaining it in phase II.

Indoor Treasure Hunt

My child played her first treasure hunt today. I remembered our college days; During our hostel day celebrations, hundreds of our hostel mates and friends ran here and there in search of the treasure. Precious moments…

When I was left alone with my kid, the daunting problem was to engage her.  In those situations, she herself would be asking for a scavenger hunt.  This time I tried a treasure hunt, an indoor treasure hunt, a simple treasure hunt.

Being the first time and my little one is an early reader I made the clues as simple as possible. After hiding the remaining clues in the respective places, I gave the first clue which leads to the second clue. Here are our clues…..

1. sit in the red chair
2. under the pillow
3. Printer
4. Dining table
5. Wash your hands
6. Watch TV
7. It is freezing
8. open the laptop
9. Pencil Box
10. see under the big yellow toy

I couldn’t take many photos as she was in a hurry finding clues, running here and there with a little tension (!!!!) and a big smile.  It’s heaven watching it.

A teepee, pallankuzhi and some multiplications

This post is not about ‘How not to make a Teepee’.  I know that it’s a poorly made teepee. But, my little one enjoyed the hot sunny day sitting in the teepee in our backyard.  She learnt some mathematics with our traditional game ‘Pallanguzhi(Pallankuli)’. 

Pallankuli is a traditional south Indian board game with 14 pits and 70 cowry shells or tamarind seeds.  If you are new to ‘Pallanguli’ visit  or watch this video.

I used our pallanguli board for teaching multiplication. Initially, I used the board to demonstrate about ‘groups of 2’, ‘groups of 3’ etc. Then, I introduce her how second multiplication table to be formed.  She put 2 cowry shells in the first pit and wrote one ‘2’ is ‘2’ (1X2=2). Then she put 2 shells in the second pit,counted and wrote two ‘2’s are ‘4’ (2X2=4) and continued.  Soon she herself learnt that by adding the multiplicand to the previous answer, the next answer can be found.

Of course, it’s similar to using Montessori gold beads. But, I think this method helps counting easier and also helps improving fine motor skills. If you do not have pallankuli, use ice trays.