Baba bear has a busy day. Mamma bear to the rescue. She takes over our day today and guides us through it, while continuing to prepare our room (one more day to go before it is ours!), doing her work on the computer, taking care of my food, and also helping Masi with her upholstery changes. Mamma is a superhero.
Then, it was a quick breakfast (2 eggs, 2 chapatis, a cheese slice, ketchup, and a mug of milk with Bournvita), and on with the day.
Apparently, the delay in the morning run was a harbinger of things to come today. The chess teacher never turned up, and Baba could not reach her on her phone or WhatsApp. We spent the hour listening to chess lessons on chess.com and playing a game with the computer. Finally, Baba got in touch with the teacher and she said she just overslept. LOL. We thought maybe she is kidnapped and is held by goblins, forced to eat karela, but it seems the problem was a malfunctioning alarm clock. Baba and she rescheduled the class at 1745h IST and we suddenly realised that we had a huge amount of free time to do whatever we felt like in. So, we made up songs for Mamma and Baba, and sang to them. Our songs have butterflies and rainbows, like our dreams. We also regaled Mamma with tales of our dreams where we have a dream and we wake up to see Mamma and Baba sleeping next to us, and we mistakenly think that we are dreaming now and that we were awake when we were seeing butterflies and rainbows. It’s very funny.
Mamma realised we were wasting time and asked us to practice our piano, which we did for 15 minutes, and then it was time for Home Science with Mamma again. We were so excited. What is this Home Science about? Mamma said we can learn to make a simple dish. It needed mushrooms and tomatoes to be cut, and do you know what Mamma did? She gave us a really sharp knife and asked us to cut!! We could not believe our luck. Throughout the lesson, we smiled.
Apparently, Dr.Bhooshan, a child psychologist that Mamma and Baba trust, had said that 6-year-olds are perfectly capable of handling knives and fires under supervision, but without worrying about it. So, here we are, wielding a knife. And this is the dish we made (Mamma did the sauteing but we did the cutting and chopping). We feel so grown up.
Priyanka teacher came on time and we had to go to Masi’s place again (because our house is still a mess), where we read a story about ‘Hasmina’s Kite’ in which Hasmina and Saif become friends with Sharmaji, their neighbour who helps them fly kites and shows them how to stand up to bullies. Our teacher asked us if we remember the spellings from yesterday. We said yes. She gave us a dictation. We scored 10/10. Easy. Peasy.
Did I tell you this day began with the schedule being thrown off balance? Well, it happened again. Our Sci-Maths teacher, Mugdha, just didn’t turn up online on time. Baba called her and she said she had some family emergency. Family always comes first, Baba tells her. He says that to everyone. But I know we are lucky to have a family. And they are lucky to have us. The class was rescheduled at 1630h IST, so that we could do this one and follow it up with chess in quick succession.
The next class was, once again, English, but this time Devsurabhee teacher with whom we like to tell stories and play games. We played Name-Place-Animal-Thing, and learnt a new word: Armadillo. Baba showed us an Armadillo’s picture later and also explained how it cannot see and uses smell. Did you know ‘Armadillo’ means ‘the little armoured one’ in Spanish? Well, we didn’t. And now we do.
The next class was with Mama. Again. So, we saw a film with Mamma bear, ‘Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made’, in which this little boy Timmy, with his imaginary friend (a polar bear, no less), goes about town ‘solving’ mysteries. It was funny, but not so much. We prefer watching ‘The InBESTtigators’ where real mysteries are solved. Anyway, I think Mamma wanted to watch this one. So, we humoured her. We think Mamma bear is cuter than the polar bear in that film. I wish I could go solve mysteries. Mamma said that maybe I would, and no one knows what we can do when we are all grown up.
By the way, we wrote an email to Aji as part of our typing exercise. In that, we wrote, ‘Hope this letter finds you in the pink of your health.’ When Baba dictated this, we giggled so much, we drooled on the keyboard. But it’s OK. Apparently, this is how you are supposed to begin your letters.
It was almost evening by now and we were getting a little cranky, but then, we realised that we still have a Sci-Maths class and a chess one too. So, we logged into Mugdha teacher’s class, where we learnt about planets and deserts and animals and cactus (we don’t know that the plural is ‘cacti yet, but Baba does not want to confuse us at this point). Mugdha teacher makes us write stuff in our notebooks. These are the ones we got from Ajoba after he passed. They are the best notebooks in the world. We also used Baba’s pencils, which he guards zealously, but pretends that he did not see us using one if he walks past.
Then, it was chess time. Yay! We love chess. And Priyanka teacher guided us through some really difficult strategies (we don’t know what that word means, but we presume it is an important word; maybe we shall look it up tomorrow), and solved some puzzles with us. But since it was well past our ‘study’ time, we were bored and sleepy. We think postponed classes are the most boring things in the world.
Finally, it is all over, and we don’t feel like revising or practising anything. We shower (Mamma practices 1 to 10 in Mandarin with us while she bathes us) and change into our nightclothes.
Baba asked us for a debrief, and we oblige. He records a video. We are too tired to protest. It’s dinner time (we have cornflakes in milk with sugar) and then off to the bathroom to brush our teeth, do susu, and go to bed. To dream of rainbows. And butterflies.
#LearningWithKymaia
