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Last year I had written about TuxPaint – a painting and colouring program for Kids used by son in his kinder garden days. In my son’s school (First Standard) last academic year they introduced him to a new program. And that program is “Drawing For Children” written by Mark Overmars and it is free. It seems to be very capable for growing kids to show their creativity. Look in the below screenshot of what my son could do with this program in say 10-15 minutes!
My son’s class in First Standard had an education programme today on Space, Moon & Astronauts. My Son Vaageesh went dressed as a Lunar Astronaut and talked about Lunar Program, first women & first Indian to go to space and so on. Since it was a class programme, we couldn’t record it live, so we recorded it with the costume in our house yesterday. I had the astronaut costume rented for Rs.350 per day from Nathamuni & Sons in Kodambakkam, went to few shops in Mylapore (one near ThanniThorai Market, one near Srinivasa Perumal Koil Lake) but there costumes were not that good. I envy the kids today for the exposure they get with all these programmes!  The poster below was given to my son studying in Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan School (KK Nagar) last year when he was doing his U.K.G. I have been saving this poster to do a blog post and managed to do it only now. The poster talks about simple ways to educate kids about private body parts, hugs, touching and other similar issues. It was issued by Tulir in support with the school.
You can download the posters from Tulir website in English or Tamil or Hindi. I am not an academician or a teacher, even then I fail to understand on how Photoshop can be a theory subject?. It seems it is so in some schools in Chennai (may be in other schools across India) for students of VII standard. See the below notebook of a Class VII student who has written about Photoshop “Brush” and selecting Colours from the textbook. When I saw my niece having a textbook on Photoshop I was curious and on examining it turns out they teach in class “Photoshop” as a theory subject and are expected to answer exams on the same.
I may be biased here, as I didn’t have any formal computer science education and my engineering discipline was Electronics & Communication and all my computer learning have been practical and self-taught. My son, Vaageesh’s sixth birthday was last month. We couldn’t have the birthday party on that day due to various reasons – finally we arranged to have it today and invited his friends few days back. Being a member in TNCA Club, Chennai I decided to have the birthday this time around in my club. The club has a nice spacious hall “VAP HALL” that can comfortably seat about 70+ people. Being our normal practice we had invited only his close friends and family and that was less than half of the capacity, so the kids had a ball playing in the huge vacant hall. My sister had organized for a nice magic show by Mr.Puyal Ganesh (Phone: 044-2474 9138, email: puyalg at gmail.com). Mr.Ganesh did a variety of simple magic tricks that the kids could follow easily, he had them entertained nicely – keeping the mischievous “First” standard kids in their seats is a “magic” by itself which Mr.Ganesh managed to do for most of the time. After the event I managed to have my car keys inside the locked car. It happened this way – I had the car keys in my shoulder bag, so I opened the car, put down the shoulder bag inside the boot and closed it, then suddenly the car got auto-locked. So I had to return home in another vehicle, collect the duplicate key and go back to the club and get the car. What a night it was!
Last Sunday I went with my son to Vandalur zoo (Arignar Anna Zoological park) near Chennai. It is about 25Kms from Chennai city on the NH45 national highway (the same road as Chennai Airport, Tambaram railway station) and driving there is easy once you cross Tambaram. There is ample car parking available inside the zoo premises. The Chennai suburban electric train service is another way to reach there with the station at walking distance from the zoo. The zoo charges for entry are Adults: Rs.20, Children: Rs.10 and for Photo camera: Rs.25. You can see many varieties of animals, birds, fishes in the zoo. The zoo is situated on a large forest land with lot of space for each animals, so the area you need to cover is quite huge. There seems to be lot of vacant areas with no animals and the overall animal count seems to be low compared to the area of the zoo. You can cover the entire zoo in multiple ways:
We went there in the afternoon (in the scorching sun, which was not a good idea) around 1:30PM. By the time we went options 2,3,4 were not available for us – so we took the trip by walk. We saw the animals near the entrance (Monkeys, etc.), then the birds and so on. There are adequate number of resting area (shades) provided for sitting and relaxing, Toilet facilities are okay. The zoo severely lacks in food courts and cafeterias. Inside the zoo area there are a Aavin ice-cream booth, a small snack shop and in the entrance a restaurant Hotel Tamilnadu owned by Tamilnadu Government. After spending nearly two hours walking, we were tired and hungry – we wanted to get some snacks and my son wanted to eat a ‘dosa’. At that time we were half-way inside the zoo, we walked all the way back to the entrance and went to Hotel Tamilnadu hoping for some eatables. To our utter dismay the restaurant was in bad condition (water stagnating on the floor), people having arguments with the billing counter staff (only one for a crowded zoo) and non-availability of any food. They don’t seem to be serving Dosa/Idly or any other light snack – only rice items, veg and non-veg biryani’s which too had ran out very soon. This re-enforced my general view that Governments (that too in India) have no business running a service industry, Hotel industry is a great example of that and you can add Resorts, Airlines to that list. We decided to cut-short our trip and came out of the zoo. The parking lot attendant helped us by suggesting a "Hotel Sangeetha" which was on the other side of the national highway, just opposite to the zoo. We drove down there, had some good Dosas and Fruit-Juice, came back re-energized.
