Hindi letters flash cards

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CLICK here for Kannada.

Wrote this small program for my kiddo for his quick learning. He has already learnt all the numerals, vowels (swara), consonants (vyangana) and syllables (barahakadi). Now, to make him read the words faster, I thought of having some kind of flash cards for each syllables. And this is the result of that idea: a random letter generator!

I extended this with equivalent Kannada and English pronunciations, and sequence buttons (next and previous) based on the comments received. Hope this helps anyone who has just begun to learn Hindi.

Comments are welcome.

Kannada letters flash cards

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CLICK here for Hindi.

Wrote this small program for my kiddo for his quick learning. He has already learnt all the numerals, vowels (swara), consonants (vyangana) and syllables (gunitaksharagalu). Now, to make him read the words faster, I thought of having some kind of flash cards for each syllables. And this is the result of that idea: a random letter generator!

I extended this with equivalent Hindi and English pronunciations, and sequence buttons (next and previous) based on the comments received. Hope this helps anyone who has just begun to learn Kannada.

Comments are welcome.

Do I want to enroll my 8-year-old kid to a coding class?

 Just last week I got a call from an executive from a company asking whether I would be interested in enrolling my kid to a coding class. Before replying to his query, I questioned him how he got my contact details because he already knew I have a son who studies in 3^rd grade. That bothered me. He replied nonchalantly that his company’s app was installed in a phone which provided the phone number, perhaps by someone at home or kid himself. He in fact tried to justify saying it’s a Samsung brand phone on which it was installed. I seriously doubted all those things as I don’t have that brand phone at home and none at home have installed it. Anyways, without any argument on this I told him I’m NOT interested.

Let me first begin listing some of the common activities a 7-8 years old would be busy with:

• Academic learning involving:
• 2-3 languages, expanding vocabulary and grammar.
• Mathematics that might include addition, subtraction and basic multiplication may be.
• Other subjects about nature, environment and general knowledge.
• Games such as cricket, badminton, cards, LEGO, mobile/computer games etc.
• May be, learning some musical instruments, singing, dance or karate.
• Household interests like cooking, understanding ingredients etc.

And now let me try to explain what ‘coding’ means without going into details. Broadly speaking, coding is a process of writing some lines of code, which will subsequently go into some machines like computers or mobile phones, and finally make them do some intended tasks. These lines of code, also called programs, can be written in different computer languages which have their own ways (syntax - grammar and vocabulary).

To accomplish this, we need to:

• Understand how things work from those machine’s or system’s perspective
• Learn and understand a programming language and its syntax
• To write those lines, we need to understand the whole process involved; Understanding the task for which you are writing the code, constructing the logic and details required to get that done

So, as you can imagine, this coding would require a person to have a capability to grasp all the different aspects of the system, or a task for which the code is written, importantly the programming jargons and other logical and mathematical calculations; at least basics if not high level.

The company folks who are planning to provide coding classes to young ones MIGHT be doing following things:

• Exposing the kids and their parents to the world of coding.
• Making the whole coding experience for the audience an intuitive and interesting with small app development and real use cases.
• Providing some techniques or simulators that might make things easier.
• Not trying to explain in-depth and complex aspects etc.
• (Regardless of all the above, they need to target the right audience IMO)

But I believe:

• The onus is on the parents to decide what their kids need and try to understand the details first before putting their kids through things. There might be many people out there selling products, classes and things, but it's you who have to decide what's best for you and your kids.
• Coding is not a one-time activity that you do it once and done. It needs commitment and need to keep practicing it regularly just like any other activities like playing a musical instrument or learning non-native language.
• Nobody should go overboard in portraying coding a means of getting rich overnight. Nobody in the right minds will knock at your doors and try to buy any simple app for big bucks.
• No need to portray it as a big service to the nation too. (I mean, seriously?!)
• It’s not a mugging up activity where you just do what is told without much understanding. In fact, I hated it when the 2nd grade class syllabus asked kids to mug up different frame/copy/paste/save operations of a random Animation app as part of school computer subject.
• Age, capability & their interest must be considered. Kids should be able to understand the details otherwise they get will get stressed out and, in the process, they start disliking it. Why do you think many kids/grown-ups hate mathematics?! 😛
• Young kids are quick learners, but that doesn't mean you start teaching them rocket science. The building blocks should be in place. And in a way the education system is doing that job (Whether it needs an update or correction is altogether a different topic for some other time).
• Keep in mind, coding is one of the many skill sets out there. You cannot simply  expect an 8 year-old kid to understand how bank finances work, or internal organs of our body & their functionalities, or how a car engine  works, unless he/she is a super kid with a great IQ.

