Tag Archives: Children

End of School Year

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BB & GG’s school year for Primary 2 is coming to an end. Tomorrow is the last day of school and Friday is the awards for top performers. BB missed the top slot by a few marks, but hopefully he realises this and bucks up next year. They will be going to school on Friday though as they are part of the choir which will be entertaining the parents and the prize winners.

Picture Source

They brought their year-end reports home yesterday and BB managed to get Band 1 (85% and above) for both his school subjects but Hindi brought his total score waay down. So this year has been an eye opener for him. As for GG, she really needs to work on her Math. She scroed Band 2 (between 75 to 84%) for English and Band 3 for Maths. Hindi also brought her total scores down. Here is what their teachers wrote about them in the year-end report.

GG: With her gentle temperament, GG gets along with her classmates. She  is a helpful girl who is always ready to offer her assistance to the teachers. She is diligent and has shown keenness to learn. Keep up the good work attitude.

BB: BB is an independent worker but needs to put in his best effort to complete tasks assigned by teachers. He clarifies his doubts and has a natural flair in communicating his views. To improve his collaborative skills, he will need to be patient and listen attentively to the views of his classmates. If he exercises more discipline in his studies, BB can achieve even better results. Strive harder!

Now on to conquer Primary 3…Wish us luck…

Maiden Perfomance Jitters

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Today BB & GG are home from school. The school has admin day (I have no idea what that means – maybe they are collating all the reports for the parent-teacher meeting sometime soon). Then next week they have four days of school (maybe less because of the parent-teacher meeting) and then six weeks of holidays, the highlights of which is GG’s upcoming ballet performance and our trip to India the next day! We’ve so looking forward to both things.

GG modelling her ballet performance costume

GG got her performance costume, which is a gold lame leotard with a yellow/white stiff (tulle?) tutu attached to it. She modelled it for us on Sunday and she does look cute in it. This Sunday, she’s supposed to take it to class along with a face made up lightly so that they can have a class picture of all the little ballerinas! When I tried on make-up on GG, she hated it and I was so happy! Hope this keeps up and she doesn’t touch it till she’s 15 atleast! Will this continue or no???

On a completely unrelated note, I need to back up the photos on my iPhone (after deleting the loads that GG & BB take of their games) as I just realised I have 679 photos there!!

Ra One: Not really what I expected

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Shahrukh Khan got two new fans to bolster his legion of fans. We caught Ra One en famille over the weekend and while they didn’t like the movie, GG & BB liked the hero.

So Ra One….Where do I start. Before I start with my observations on the movie, here’s a Wikipedia link with the detailed storyline and reviewsThe movie had a PG 13 classification here and since BB & GG are eight, and they saw Enthiran/Robot last year in the theatre, I thought they could handle a similar genre of movie. I was wrong, they can’t handle violence, so I am going to try and get them to see something softer, maybe a romance or a comedy soon. Since they are learning Hindi in school, this was supposed to be something which had undertones of education attached to it.

I found the movie to be a big disappointment. For a movie which was the most anticipated movie of the year and which had so much hype surrounding it, the actual movie was a complete let-down.

The film starts with a double meaning joke which is supposed to be a dream which Shahrukh Khan’s (SRK) son, a 10-12 year old is dreaming about! This is not the only crude joke in the film. The whole film is peppered with such jokes, with a ‘condom’ joke running through the entire film. This ‘condom’ joke is offensive, not for the content, but for the fact that it is supposed to be a wrong version of the tamil word ‘konjum’ (little) which Kareena’s Punjabi character mangles all the time.

The stereotypes alluded to Shekhar Subramaniam is typical, which is quite irritating given that he is supposed to be living in London for a minimum of 12-13 years (they show a song with the courtship of Sekhar and Mona then the birth of their child), so in that time, it is inconceivable that he would learn to speak English without that irritating accent and also lose all those stereotypes like eating noodles with yoghurt with bare hands! Come on, nowadays, most people are more sophisticated that that!

I also found the back story between SRK and Kareena very vague. She is a typical gaali (ephitet) sprouting Punjabi kudi while SRK is a sterotypical Tamil scientist nerd. How did they meet? Where did they meet? If the couple is based in the UK and Sekhar Subramaniam (SRK) is a British citizen, then how does he own a huge house in Mumbai with the house holding loads of memories for him and his wife? These questions were never answered and leads you with a sense of the storyline missing something.

SRK’s Shekhar Subramaniam dies within 30 minutes and the hero of the film, the good guy G One appears at the point just before the interval is announced. The villian, Ra One is initially an Asian guy and the real villan Arjun Rampal, appears in the last 40-50 minutes of the film!

The songs are ok, I loved the Chammak Chalo song which comes almost at the climax. At the climax you also see Ra One on a running train, something that reminds you of Enthiran/Robot. Alluding to the same movie you have Rajnikant make a 1 minute appearance as Chitti, his robot character in the movie which is greeted with awe by the characters in the scene.

So all in all, the movie is worth is a watch, just to see the special effects and especially if you are a Shahrukh Khan fan. But if you are planning on taking children below 12 to see the movie, then exercise caution. If your child/ren are the innocent variety like GG & BB, then give the film a miss or see it alone/with adults. If your child likes/understands adult and toilet humor, by all means take them with you

My Son is Smarter than me….

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I consider myself to be an intelligent person – certainly not Mensa material, but smarter than average. Why I am say this – well yesterday evening I realized my eight year old son is smarter than me! So how did I come to this conclusion? Well yesterday BB & GG had their Math final paper. One of the questions in the paper was a tricky one. When BB explained the question to me, it took me a while to get it and longer to figure out the answer. It was only when BB showed me the working, it was like a ‘duh’ moment for me and a realization that my son’s smarter than me!

The problem in question goes like this and I paraphrase “In a room if 15 handshakes are exchanged, how many people are there in the room?” The answer for those interested in knowing is 6 people.

So now how do I nurture this ability? Any ideas?

Chica learns something new

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Every day, around 4 pm, Chica could be found at the window of her room. She would be in for about an hour and when she came out, she would be in a very funny mood. Her mother was perplexed at this and one day decided to go down to the root of this mystery.

So one day when Chica was, as usual at the window, her mother, entered Chica’s room and peeked out of the window too. When Chica saw this, she quickly turned her face, but not before the game was up!

“Chica, why do you sit here every day?” mama asked. Chica didn’t want to reply, but had to reply to her mother and said “Mama, I want to learn how to ride a bike like these girls there”. “So what’s stopping you?” replied mama. “I’ve heard you fall when you learn to ride, so I am scared”, this from a scared Chica.

“Nonsense” countered mama, “Yes, you will fall down a couple of times while learning to ride a bike, but that is part and parcel of the learning process. If you have the will to learn, you will learn”.

So Chica decided to start learning to ride a bike. The next day, she went down when she saw the girls riding their bikes and asked them to help her learn. The girls were happy to teach her and with so many teachers around her, Chica quickly learnt to ride. Of course, she did fall a few times, but remembered what her mama told her and didn’t bother too much about that.

A week after Chica had learnt to ride a bike, there was a surprise waiting for her – a pink, shiny new bicycle just for her. Chica was overjoyed and soon was happily playing on the bike with all her new friends!