We came back on time (had to buy the entrance ticket again) for our Lion Safari tour. We managed to book this ticket (advance booking for the 4:30PM tour) for the Lion Safari tour. The whole tour lasts for about 20 minutes and runs every hour twice. You are taken in a special caged van to a special enclosed area inside the zoo where lions are free to roam. The vehicle you are in goes very near to the Lions who are oblivious to our presence inside the van. If you are visiting Vandalur zoo don’t miss this tour. If you wish to see the entire zoo, you will need a full day (nearly from dawn to dusk) to cover it. Keep a good pair of walking shoes, sun cap, drinking water, food & eatables.
I have been delaying my promise to take my son to a “Zoo” in Chennai to see animals for few weeks now. Even though today was a Saturday I had some office work to complete (accounting related to be done before 31st March 2009), I completed them in the first half and returned home early. I took my son and we both went to “Guindy Children’s Park”, the Children’s park and the Snake park (same campus) are both part of “Guindy National Park” situated in Adyar. The Guindy National park along with the adjacent IIT Madras campus and Raj Bhavan as seen in the Map here gives Chennai the much needed lung-space with greenery. The last time I went to the park was when I was in school and I hardly remember from that visit, so I was not sure on how good the Children’s park will be. Whether there will be enough parking for cars, will it be too crowded, opening timings, etc. Anyway I decided to go and check it out. I should say I have been pleasantly surprised – there was enough parking (even on a saturday), though there were lot of school excursions we never felt crowded as the place was big enough to accommodate all. The parks seems to be reasonably maintained, with few places you feel the authorities (Tamilnadu Forest Department) could be doing a better job at cleanliness and animal care. We did notice new name-boards and fences and more being built by workers. The parks close by 6PM with the last visitors to be allowed at 5:30PM, we went to the Children’s park first by 4:15PM so we had a comfortable visit to both the parks and was out around 5:45PM. The parks are open on all days except Tuesday. The entry fee for Adults in both Children’s Park and Snake’s Park were Rs.5 each; with the Snake park alone charging for Children that too only Re.1. To see the animals (Hyena, Deers, Peacocks, Birds, Monkeys and others) in the Children Park it took us only about 60 minutes (we went slow and never rushed anywhere) and the next 20-30 minutes in Snake’s park. The Children’s park has animal enclosures and a large area for kids to play. Saravana Stores maintains the only available food-stall/canteen with a limited offering – Popcorn, Juices, Cold-Drinks, Ice-Cream and some snacks. I recommend you wear a comfortable walking shoes so you can walk the full park easily and a cap for the summer days in Chennai. Remember to carry Drinking Water with you. The rest-room facilities are not that clean and are limited in number (we could see some new one’s being built) so please plan accordingly. Overall, if you are in Chennai I recommend a visit here. If you are visiting Chennai, I will suggest you go to Arignar Anna Zoological Park (a.k.a. Vandalur Zoo) which is 30Kms from Chennai and to Chennai Crocodile park in ECR Road (my earlier post here on Crocodile Park).
I have been looking for a good colouring and painting programme that my 5 year old son can use easily. Windows Paint is Okay for beginning, but beyond a point it is very limiting for their creativity. I have tried many of the commercial one’s that you get in CD and DVDs in Bookstores but most of them are little more than being useless. Today I came across a free and Open-Source drawing program for children ages 3 to 12 called TuxPaint. It combines an easy-to-use interface, fun sound effects, and an encouraging cartoon mascot who guides children as they use the program. Last one hour my son is playing with it and seems to like it a lot.
I have a five year old son and it goes without saying that I love him a lot. Last week in his school he had a general health checkup done and his teacher sent us a note saying he has cavities in his tooth(s). We were surprised, and as any other parent we dismissed this as a poor job by the school. My son is allergic to food in general and every meal is a 1 hour ordeal with him. He doesn’t like Ice-Creams or sweets, and it is rare for him to eat even chocolates or cream biscuits. So we thought there was little chance for him to get cavities. Anyway we took him for a visit to our near-by dentist, who diagnosed that he has 8 cavities (one per tooth) and out of which two were more deeper than the rest. Since these are Milk Tooths we assumed we can leave this as it is and they will fall themselves. The dentist educated us on both our misunderstandings:
The first three visits went easy with the dentist doing the easier fillings, two tooths per visit and my son cooperated very well with the doctor. The junior doctor made it interesting for my son, by showing the drilled dusts as “Germs” and telling that she was shooting the germs with water & then filling the gaps with white colour “Cement”. The last sitting when the dentist injected him and did the root canal, my son cried a bit which we managed. After the treatment he is feeling fine now. After two weeks we have to go again for the permanent filling for the last two tooths. Myself and my wife now realize it is our responsibility to teach our son to eat properly and brush his teeth regularly! |
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