Considering all these aspects, I would NOT want my 8-year-old kid to go to any coding classes right now as I want him to enjoy what he is currently doing i.e. enjoy school classes, playing games, making friends, understanding feelings, etc. When its right time let him understand what coding is and if interested venture into it.

Comments are welcome.

B'day decoration activity

While this lockdown/work-from-home situation has forced people to stay indoors, it has surely given a unique opportunity for many to attend to their inner talent or rekindling with their forgotten passion. The various singing, dancing, painting or cooking posts of your friends and relatives in Whatsapp status or Facebook timeline will only confirm this.

For sure I am one of those guys who is quite okay, in fact more than okay, about this WFH situation. The benefits quite outweigh the downsides for me.

Anyways, I’m not here today to talk about this situation but would like to talk about the unique opportunity this lockdown has offered me this year.

Well, yesterday was my son’s 8^th birthday, and as we couldn't have a usual party with friends and family during this self-imposed lockdown, my wife and I decided to give him a surprise by decorating the house in secret. The planning started 3-4 days before the birthday with an action item to get a birthday banner, few of his favorite cartoon characters ready along with usual balloons around.

I decided to have the banner in a form of letters joined together; simple yet effective. I picked up paper sheets cut them up in the shapes required and finalized on the font to use for the letters. I created templates of those letters so it becomes easier and faster with repetitive ones.

 

My wife and I painted the letters in one stretch at night, in his absence of course. So it had to be post-midnight. It’s impossible to get it done during daytime with the kid around and especially with no school.

 

Then came the interesting part of getting the cartoon characters ready. This year, he’s been busy watching 2 cartoons Oggy and the Cockroaches & Bandbukh Aur Budbak, so decided to pick those 3 characters i.e. Oggy, Budh & Badri.

Very lucky that the sketches and the paintings turned out quite good. It surely was a very satisfying activity I had related to drawing and paintings since ages.

 

When the final setting was up on display and when the kiddo saw that on his birthday morning, he was surprised and importantly happy to see all the decoration. A special note of appreciation for his fav cartoon characters from him. He enjoyed it and we enjoyed more doing all this for him.

80 days!

80 days. Yes, that is how long it was since my last visit to office. As we all know, this pandemic has forced everyone to face the lock-downs and stay-home restrictions. Apart from the necessary outings to near-by grocery supermarket I ventured out of house only once over a weekend to get my son back from his grandparents' house. Suddenly everything has changed and yet we need to continue with our routine.

While this situation brought a lot of restrictions, it also got us a little spare time because of no office commute. And in a way it's a gift in disguise. I would like to jot down those aspects which were beneficial for me personally due to this excess time in hand.

• Time with family

Needless to say we all found ourselves around family all the time. This being new, we had to realize and adjust accordingly. Because it certainly felt like an extended weekend or something. Importantly, it brought so much more time for discussions, meals together & etc. With no services from maids, we all had to step up and rise to the occasion and distribute the chores (or face the wrath 😛). This week even the online classes started for my 7 years old and this gave a great opportunity for me to witness his participation & learning during the classes. I used to take up his studies and closely track his learning but this scene of seeing him respond to teachers' explanation and learn is new which otherwise would take place in confinement of school classes. And furthermore, I'm totally enjoying the NERF battles with my kiddo. He has totally gone crazy with his new set of NERF guns. I tell you, NERF and LEGO are boon to humans!

• Extra hours at work

Yes, I got this opportunity to spend continuous hours on the tasks I am handling and I am absolutely satisfied with improved productivity. Not that it wasn't up to to the mark previously but an increase in this matter can of course be a reason for delight.

• Extra time for friends

Well, we cannot meet up like before in person but the situation has brought in this new trend of video conferencing. Apps like Zoom, Whatsapp Videochat and Google Duo are now felt necessity and people are using them like never before. I too enjoyed these instances of group videochat with friends and family. We even had some nice task games over Whatsapp and online forums.

