At one point of time, when V’s  dinosaur obsession was at a peak, the question of why we can’t see them anymore came up very often. We explained to her how they are extinct now. But also that they were real, because we can see their fossils.

“How does an animal become extinct?”

This was a question she kept coming back to. And we kept asking her of possible reasons. She knows about death ( thanks to mosquitoes we kill every night) and figured out it was possible that all dinos just dropped down dead.

Luckily, the Usborne book of dinosaurs has a page on how T-Rexs fought amongst themselves and many died. V accepted this argument for Trex but she still wanted to know how vegetarians like Brachiosaurus could die out. We explored the possibility of something catastrophic like Ice age and she considered it for a few weeks. Recently, we saw the movie Ice Age and she has warmed up(pun unintended) to the idea.… Click to read the rest

After plenty of thermal sensory play, V knew the difference between hot and cold. Soon, V started noticing the differences in temperatures, and that the weather changes everyday. We are blessed to stay in a place where we get to witness plenty of sunshine, rain, cold and storms.

“Where does the rain come from, ma?”

V can sit and watch the rain for hours on end. When the weather forecast for the day used to read rains, she would be bummed, but would sit and watch them at the window happily. One fine day, she asked us where the rains came from. We answered, “the clouds”. After a week of observing different colored and different shaped clouds, she deduced that when we have grey clouds in the morning, we invariably have rain that day.

“But how do the clouds get rain ma?”, she asked. We learnt a little about evaporation and did a simple cotton squeeze activity to reinforce the concept.… Click to read the rest

It wasn’t until V was close to 18months that she started showing signs of interest towards vehicles. It was more an obsession to try out all the possible vehicles.

From the time she was a colicky baby, car rides have always calmed her. But her first fascination for a vehicle was that for aeroplanes. Her first question was “why do we need vehicles?” Well, one visit to the Vandalur zoo with over 2 hours of walking took care of that question!

Why are there so many different vehicles?

She figured this out herself when we did land, air and water units in geography. That some vehicles can work only in some places. And also that some have specific uses- like the water tankers, garbage collector trucks, public buses, etc. I’ve listed a few play ideas we did, on this topic.

Gross motor skills

This is a real fun activity one can start as soon as the child gains confidence in walking.… Click to read the rest