Crosswords for Crossing the World

Recalling our childhood days,most of us may have funny experiences with crosswords. How many encyclopedias and dictionaries have been referred by us for getting a single suitable word ! We rubbed and scratched again and again !! All times we missed the prizes awarded by our children's magazines !! Yet we were waiting for the next crosswords !!!Here I remember many faces including the loving face of my catechism teacher of the fourth standard, who helped me  to write ' video' on a crossword instead of I am writing ' radio', when videos were not familiar to our villages.


Yesterday I myself prepared a simple crossword as a part of playing with her! She enjoyed filling it and 'painted' my drawings too.

I had no idea that a kindergarten child, who has just started to read and write the alphabets will love  crosswords. But she loved it, tried to fill it up curiously just looking at the pictures and telling vaguely ; b-for  ball, 'a' is written here...help me to fill...am I to write downwards now... A crossword is a powerful  equipment for beginning kids.

This game has enough internal motive to fill even a simple child with joy,enthusiasm and the spirit of a normal game, since most of the newly invented games are for making the children abnormal !!  !!!  !!!! 

A game with words,with an aim to conquer the world. That is why everybody likes crosswords. It is a measure of their word power as well as their knowledge curve. It is programmed with a two dimensional system of  applying knowledge and at the same time achieving it. Many brilliant people around the globe burns their brains everyday to complete successfully complicated crosswords !!

Dear dads and moms,

1. It is a game,where gambling always fails. So,it has a moral value.
2. Children always follow their parents or elder ones, quenching for the answers or clues. It has a social value too.
3. More over it has the well known intellectual value.

Help your child to follow crosswords from their initial stages.See how much he/she is interested in using and connecting the alphabets he has just learned.  Many daily crossword problems available on internet too,suitable for the tastes of  our naughty kids.

Monkey,Crocodile and the Colourful Strawberries

I don't actually remember, when we started to tell her the evergreen story of  monkey and crocodile. She loved the story very much and it is wonderful that every child likes this story than most other Panchatantra  stories.Their hero may be the brave monkey, foolish and innocent crocodile or...?!! She demanded the story everyday before going to sleep.

At last,but the story led her to make there a 'calamity'! She wanted to have the reddish beautiful athi fruits (fig fruits). I have seen many times her eyes glittering and face expanding when I describe the sweet 'athi fruits'. The image of those fruits were very strong in her little mind. The crocodile's greedy wife says ; "If athi fruits are so sweet, how sweet will be the heart of the monkey, who eats it everyday".

She cried, wept and even became angry on the matter of getting fruits. Even all our neighbors knew why my child was crying so loudly.

It was not easy to get some such rare wild fruits. But one day there appeared some reddish beautiful fruits in the fruit stall. They were strawberries from Munnar hills.
At once a 'false idea' rose in my mind..!


I came home with a pack of it and introduced her them as one 'similar' to athi fruits. She became so excited and started to bite those nice looking fruits.
Her face paled. Those fruits were not at all tasty as they appeared.

I have learnt, how classical conditioning affects child behavior. But the theory makes a sense when it comes to real practical situations. Sometimes such an experience is panic too !!

This incident (or an accident) happened last year. She 'forgot' asking her favourite story again.

Two days ago she saw a wall paper of monkey,crocodile and athi fruits.
She reacted; Those fruits are not so tasty.

I am guilty on my joking .......Her hero was those fruits ?? She was the monkey ??
Now I am that cruel and foolish crocodile too !!
    

Mobiles Cry in Childish Tunes !!!

" Klee, klee, kloo, kloo....where is the sound from ?  Suresh turned back. A myna was sitting on the ground...."                               
(From my textbook, std: 2B, year:1980)


Long after those sweet decades of natural music, now I am living in a dramatic background of artificial sounds,noisy ring tunes and meaningless thoughts. I confess myself,  I am also totally addicted to electronic media!! If  I am so,I have no right to blame a child. But I was totally disturbed on her love to mobile phones.

It has been only six or seven years,since mobile phones started their cracking sounds in our lonely villages. Rapidly their 'ranges' increased. Now mobiles are not rare things. Even every beggar and burglar of the country ( including myself..haha!!) owns it. India is growing as a powerful country,they say, including in  its cellphone markets !!

But slowly most people recognise that this nice looking equipment is as harmful as a nuclear reactor, because of  its colourless and odorless radiations. If it is harmful, how it affects our innocent children ?

There are many studies and contradictory reports on the issue,I have read, favorable to both parties. Somebody says that it affects brain tissues and some reports say not. So it is safer to keep our 'thin-skulled' children away from using mobile phones. The don'ts are more than enough...!!

• Don't allow our little ones to talk on mobiles for more than a  few seconds.
• Keep them away from mobile phone games. It may affect their eye sight.
• Don't allow them to use head phones. It may affect their hearings.

But now a days mobiles are little computers and we cannot prevent them totally and cannot stop the 'future citizen' from using it.

What can we do when a little child quarrels for getting our mobile phones? Hoo.. At last I discovered and my discovery is as important as the Amundsen's discovery of Antarctica. Can you guess...?

Allow her to take photographs using mobile cams !!

 I think it is a comparatively harmless activity and motivating too. Though you are not interested in my discovery, I am very much interested in the photos taken by my child and she is interested in focusing more and more photos...!! Her photo album is to be published soon in Facebook...!!!

Forgot Quizzing Her Everyday ?

Ever thought of  quizzing  your child? I was very much interested once, though she sometimes answered  'Manmohan Singh' instead of 'tiger'.

Yes, I mean nothing but asking questions to your lovely and talkative child. But I know the child asks you hundreds of questions everyday. You always get irritated on her complicated questions and call them meaningless or nonsense !! Why the crow is black? How the cow got four legs? See,they are not meaningless,but what else  would we do if we don't know the answer !!