 

 

Along with these above benefits there are however some downsides as well:

• Trek cancellation

I had booked for a 10 days Har-Ki-Doon trek and was supposed to report to base camp near Dehradun on May 2, which of course got cancelled. I even had plans for river rafting and bungee jump at Rishikesh. All this had to be called off. The 4 years trek streak was broken unfortunately. Anyways, there's always next time.

• No running

I've not run a single KM in this last 80 days. It's not that I will be stopped from running on roads or in my community, but it's the impression what one gives by following everything like before will somehow give others a sense of leniency in the society and that's kinda dangerous in this ongoing crisis.

We have to follow stay-home stay-safe mantra and need to step out only for really important work.

I see this situation is surely gonna stay for few more months. Hoping for some miracle, some vaccine to come out soon which will take us out from this nasty situation. Also hoping that everyone learns something from this unfortunate situation. We need to mend our ways and find a better way in living peacefully in this beautiful world.

Sakleshpur outing

After going through a list of getaways around Bengaluru & lot of discussion, my friends and I decided to visit Sakleshpur in Hassan district of Karnataka over the weekend. We booked Kaduhithlu homestay/resort. This place is around 6 hours  from Bengaluru. We started at dawn and reached the resort during lunch time, after stopping in between for breakfast and tender coconut.

The resort is situated in the middle of greenery with a nice view of mountains next to it. We were greeted with delicious lunch immediately. It has a nice play area where we and kids enjoyed playing volleyball, cricket and football. There is a hut kinda sit-out which served as the ideal place for our quiz games and discussions. Campfire at night in that breezy cool weather was something which everyone enjoyed.

The best part of this place was there is no cellular network. So, all we could do with our phones is taking photos and playing music. Just imagine, all friends sitting around and nobody checking any social networking apps or messaging apps, complete attention in the middle and everybody totally involved in the talks or games or with kids. Bliss!
Hope this place remains that way with no network, and I forgot to ask how the owners managed w.r.t inquiries and bookings. There is downside to it but I guess, the whole point of getaways like these is that you have total fun away from all your chores, including your mobile screen time.

PC: Varsha ;-)

One other good thing is the arranged trek/hike to nearby Saalugudda hill. This is about an hour, easy trek which anyone can enjoy, including 6+ years kids. If parents are fit enough to carry kids who are < 6 years old and those who can't walk for long, can even think of going. I trekked this hill twice i.e. on a Saturday morning and Sunday morning as well. First one with friends which gave a proper estimate of the trek which apparently helped me decide to take my wife and 6 year old son the next day. This was my son's first trek and I was delighted. He was excited walking in the dense trees and reaching the top, however his energy faded towards the end as he got little tired :)

The hilltop gives a nice view of the sunrise and also of the surrounding areas, including the resort top view. In fact, people at the resort could see us when we were at the top.

• A nice sports shoes should be enough for this trek, especially for kids. Even crocs or floaters are ok for grownups.
• Carry a backpack with water and some snacks.

So, in all a nice weekend retreat and one of our best outings so far.

Air Force protects us from Aliens

The last few years have been wonderful. My son has given me so many wonderful moments and instances to cherish for the rest of my life.
These kids have this amazing ability to surprise us every now and then with their intelligence, creativity and logical reasoning. One such incident happened just last week.

My 6 years old son was given a theme for a class drawing session. The theme was 'I'm proud to be an Indian' and the kids were supposed to come up with a drawing and write a few words about it.
And as it so often happens, I remembered about it just the previous night of the schedule. So all I could do was discuss with my son as what he wants to draw the next day in class.
I asked whether he is okay to draw an airplane representing the Indian Air Force. He was happy with the idea as he loves drawing cars and stuff, and immediately asked what should he write with it. I told him to write, 'I'm proud of Indian Air Force as they fight the enemy'. I continued to mention, 'Aliens' as the kids relate to aliens more than the enemies. With that idea we closed the topic.

The next day I had to pick him up from school who usually commutes in school bus. I very well thought of meeting his new class teacher to have a word with, so I went all the way to his class. While we were at it, my kiddo was excited to show his drawing which was put up on the board along with few others. I was happy seeing he had drawn a nice airplane as per the plan. I took a snap and came back.

