School School

Posted By SLK on Wednesday, June 29, 2011   { 0 Comment(s) }

Pretend play and dressing up is what kids do best as Kit’s age of 4 – it’s real fun to watch her transform into a mermaid or (yet another!) princess with such ease. In moments the room is a mini tea party or a picnic for the endless dolls – all being served food in dainty dishes...

Kit and Kat are slowly becoming the sisters who share and play together (it’s taken a good number of years!) and the most imaginative part of this love is their playtime together (courtesy Kat) – lovingly described as ‘School School’ by Kit.

Kit is seated on her little blue IKEA chair (originally Kat’s) – very straight and attentive. Kat makes up this grown up voice and reads out names from an ‘attendance sheet’ – for imaginary students, Kat makes up different voices to say ‘Present’ – when Kit’s name is called out, she immediately responds and also raises her hand to show her presence.

Attendance over, Kat (still in her grown up mode), announces the schedule for the day. Some days, Kit actually has a sheet with the activities for the day (courtesy my printer!).

Activities include story writing time (where Kit tells and Kat writes), spelling time (making use of a whiteboard where Kat writes ‘dog’ etc and Kat spells it) or going over the big world map on the wall.

School School also includes ‘Kumon time’ where Kat helps me tremendously by assisting Kit with her math and reading sheets (some days though, this JUST doesn’t work!) . Also interesting are the little workbooks that Kat prints from the internet purely for playing with Kit. She has now even started using her own pocket money to buy actual kindergarten workbooks (pocket money that was earlier being spent only on iTunes and her own stuff – very impressive!)

When Kat is done playing in the morning session, Kit is assigned homework which she very religiously completes!

There may or may not be another sitting on the same day but whenever Kit Kat decide to play School School next, out comes the big box from the cupboard filled with folders, colours, worksheets and School is ON!

Tags: child play, how children copy, kumon, learning new words, school, sisters

Number Word Quest

Posted By SLK on Friday, June 24, 2011   { 0 Comment(s) }

Kit’s vocabulary is being enriched every moment – there is so much to learn!
She tries very hard to use all newly acquired words in her regular conversation SO we usually have (wise) comments like “I can see the constellation” during lunch time or “I am very depressed” when there is an argument with Kat.

What I find most interesting is her age calculation. If anyone asks her age and I say 4 years, Kit insists on saying that she is 4 and a quarter! Also, her goal is to be same age as Dora (!) who is (as per Kit) 5 years old (not a bad guess!) and Diego is 11years (surprisingly the same age as Kat)

...and so the word (and number) quest continues and in this journey we come across words like never before – “I goed (‘went’) there” , “I putted (put) it in my cupboard”.

The other day I got a hand made book which read “Bad Tme Stores” – yes, you guessed it – BED TIME STORIES!

Tags: child play, growing up, how children copy, learning new words, love, school