Ria’s current favourite lullaby …

… in her own voice

[audio:http://riakhan.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Voice_004.mp3|titles=Ria singing]

This is what she asks me to sing every night these days when she cuddles up at bedtime. Also sings along most of the time. And goes to sleep in a minute or two 🙂

A happy evening stroll

With the c-sec scheduled tomorrow, have been feeling apprehensive about a lot of things, but especially about not being there for Ria tomorrow and maybe a couple of days more as I would be too groggy from the surgery. In the evening was feeling pretty restless, and so I thought of doing something both of us would like. So, even though I was pretty tired and it was kind of late, I asked Ria if she wanted to go to the library with me and change our books. And that little outing with my baby cheered me up so much. She already loves books as much as I do, and jumped at the idea of going to the library. On the way, she chatted about compost and how it is made from veggie peels and apple cores and how worms make compost, etc. At the library as usual she went to the children’s section and carefully started going through a few books. It’s such a happy sight to see those tiny hands handle the books so carefully and go though the whole affair of selecting the next book so seriously. She looks at the books and often settles down on the floor with a few of them and checks them out in more detail before picking up one. Once she was done picking her book she kept the rest back, made sure she had arranged them properly, and then came over to where I was still deciding what to pick up. Wandered around till I was done, and then we went to the librarian and got the books issued. Happy kid and mom came back from the library, enjoying our little walk back home, just the two of us, holding hands and talking about this and that. Life is good with you, thanks for being such a sweetheart

Sleeping lines, standing lines

Ria got her first homework this Friday, a set of worksheets to be completed over the weekend.
It was surprising how much she’s picked up at school over the last one month. With a crayon she can now draw reasonably straight lines, and complete dotted lines as well, both which I know for sure she couldn’t do during her summer vacations.
They have introduced the written alphabet in an interesting way … well, maybe that’s how every school does it nowadays, but I found it a very nice approach.
The kids were first taught the concept of a standing line (vertical) and a sleeping line (horizontal), which they could easily relate to because they understand the concepts of standing and sleeping. They’ve been drawing standing and sleeping lines for some time, in fact, Ria does them a lot while playing on her own with her crayons too.
Once they could draw these reasonably well, they were started off on their first letters of the alphabet, not ABC but L and T, both of which can be created with one standing line and one sleeping line. So she can now write and recognize two letters, and also knows their sounds, etc. Pretty impressive!
She was very happy when we handed her the worksheets, and sat for an hour with full focus, finishing all 8 of them in one shot (she had two weekends’ worksheets to do this time, because she was absent last Friday). All homework done on Friday evening itself, hope that trend continues 🙂