Only after coming back home I noticed all the other details from the snap and I was astonished of the fact that he has created a whole scene on that paper. Kiddo had filled in so many other details in the drawing that I was amazed at his thought process. I've numbered few key aspects which I want to emphasize on:

1. Here, he has drawn an alien ship. I am pretty sure, he has got that idea of alien ship from the cartoon Pocoyo. 😜

2. He has drawn a guy taking a leap from the airplane with a parachute. And please note, he has aligned the frames to depict a fall.

3. And here he has made sure to open the back door. I can see that was a closed compartment before, which he erased to open it.

4. I can also see he is showing few bullets being shot at the alien ship.

5. Icing on the cake, he gives the title 'Air Force protects us from the Aliens' 😃

We have always seen him enjoying his drawings and coloring activities at home. I was happy when his previous class teacher had talked about his ability to bring details in his drawings in a recently concluded Parents-Teachers meet.

This was so overwhelming that I decided to share it here.

Word puzzle

From the beginning I've enjoyed spending time with my son, Nivaan taking care of his school activities and homework. Initially it was just about drawing, shapes, alphabets and numbers and he was highly enthusiastic about it and used to look forward doing them. But now that he has moved up to Sr.KG class, even his activities are to the next level, specifically spellings, words and sentence formation. Since these are comparatively difficult and time consuming, it becomes challenging to keep his interest level up during these activities. So, often I find myself coming up with new and innovative techniques of getting things done that really helps both of us. 😊
Since few months, there is this dictation activity going on in his class where all the kids are asked to write about 10 words dictated by the class teacher. These words are shared to the parents one week in advance so that they can make the kids practice writing those words. Making a kid write 10 words seems a pretty simple task but believe me, my son's interest lasts only till the forth word and after that it's a war between him and me. So I decided to come up with a great idea of getting those words added in a word puzzle and make him solve it. A puzzle and the sense of accomplishing solving it always drives the kids. It worked quite well in my case as my son got interested in it every week and in the process I could make him get the phonetics and spellings of each word correctly. The results in the class were also encouraging and this made him feel good about it. Mission accomplished! 😎
Here is how it went down. Initially, I made the word puzzle myself on a sheet of paper taking the words given by the teacher.

But as this was weekly activity, I decided to improvise and automate it. I wrote a program which would take 3 parameters as input; complexity, number of words and the list of words. And the output of the program is the word puzzle in a file. I just need to take a print out of this and voila! the meal is served on the table.
Before writing my own program, I realized few word puzzle tools were already available over the net, but I didn't find a perfect match for my requirements:

• I wanted word directions to be only left-to-right and top-to-bottom in the puzzle as I wanted them to be quite easy for my kid during initial weeks. 
• And I wanted the gap fillers in the puzzle from a selective set of alphabets like O, X, Z etc which will make my kid find the words easily.

Here is the snippet of it -

Input:

Output:

Activities like these will undoubtedly bring a lot of satisfaction not just in kids but also in us as well. Isn't it?! 😉

And now, can anyone puhleeease suggest how to make a kid write 'Fruit' and not 'Froot', and that too after they have taken all the phonetics classes? 😣

Game of cards

I must begin saying that I have played the card game, Uno in last couple of months so much that it's more than what I've played in my entire life and that too considering all kinds of card games put together. Yes, it's no mere exaggeration. All thanks to my son, who will be turning 4 next month and to my wife. He loves the game so much that he's okay playing it for hours together. To test our patience to the last possible limit, he even requests for couple of rounds just before he goes to bed at midnight. He even teases us and makes naughty faces when he wins, which surprisingly happens most of the times. I mean, as if forcing us to play at midnight wasn't bad enough :)
Well, his liking towards card games started an year back when I introduced him self-made flashing cards to make him learn alphabets and numbers in a new interesting way rather than just make him write repeatedly. He used to guess the alphabets and numbers enthusiastically every time I flashed a card. And he in turn tested me by taking the cards and flashing at me. Later I proceeded with actual deck of 52 cards and play aimlessly with him. He used to like just placing his cards one by one at the middle by calling out the number and type of card aloud.
The main reason I thanked my wife at the beginning of the post is not just because she forces me to play Uno now but for the reason that she is the one who taught my kiddo this game in the first place. She regrets it even more when he forces her to play it when she is totally exhausted and bored of it :)

