This is my first post for this blog and first one after ages! Although I have previously blogged about my rendezvous with nature and wild trips this is the first time I will share with you all an even more interesting journey of my life. After more than a decade of being away from blogging and writing I have mustered back courage and tried to stop procrastinating! I have been meaning to write since the time I was pregnant! But hectic work and crocheting during free time left me with no time to sit up and write! After the birth it became very challenging and tough as I had a very light sleeping and clingy baby along with moving to different countries! I was practically on my own dealing with the toddler and house work sparing me no time! However with encouragment and motivation from lot of my mommy and non mommy friends I decided to take the plunge and get started..
The blog post title I chose here is to talk to you about the first title I chose for this blog . I could not retain it and had to change it owing to a beautiful factor! So allow me to share the story right from its name.
My daughter’s name is Vega and I go by the name of Vega-ki-amma practically everywhere! I found that name interesting, personal, special, unique, gifted and cute too! It also has a humour value and a touch of warmth! Once I decided to write a blog I decided to stick to this name and found the title readily available! The same week while I was busily reading about WordPress and discussing with a creative illustrator friend about logo for the blog I was confirmed pregnant again! Although we were not expecting it , it was a wonderful news for us! That moment I realized I won’t just be Vega ki amma and it would not be fair to create a new one for the next baby or keep this for both of them! I wanted to start my writing and sharing journey about my entire motherhood which would also mean fairness! I wanted to go for something that then lets me connect being a mother , my thoughts, and something I am passionate/crazy about! I am a big harry potter fan and found I have found solace in the books for last many many years! Even during pregnancy and post pregnancy I must have read them plenty of times ! I incorporated my love for harry potter with my vision and purpose of writing and chose the above name! Coincidentally I also became close to a blogger/instagrammer friend who is a big fan of hp me. Her blog features the pensieve too! It felt like a Providence approving my choice! I discussed with my closest friends and they all loved it!
So here you are my dear readers.. my first post is my first attempt to share a memory out of my pensieve. Hope you all enjoy all the joys and challenges I manage to share out here! Thank you for your patience !
One of the things that brings me joy in our homeschooling journey is preparing materials.. We follow Montessori way of learning and I am enjoying the process making our own materials the Scrappy Montessori way.
The blue and red rods has been enticing me for a while now and I wondered if I could make them at home. The original ones are bigger and cuboid and made from wood. Sourcing materials during the lockdown wasn’t easy so I decided do using PVC pipes as we had some left over at home after doing some garden works. I did buy 2 PVC pipes for this project after testing it with the leftover ones at home. I used a white PVC pipe for the project. Although they are cylindrical they still work brilliantly for the purpose. If cut evenly they stand upright too.
I first made a list of things I would need and also looked up for details about painting PVC pipes. Unlike wood or metal PVC pipes can be tricky to paint due to its nature. So I chose to sand the pipes using a sand paper. I sanded them well and ensured that all the sides were rough.
PVC cutterMasking tape,painters masking tape, sandpaper Cobalt blue and Crimson red acrylic colours.PVC pipes
I first measured the PVC pipes and marked at 5cm, 10cm, 15cm , 20cm, 25cm and so on upto 50cm. The original ones are double the size but for convenience I chose to reduce the size. I used 2 2m white PVC pipes for the project. I used a PVC cutter to cut the pipes at the marked areas. On cutting I had pipes that measured 5cm, 10cm, 15cm, 20cm,25cm,30cm, 35cm, 40cm, 45cm and 50cm in length.
The next step was to sand them thoroughly. You can use any grit of sandpaper that is available on hand. You don’t need much at all, just a small piece should do. I used 100grits sandpaper that I had on hand after using for sandpaper letters. This activity the kids joined me as well and they also had a go at sanding the pipes.
PVC pipes cut into 5cm, 10cm, 15cm, 20cm,25cm,30cm, 35cm, 40cm, 45cm and 50cm pieces.
