Panchgani: First school trip

Kabir's went for his first-ever overnight school trip to Panchgani last month (3 days 2 nights away). His excitement knew no bounds.

Goodbye Peace Montessori: Annual day

Anurag bade farewell to Peace Montessori last week. The final event was the school annual day based on an animal theme.

Milestone

Today was a milestone day as both kids finally started going to the same school! Anurag graduated from kindergarten at Peace Montessori last week and started Grade 1 at Pawar Public School (PPS). Kabir also agreed to move from his current school (KV) to join grade IV in PPS. They will now be out for a big part of the day: 7:30am to 3:15pm including the commute time. Its going to take us a while to get used to this.

How to make writing fun

Rote learning has never been Anurag's cup of tea. He vehemently refuses to comply and if forced, comes up with such gems: Kite flying by alphabets.

Anurag's Zoo

Anurag's home assignment - writing 5 lines about "zoo" and drawing a picture

Janmashthmi

Anu as little Krishna for Janmashthmi celebrations in school

Thanks to Seema aunty for dressing him up

little sardar

Kabir dressed for his school annual day

New academic year begins

Kabir started Class III today and Anurag started his new school - Peace Montessori. School will go on for a month before summer vacation starts. Its a bigger change for Anurag since its a change of school. We plan to have him go to the new school for a year before he joins Kabir in KV in first standard. He would have been one of the youngest kids in his class in KV had he joined this year (being March born), so we decided to have him wait out for a year.
Today was his first day and he settled in quickly. There was a car washing activity in school which certainly helped him like the new school. The tricky part is going to be the pick/drop logistical routine for us, which we need to deal with for this year.

Anu in his new school went I went to pick him up today

Anurag's Annual Day

Anurag's class performed a charming Konkani dance for their Annual day (based on the song ya ya mayaya). Video to be uploaded later. Here is poses before the performance with his best buddy D who was in a different dance performance.

Science Fair certificates

Kabir and some class mates with class-teacher Mrs. Veena Sharma (Class II-B)

Ready for school this morning

Grandparents' day in Kabir's school

Dada-dadi and nana-nani, all got to attend grandparents'day in school today!

School fair

This weekend KG School celebrated its 50th year anniversary with a fun fair for all campus kids.
Anu posed with his favourite teachers.

With Harshada teacher - Anu's class teacher from LKG (also Kabu's LKG class teacher). She's Anu's favourite even though she's no longer his class teacher in UKG. He says that she is the most beautiful teacher ever.

With Sarita teacher and Tejaswini teacher. Sarita was Kabu's UKG class teacher.

Making a beautiful pot on the potters wheel

 Watching "lakh" bangle-making - Anu wanted to get one for each of his teachers

 A pink dolphin (to match Harshada teacher's tattoo) and a scary dragon tattoo

And many other fun games!

Kabir's essay - My mother

This should be sufficient justification for me to go get new clothes :)

Handsome young man

That's the role Kabir is playing today in his school's pre-Teacher's Day skit called "The giving tree". To be more precise, he's playing a young man who's going to get married. :)

First day of UKG for Anu

Taken on July 1, 2014

Action song

Kabir with his classmates singing "Bachche man ke sachche" for their inter-house action song competition. Video taken during their class rehearsal.

Misc update

November is usually a crazy month around here with Diwali, school vacation, children's day and so on. This month it got a little crazier with me going down with dengue fever. I've recovered now though still not back to usual energy levels. Fortunately, dadisa was around until last week so the kids had a great vacation nevertheless.

Some highlights from this (long) weekend alone were:

- Children's day event in Anurag's school on Friday (magic show, juggler etc and special appearances by Chhota Bheem and Doraemon)

- Kabir's fancy dress in school on Saturday. He won the second prize for being an astronaut!

- Amu's birthday party and a half-day outing to Tushita chachi's home after Kabir's school on Saturday

- Ramayana play for kids @ Canvas laugh factory this Sunday with nana-nani and many other friends. The boys are quite dharmik to begin with and so the play was a hit with them. Kabir's favourite character was Hanuman and Anurag's favourite were Sita and Surpanakha.

In other news, Kabir had been spending time with Saurabh in reviewing the World chess championship games. But now with Vishy being 2 games down, the excitement for the game as subsided and noone in the house wants to look at the news, let alone going through the games.

Diwali was low-key with me in the hospital (the doctor allowed me to go home by noon on Diwali when I requested "to atleast let me spend diwali at home") :-)  So there are no Diwali pictures this year.

School restarted a few days after Diwali for Kabir and this week for Anu. Kabu has been getting into some trouble at school for not doing his class-work and creating mischief in class. His defense was that he doesn't feel like writing. Math is the only subject that he seems to like and that's because it doesn't involve writing long sentences. We lectured him on the merits of hardwork (surprising how it felt like I was repeating the words I'd heard from my parents a million times while growing up) and have started paying a little more attention to what he brings back from school (fortunately no homework yet). Hopefully this is just a phase and will pass soon.

Kabir the astronaut

Kabir decided to be an astronaut for his school's fancy dress competition on Children's day.
 

Here is a (poor quality) video of Kabu saying his lines during the program. His class teacher Mrs. Veena Sharma is standing next to him. 

 

Biking to school

Kabu's school is a little over 1km from our house. Normally Saurabh or I drop him to school. Today Kabu rode his bicycle to school for the first time (I accompanied him on my own). Hopefully, soon enough we'll all be confident enough to have him commute to and back from school himself.