Newerways

Journey of children’s life from infancy to adulthood is marked by many milestones. The years pass by and they begin to spread their wings to fly leaving behind them a few memories. As I dusted the old “Scrabble” I remembered my younger son saying “It is not interesting to play scrabble with you any more”. “Why” I queried his reply was pert “because you play to lose”. It is always very difficult to keep the children involved during summer vacations when you want them to be engaged, creative, constructive and disciplined; managing all these fronts is where you need to show your talent in. This is where the scrabble fitted in very well for me. Day after day for hours and for years we played scrabble. Initially I would be the mentor to both of them. I sometimes made exceptions to continue the game taught them to make words so that it would not come to a dead end. Being older I was the inevitable winner and I always managed to hide my excitement about my winning status. It was a logical con...

I was no wizard, still scared of Mathematics as I was before in my schooldays. Maths included arithmetic, algebra, and geometry. I was good in algebra and geometry, but arithmetic failed me at every step. Multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction scared me then and continue to do the same even today. Careless mistakes were a rule the more I tried the more disastrous were the results. This vicious cycle ended only when I opted for biology in class twelve. Math is an integral part of life, this realisation helped me lay stronger foundations for my children. My progeny inheriting my math gene was a scary thought. I slipped everywhere in life in all the calculations, but I never wished this for my children so, I decided to give them a head start. A mathematical mind which I craved even for myself. The early remembrances of mathematical marvels were my maternal grandmother and her sister who could do oral calculations of the grocery bought by their staff and the transactional di...

It was a wonderful experience raising and educating my children though I had nothing planned out but the way it shaped out was wonderful. I am a dentist by profession but I think  I was a better teacher.  It so happened that I used to color maps of India and show to my son ten times a day for many days never realizing the impact. One day while watching weather forecast on DD news he started shouting" mummy India ka map India ka map". I was very impressed and then began our hours of togetherness.  Two of us would talk and notice all  that went around us . We played all day and I would often run upstairs after my clinic to my overjoyed children.  Reading stories came very early in our house initially we saw pictures then it progressed to reading words and then sentences.Bed time was story time from Panchatantra to Ramayana to Indian mythology to stories and incidents all over the world. They knew about Pompeii ruins and casts and Paul Revere's Ride and Troja...