Next step is painting. I was using red for the smallest rod so I had to keep one the ends of all rods as red. So keeping that in mind I carefully put masking tapes to cover the area that would be painted blue. I first marked the points at 5cm and then left 5 cm space unmasked followed by 5cm masked and so on.. Once the masking was done I used Acrylic paint to paint the unmasked spaces. Crimson red colour was what I chose as that was the red variety I had on hand. Its rich and resembles the red used on the original rods. It’s important not to use water at all for painting as they can drip and also can go under the masking tape and give imperfect finish. I gave one thick coat of the paint. I started off with red and did the blue only after I finished all the red portion of it.
This is how they looked after the red paint dried. I clicked this before removing the masking tape.
One of the tricks I used to keep them safe while drying is using wooden blocks for play and clay. Most of the part I used clay. I took a big piece of clay and made a depression. I kept two such pieces little far from one another. I placed the wet freshly painted rods onto this clay ensuring that the unpainted portion sits in the clay.
The wet painted rods resting on clay for drying.
Next day I used another masking tape to put it just underneath the old tape. This is optional as you can remove all the tapes first and then tape the red portion again. Taping under tape and then removing old tapes gave me more accuracy and easy way of taping. So I taped around the edges of red colour to ensure I had enough space to hold them while I painted. I used the acrylic Cobalt blue colour for the blue part of the rods. This one i had to be more careful so as to not paint on red by mistake.
Taped and ready for painting blue.
Blue is thicker and darker so I could cover up the mistakes that happened with red. I dried them again the same way. Keep a towel handy if he hands smudge in blue paint as you may by mistake touch the red area. Once they were all painted I kept then to dry. The following day I removed the tapes after ensuring they were all dry. The final product was ready.
Blue and Red rods
I haven’t sprayed a sealant on it yet but I intend to do say. I will update the post with the results when I do that step. Although it took me few days to do this it is a fun DIY to do and enjoyable.
Important notes : The reason I took my time is to ensure I can focus the best i can. Sanding is very very important if you chose to use PVC or you may want to use a spray paint and cover it with sealant but most of the friendly sprays are very very expensive and also you can’t do it inside the house. The spraying part has to be outside in an airy space away from children. Masking tape and marking accurately gives the best results. Masking tape ensures clean lines and prevents Mish mash. I used a PVC cutter to cut the pipes which is a handy tool. It is not child friendly and is sharp so I advise to use it in the absence of the children and safely. I didn’t try using any other tool for this purpose so I strongly urge to not try anything else unless its a saw and you know how to use it. Avoid using water while painting. I used white pipe but you can use the gray ones too.
Hope you liked the DIY.. feel free to reach out to me if you need any help or if you have any suggestions. This is my first tutorial-ish post and I am eager to learn more about it too. Hope you found it useful for your DIY journey with Montessori materials.
I am currently doing my course on Montessori homeschooling for Primary kids with Aubrey and Kari at Child of the redwoods. Aubrey and Kari are great advocates of making Montessori practical, affordable and fun for all parents along with great support and knowledge for scrappy Montessori. Do check out their website for more details on the enrollment for next batch of the course that starts in spring and also the wonderful free courses she has on the website. Happy homeschooling,Happy learning.
The benefit of observing kids are truly magical. Vihaana who is a little over 3.5Y has been unschooled and we haven’t really started any lessons with her. She learns a lot by watching, observing her sister and asking endless amount of questions. Yesterday a funny incident brought an amusing conversation which amazed me.
Vega had broken a button and two days back she had mentioned how vihaana had broken one.. so yesterday while Vega was holding on to the shirt viha went up to her and said “Ammu you broke one button, I broke one button. Hahahaha . We broke two buttons . Hahah. Amma look we broke two buttons. ” That little addition there without knowing what the number symbols or quantity is was quite an surprise to me. I would have never observed so closely had we not chose the homeschooling path.
Viha can just count to 10 and that’s about it so this for me is the sign that kids learn just from environment and we are on the right track.
