Ready to go.

 While Lila’s school requires a uniform, Logan’s doesn’t. They believe the children should come to school wearing what they are most comfortable in. They do have some special occassions that the children dress up for, like certain Indian holidays. Here is Logan in his traditional outfit. He has already worn it 3 times this month. Ha. I only got him one since he won’t wear it anywhere but school,  but I bet they are getting bored of seeing the same one all the time.

Ready for special holiday activities.

 Of course the big holiday this month was Independence Day. Here is Logan in class the day before.

 And here is Lila ready for her Independence Day activities. This is her first time wearing a traditional top.

And I did her hair in the colors of the flag.

On the actual Independence Day, we rested at home and then went for a family outing to the park in the afternoon.

September 5th was Teacher’s Day, so I helped the kids make cards for their teachers. My mom sent them this teddy bear activity and it was perfect to use for cards. While I had to do most of the work (of course), they did the coloring and drew designs on the cards, plus signed their names on them, with a little help.

Logan’s cards made it to the school bulletin board.

Logan has only been in this school for 7 weeks, but already we see him making so much progress. I had my first PTV with his teacher last week and he is ahead in everything, except writing. Well, that doesn’t bother us. We don’t mind if he goes slower with writing and learns to do it right. See, here in India, children are required to be reading and able to write two sentences on their own when they enter 1st grade, so they begin learning to write in preschool. LKG reinforces it and by UKG, where Logan is, they are introduced to cursive. Wow!

His difficulties lie in a) desire to learn to write, and b) a lack in fine motor skills. Homework was tough for him at first, but he is getting used to it. I don’t always make him do everything that is sent home. They were giving him a lot because he had two months worth of work to make up in order to be up with his classmates. Now the amount has been reduced. Even the teacher said she doesn’t like to give them so much but she is requred to in order for them to be ready for 1st grade.

Last week she gave them all a break from writing and planned a fun day of cooking. Logan was so happy, as you can see from the pics. He was especially delighted to not have any homework last weekend.

Taking a turn with the mixing.

And enjoying the sandwiches afterwards.

One funny thing: Here children address their teachers by their name first and then they say Miss afterwards. In Logan’s school, the children say aunty instead of miss. Well, Logan calls his teacher Sherly Aunty Miss. Ha. He was used to calling his teacher Miss so he just tacked it on. He also used to call the nanny in his class last year Aunty Miss and everyone thought it was so funny. I guess he thought aunty was her name.

As you can see, he has a lot of books. From the top they are an English workbook, Math workbook, cursive and print writing workbooks, an art book, general knowledge, writing numbers, a blank drawing book, Hindi alphabet book, English reader and workbook, plus 4 blank notebooks. The school also provided a backpack. Most of this work is done at school. So far his homework has been the writing and numbers workbooks, reading, drawing, and Hindi, though with the last one I sent a note saying I wasn’t able to teach him the Hindi alphabet and Glad could only help with it on weekends. He was supposed to practice the letters at home but I think they decided to not send it any more. He also often gets extra letter practice in the blank notebooks.

As for the reading I was doing with him, we have slowed down with it in order to make his homework a priority, but he is reading so well that even though we don’t get to do it daily any more, he is still progressing. Today he surprised me by spelling all the numbers from one to ten! I had no idea he was learning spelling already.

Today I met with Lila’s teacher for the first term PTV. Lila has made excellent progress in every area, except talking in school. While she is a great (and loud) talker at home, at school she is very quiet and never speaks above a whisper. Only recently did her teachers discover that she has a loud voice. Glad had been out on business and picked Logan up and brought him back to Lila’s school, instead of the other way around. Logan took off to explore his old school and raced up the stairs. Lila knows that she isn’t supposed to go up as her classroom is downstairs (the same one Logan had, with the same main teacher), so she stayed at the bottom of the stairs and politely shouted for Logan to come down. Apparently all the teachers came running because it was the first time they had ever heard her normal voice. Ha.

They are preparing for their annual day event at the end of this month, so the kids will be having dance practice all next week and Lila is excited about it. She is doing well with the dancing and enjoys it above all the rest of the activities at school.

And I will leave you with photos of them leaving for school, taken just this morning. We live in a large house that is divided into apartments and ours is on the first floor. Here they are heading out.

Down the stairs…

… onto the scooter …

… and away they go.

I’m nervous about bikes. I’ve never been on one myself because of this, but the kids are used to it. And Glad goes slow with them. Their schools are super close to home, too, so it is not like they have to spend a long time on it. And it is cheaper than taking them by auto every day. Don’t get me started on the exhorbant fees auto drivers charge here in Chennai. Thankfully the city is waking up to the need to change it and hopefully they will get the local government to reinstitute the use of the meter. I hate haggling prices with auto drivers, especially because they expect me to pay more since I am white. (This sounds like a new post. I just might write it.)