But we, parents are to be inspired on the stories of the American Indian boy, who won the first prize in the worldwide quiz competition,conducted by the National Geographics!

When the child starts to hear and learn, train her to answer your simple questions such as; The colour of a crow ?Name your country ? President of America ?...??

Though the child wont catch the meaning of your questions initially, the child gets the images slowly when it sees a crow,watches the map of your country or the picture of  Mr.Obama. Our aim is but giving initial inspiration !! Allow the child to be on your laps for a limited time, when you browse on the net.

There have been some 'quiz competitions' between I and my child. Sometimes I am the quiz master and sometimes she is. Thanking her pre-school magazine for introducing an interesting story on quiz competition. It was there we started, I remember. Let it be retold shortly for your child.

"The fox,little Pachu could not win any game in the forest festival. The last item was the quiz competition. He decided to win it anyway ! The fat bear Dhimman was the quiz master. He told the bear that he would supply him enough honey,if he helps. Though first opposed,the bear admitted it on honey matter. The bear taught him only the answers in its order,as the lazy fox suggested. Dhimman got more than enough honey. But when the quiz started, the quiz master forgot the order of the questions on the influence of honey. He asked; which is the largest land animal? Pachu answered 'frog'. The bird laying largest egg? 'elephant'. One that lives in water and land? ostrich. Poor Pachu..the whole forest was laughing at him".

Start with a similar story and see your child becoming excited ! Your simple questions might inspire him to the world of encyclopedias and the mysteries of  the universe !! You can win yourself  when he becomes a great one as a scientist or a professor or a civil service officer in future.  

Festivals And The Children Of The Country

We,all of us,Christians,Hindus,Muslims and every children of the village were waiting for the festival days of the temple. We were familiar with every god and goddess of the temple! Thanking Uncle Pai and Amar Chithra Kadha, for colouring our childhood days with their stories !!

None of  the adults are eagerly waiting for a festival. Festivals are always for children than for adults !! Innocent children can enjoy its virtual reality than any grown up person can. Every festival is a festival of colours,of  light,of sound and most are related to a story or legend of the glorious past. No wonder, why they are the festivals of the children and for the children.

 Christmas is especially a festival for children as it is the 'Happy Birthday' of their beloved Jesus Christ. The birth and childhood days of the saviour of the world is a melodious song for them. It takes them to the centuries of Roman empire and its past. The children sit for hours in front of the cribs. They are in the fantasies of the world created by the shepherds and three 'kings' ! Lights glow everywhere and their Xmas trees shine gloriously. Christmas cakes are the birthday cakes of their little Jesus and they are waiting for the moments with uncle Santa Claus.

I wonder,how nice is the role of children in keeping the communal harmony of a diversified country like India! Children compel their parents to hang stars even in non-christian homes! In 'Onam' festival seasons children of every community compete themselves to make the most beautiful 'pookkalams'. Everyone celebrates 'Holy' in north, which is the festival of colours and 'Dassara' in south,which is a festival of light. I recall what Pope John Paul II remarked on his visit to India that 'the future of  India is with her children'.

Let our children know the legends or 'ithihasas' related to every festivals or celebrations. They should know that the childhood days of  Lord Krishna was not different from that of  Jesus Christ. It  makes his visions broad, brilliant and suitable for the society.   It will make the child to love the country as a whole and the past as a part. Yes, a child and the one who knows the human history cannot discriminate one man from the other !

        

Have You Selected Valuable Toys For Your Children?

Now a days there is no complication in buying a toy for our beloved children.People have enough money to spend comparing with those in former decades.Toys are available in different colours,shapes and sizes,varying in cost from high cost Indian made or Japanese made toys to low cost but attractive Chinese toys.The world of toys grows in high speed and even faster than the growth of emerging Asian markets.Thus every layman is able to buy toys from anywhere.

However as a brilliant father or mother you have to think about the intrinsic value of the toy you have selected.The toy selected by you may be colourful,attractive and suitable for the age of the child.But I ask you about the strategies you have kept in mind,when you select a toy so as to make him/her a brilliant and outstanding one in future!!Let me share my own ideas with you.Toys have both aesthetic and intellectual values.As the aesthetic value helps him to enjoy the beauty of the world around him,the intellectual value helps him to discover the unrevealed facts in the universe.More over,toys have social values too,which helps the child to adjust with his surroundings.

I believe that the first five years make a child best performer in life.Thus as a brilliant parent,you should be well prepared in selecting toys too.A toy you are buying for him should have an intrinsic value whether the toy is cheap or costly.Thus you can introduce building blocks or cubes or cross-words in proper years.It is necessary that you should find some time to spend with him in his games with these bright toys.

Let me conclude with my own experience with a pack of toys.One of my cousin's daughter was presented a set of small and beautiful Chinese toys of wild animals.She kept it for two or three days with her and left it somewhere.Keeping this in mind,before buying the same set of toys for my own child,I had taught her many facts about wild life such as Giraffe is the tallest and Elephant is the largest.Then she was eagerly waiting for getting it and by two or three days,she was able to say that Zebras and Giraffes are found in Africa.Just to introduce Africa to the three year old child,I used a world map downloaded from the net.There were many animals in the set which were not known even to me!We together searched the internet for many days and identified most of them.This also helped her to use the mouse of the computer herself.Even after one year she is interested in playing with and knowing them.Thus the set,which costs only Rs.225 became a most valuable one for both of us.Any of us can guide our children with a toy,if we are able to find an intrinsic value in it,keeping in mind that our guidance is a necessity in forming a future citizen.