Loving my Montessori way of life in our homeschooling journey. Still a long long way to go as the philosophy is very deep and there is so much unlearning to do…. I am glad I joined the beautiful Constellation community which is an online community that is a part of Child of Redwoods. I have found a great source of learning, support and guidance in this new journey of mine. Read on for our wonderful day with Banana flowers and tail of a gecko ☺️
In our residential community many house residents have been growing various kinds of herbs , vegetables, fruits etc. Recently on our walks we learnt a lot about flowering and fruiting of trees and we could see the trees that bore the fruit we normally would see in markets or fruit farms. We also made acquaintance with residents who kindly indulged the kids with fruits. This time we had this gentleman give us lot of plantains (raw bananas) and a flower stalk of bananas when I told him that it’s very very popular in our kitchen. Here they eat the flowers but not the raw banana so they are always amused and excited when I try to find raw banana in market or amongst local friends. After making deep fried dry curries from raw bananas today we prepped the banana flowers.
The never ending bunches of flowers. feels like a labyrinth. This is totally delightful for kids as they are mesmerised that you get so many flowers as you peel.
My memories of these flowers are deeply connected with my maternal grandmother. Paternal too but the story is a tad bit more special with mommys mom. My mom being a working outside the home mom barely cooked this vegetable and I wasn’t a fan either when it was made in my native home. They made fritters and dry curries with lentils or coconut and my parents relished it. So my late grandmother would do this activity of cleaning the flowers at night after everyone had slept. She kept it ready for the cook in the morning. She would chop it in morning and soak it in buttermilk until cook started cooking. All this looked so tough that it never certainly appealed me as it didn’t taste great for us kids. I also never opted to cook it as an adult as the work is cumbersome and messy. When the gentleman just passed it to us I had to cook it and not let it go waste. The children were very very curious. At first I thought I would do it by myself at night but later I decided to make it a fun learning activity for them. I am so happy and excited like a kid to write as below. ☺️☺️☺️
Banana flowers with the styles intact and not yet removedVega cleaning the flower and removing the style
I invited them to the table. I showed them what I had and told them what it is . I then moved to tell them what we are going to do. I showed Vega first that we need to remove the style ( the stalk like part which is the female part ).. and that’s it. But we need to go layer by layer. She enjoyed removed each bract and I had fun explaining all botanical things in the simplest way but with correct terminology. She did do a good quantity of it which helped a lot and I didn’t force her to do any certain number. Vihaana joined us on and off so I showed her again. She did do it correctly but was not ready to give me the flower for cooking . Later Vega also had a go at cutting the bracts and the plant parts with scissor. It was a good practice to cut some uncommon texture. She then cut them to some geometrical shapes. She also wanted to make butterfly from the flower petal which were translucent and soft.
Cleaned flowers
Vihaana ran off with these flowers and chopped bracts to play. The funniest part along with this was that they found a baby lizard which I think was dead. Vega had just picked dropped it in nature. But soon afterwards same spot viha spotted a worm. She said Amma look worm. But on closer look I understood it was the tail of the lizard. The gecko had dropped it. Viha was not ready to accept that it was the tail as it was still wriggling. This was a little teaching moment to explain Vega about this special phenomenon were gecko lose tails to escape attack and how the wriggling tail fools the predator. Viha then continued to assume it’s a worm and dropped it in the plant pot. ☺️☺️
Just like that we had some Montessori lessons. The most beautiful thing about my journey with Montessori so far has been about applying everyday things into your lessons. We certainly don’t need expensive and posh set up to be Montessori.
A snippet
I am super sure my grandmother must be feeling proud of me. I think of her a lot as I learnt lot of life lessons from her and seeing me do all this and teach Vega sewing and craft etc would make her proud.