I remember, as a kid I never played any other card game except Wrestling cards. The deck of 52 was kinda forbidden in my house. My mom considers it gambling in plain terms and she made sure we never got those cards in our hands anytime. Me and my sister used to get scared seeing those cards in presence of my mom whenever we found them in others' place accidentally. Now I'm wondering what will be my mom's reaction on learning my son's liking towards cards including the 52 deck cards :-p

So, what's your story w.r.t card games? lemme know..

Kiddo's Q&A

Before starting the details of this post, I would like to introduce my wife, Varsha and my 3 years old son, Nivaan in my blogging space.

Like many other kids of this age group, Nivaan asks a lot many questions and never gets tired. Varsha and myself try very hard to keep up with his chain of questions by providing accurate answers. The process of answering grow longer and time consuming as one answer leads to his next question and this continues until we end up short of appropriate answers or when we lose our patience, well, whichever comes first :) Believe me, our limits of patience has been stretched to the maximum extend by Nivaan by now ;-)

Here are few questions he has asked and few witty replies from him during my hometown visit this Diwali.

- Why is the lamp (Diya) hot?

 During Diwali time, we had lit few lamps at our main door and on windows. He accidentally fell near the door with his hands on the burning lamp. Poor kiddo burnt his hand a little, cried a bit and continued with his business of questioning, even in that state of pain. He simply asked "Dad, why was the lamp hot?" ("Appa, deepa yaaka bisi itta?"). I answered him, just like cooking vessels, it gets hot when we lit fire. He further asks, "And why is that?" ("Yaaka?") to which I answered, "Fire has this tendency of making things hot or burn things when in contact". Before he could further ask the physical and chemical reactions that happen due to fire, I changed the topic!

 Before anyone inquires as why the lamps were kept at the door when the kid around, let me tell you, it didn't occur to us and it was a genuine mistake :)

- Why are Tom and Jerry not running around?

 Nivaan was looking at the Tom and Jerry cartoon on the wall and asks "Why are Tom and Jerry not running around?". Well, I reasoned out that since he is used to seeing the cat chase the mouse all the time in TV out of curiosity he asked as why the characters are stationary in this photo on wall. I had to tell him that this is just a photo on wall like other photos of family members and not a TV screen where they will be in motion.

- Time out : Time come

 I was playing cricket with him in our house and after few minutes of running around getting the ball which he was hitting left and right I was tried.  To get few minutes of breather time, I said "Time out" gesturing the break signal with T symbol using hands. He was super excited hitting the ball at that moment so wanted to continue it and he immediately says "Time come". I had to ask him to repeat that and he responded again, "Time come". I understood that his opposite phrase for "Time out" is "Time come" :-D I was in splits listening to that :)

- Stomach saying Fries-Fries

 One night, while driving back home, I told Varsha and Nivaan that we will stop at McDonald's for dinner. After few seconds of silence Nivaan says "My stomach is saying Fries-Fries" ("nanna tummy fries-fries annatethi") :)

- Jogging in Car or Bike

 After telling him a bed-time story I told him that I will be going for jogging the next morning so would like to sleep now. He immediately replies, "Even I will come for jogging. Will we be going in car or bike?" ("Nanu barteni jogging ga, car daga hogunu yena bike daga hogunu?") :-D

- Pronunciation and teeth connection

 One night, Varsha was giving some medicine to him and she casually asks why he used to pronounce the word for medicine as "Audh" instead of "Aushadha" when he was younger. To this he replies that he had only 2 teeth then so he used to say that way and now that he has 8 big teeth, he is able to pronounce properly :)

So these days at home, he continues to surprise us with his answers, puzzle us with questions and equally make us laugh :)

I would like to quote below lines from this link:

“In school, we’re rewarded for having the answer, not for asking a good question,” Wurman pointed out. Which may explain why kids—who start off asking endless “why” and “what if” questions—gradually ask fewer and fewer of them as they progress through grade school.

"Preschool kids ask their parents an average of 100 questions a day. By middle school, they’ve basically stopped asking questions."