Walking around the residential complex has been really rewarding even if we don’t go too far from home or cover much distance by foot. Rain or Shine we step out when we feel the urge to be out. So today we walked a little down toward the little garden close to home with the water feature and lot of shady spot to relax and also some narrow slopes to practice balancing. We within a span of an hour noticed quite a things which mostly included butterflies and other insects. Let’s dive in through pictures
The beautiful algae that was an visual treat as well a learning tool for sensorial experience. It has a distinct soft texture. Collected , Sorted and Arranged by VihaanaExperiencing and understanding more about moss. Many of the trees around here are covered with moss and lichen. This has been an fantastic sensorial experience and also a precursor for discussion about the non flowering lower plant groups. The wasp that Vihaana spotted. It had a broken wing so it wasn’t flying and it tried to crawl and climb up the slope. She first called it a bee and then understood it’s a wasp. This was another teaching moment to understand about bees and wasps. Vihaana wanted to bring it home but I had to gently refuse the idea and said that this is its home and we can revisit it. She said bye to it. One works while the other rests 😂. Vega was thrilled to find the sloping edges of the path. She wanted to practice balancing and she was walking up and down with a book. Viha said that she just wanted to relax and watch the sky 😊. (I do that sometimes too when we used to go to park. )A gorgeous spider spotted by Vega. This image is a macro pic using my phone. On close observation we noticed that the legs were white or translucent color while the pattern on its back had blue color. Hope you can spot the beautiful little spider here where we saw it. Zoom the image to find it . 😊A single wing of a butterfly observed. The kids were excited to see the wing and they poured in lots of questions. This is one of the Lycaeneids. I need to check the resources to confirm the ID. So they asked me how there is a wing fallen, where is the butterfly and what happened to it. So when I told them that sometimes if they are hurt or injured it can happen. So they wanted to know what animal attacked them. I told them it’s hard to predict as we can only see a piece of wing here and nothing more to conclude what may have happened. We took this specimen home to study under microscope.This is the other side of the wing. The girls touched it to understand the texture and were mesmerized by the softness of it. I kept this in my notebook and when viha tried to pull it towards her some of the cells came off. I showed it to them and said that this what creates patterns. If we run them off all the patterns would disappear. Beautiful blooms.. This tree is possibly the same or closely related to the plant I am very fond off. It’s called Pongamia pinnata (the tree that I adore). I need to verify the ID of this beauty. This definitely attracts a lot of bees and we could ourselves see quite a few buzzing about. This was also attracting the tiger butterflies. The girls love collecting the fruits of these trees. They are flat and S shape like. These curious little minds find curious little things. Viha was first one to be ready to go out so she was exploring the outside front garden area. She saw this and came to me so excitedly. This indeed was quite unique and pretty. The red seeds. The highlight of the photo is the question posed by Vega. This spot has the most number of red ants (weaver ants) and the girls have been bitten before. So they associate this path with red ants all the time. So when we spotted these red seeds Vega asked me if the red ants love these red seeds. I was amused and asked her what made her think so ? She said that because both are red red she thought maybe there is a connection. 😊Explorers sharing a drink. One carries the load of lens and books and bag the other carries the water. Beetle under attack by ants. This was spotted by Vihaana. She herself called out loudly to see this. She said Amma look any attacking beetle.And close to that I spotted a dead baby roach These I think are drone ants of same group. Need to check and verify. The girls were excited to see big ants scampering with the smaller ones. Viha kept calling it mamma ant.. we saw 3 to 4 in that stream of ants moving fast. Vihaana pointing to that ant that she referred as momma ant.This particular pic has lot of learning moments. Now this is a bird nest fern baby plants. Vega thought that these were pitcher plants and when I observed closely I am not surprised why she did. The leaves do look similar. We also have a few bird nest ferns in garden and she connected that with name of the pitcher plant which looks similar. We discussed about it and it gently initiated classifications of plant kingdom. Mild discussions and she could connect seeing the patterns of the sorus under the lead of these ferns. Now another special thing is that Vihaana called this bigger baby plant as Vega plant and the smaller one as vihaana plant
Another type of life form they could see and observe was the algae that had formed on little pool of water. We discussed about it being a different group and also how such shallow puddles are houses for mosquitoes.. We also saw a white throated kingfisher fly by.
Overall we didn’t even cover more than 300 to 400m of walk but we did see quite a lot of stuff which includes lots of butterflies. Will update the post with my observation list soon.
A Mother's Pensieve 