GULMOHAR DIARIES

 

 

 

We are, by the grace of God completing our first month with our children. It is so gratifying to witness transformation in the children as well as in ourselves. The children are our biggest gift, the joy of our lives. We started with four on the 3^rd of March, 2009, Abdul Rahman, Sachchal, Roohal and Mohammad. We added a few on the way—two little visitors joined us—Kabir Ali is visiting from London with his mother and little sister for a month, and has joined us for that duration, and Ibrahim has come to us for a few days with his mother and baby brother Daood, while he is on Spring break from his regular school. Little Aziza joined us for a few days, but by virtue of being just a baby of a year, found it a little tough to cope with four boys, although one could see her holding her own when someone tried to grab her toys. It certainly helps being the youngest of four siblings!

   We have been trying out various rhythms to see what works best for our children. Initially, it was hard for them to let go of their mothers. Our garden outside provides a lots of opportunities for jumping and running around, but we needed more than that. So we decided to dig a sandpit, which the children helped with. When the pit was dug, there was a bonus—we had a mountain of earth on the side, which was perfect for climbing and jumping and digging. The unfilled pit was great because it invited them to jump in and out. Gradually we saw the tentative ones, who wouldn�t climb down the steps without holding their mothers� hand, jumping quite happily in and out. I must say, I was a little sorry when the donkey carts of sand came!!  

    It seemed that the children initially started their day better with being outdoors. Mohammad, especially, found it hard to manage indoors if he didn�t have enough outdoor time. Moreover, he is very attached to his nanny, whom he wouldn�t let go of. He is our youngest one. Gradually, we got the nanny to be where he wasn�t and now she goes home after dropping him off. Today, he asked very casually where she was and I said she would be back. He was absolutely satisfied and went about happily with what he was doing.

  Our rhythm of the day has changed completely from when we started and now seems to be a very healthy one. We start indoors—the children come in, change into their indoor shoes and join in the free play. The teachers are preparing for the next festival, which will be the spring kite festival. The children can join in the cutting and pasting of the kites. Meanwhile, the rest of them are busy with their play, which is becoming more and more social. Farah has a house ready for them made with tying coloured muslins to the stands, and the dolls are inside, waiting for the children. They love to ride on the boat together. They love to create rhythms on the drum to my clapping and stamping rhythms. The social play also sometimes involves a royal king with his sword. The younger ones still like to play with the hobby horse. The stones make good cargo for the train. It is very wonderful to have them come to me while I am finger knitting to �catch the worms�. Their dexterity is improving day by day. The meal of the day is prepared together at the table. They love baking buns, kneading the dough and forming the buns; they love to chop vegetables which they bring for the soup on our little animal shaped cutting boards. The joy with which they help with making the apple crumble is directly proportional to the faces they pull when its time to eat it. I think we need to change the menu for Fridays. The most popular days by far are Rice Day and Fruit Day.

  Besides preparing for the meals, we have painting day on Mondays, where we do wet on wet water colour painting, accompanied by the story of the little old man with the big bushy beard who comes out and dips his beard into the blue water and then  brushes it on a tree bark. The old man, of course, is the paintbrush with his bushy bristles. The lake is the blue paint and the bark, the paper. It is lovely to watch the children painting meditatively, but we have discovered that a moment of inattention can have the whole table under a deluge of blue water very soon. Thursday is our day for caring for the room, and we carefully wash and dry all our toys and water the plants, including the wheat grass that we are growing on the window sill. Fridays is clay modeling, where we help an old couple who live inside the ground, to build bricks and other stuff for building their house. They seem really to put in a lot of their forces into fashioning the clay.

   After free play, the �Wash hands� song is sung, and the children are taken two by two to the washroom. Then its time to clean up our room, and we do it to an Urdu song as well as to an English one. It is wonderful to gradually see them become aware of their surroundings. They now help with the clean up somewhat and have an awareness of where things have their resting places. They have even begun to want to help in folding the cloths.

  With a beautifully tidy room, we come into our morning circle and sing our Good Morning song, followed by Farah�s little body geography verse. They now manage to hold hands in a circle and do the morning opening quite well, even saying the words with the gestures. Then it is time for our meal and we all gather around the table. The table is laid beautifully with little mats and napkins and little felt coasters. The beautiful beeswax candle, a gift from a Canadian friend is our biggest joy at the table. It is, of course, a very quiet and shy candle, and only brings her candle light to us if we are very quiet at the table. So the candle and smoke fairies together bring the candlelight to us to the candlelight song. We then hold hands and sing the blessing and a little prayer. Then everyone is served with their meal which we have prepared earlier. Ideally we want to hear just munching sounds, because the candle fairies can otherwise decide to take our candlelight away. That ensures some semblance of order, for they love the candle. We usually have a story to share, which we call �The story of yesterday�, to which the children can contribute. After the meal, we again hold hands and say thank you for the meal. The blowing out of the candle is the highlight of the day when all join in to do �Huff, Puff and Blow� to blow out the candle. The candle loves us so much, that she finds it hard to leave u      s and usually has to be persuaded to go by repeated huffing and puffing.

  From the table, we move right into our circle time, which starts with the Cobblers� song, followed by our beloved Mousie coming out to welcome each of us. Mousie is a little knitted mouse who lives in our knitted toy basket. The other day, as I was knitting on my rocking chair, Farooq moved something, and a real mouse jumped out. Apparently, he had come to visit his little cousin in the basket. There, was of course, much excitement, and our little Mousie is quite a celebrity, with visitors coming to visit him and all. Our circle time has become simply a joy to behold. Earlier, we were even having a little puppet show after circle, but found that the children could not manage both. So we cut out the puppet show, having decided to have a week of puppet show after two weeks of circle. The circle was a challenge before, with the children wandering off. It has suddenly come together beautifully, and almost everyone now knows all the songs and they love to sing and do the gestures. They especially love the Urdu songs and the finger songs. We have just introduced the Movement journey with the old man with the funny feet where the old man�s family all walk with funny feet. They love walking with their toes out, or on their heels and toes. After the movement games we join hands and come together. I tell them to quietly sit on the steps and change their shoes. They have become very orderly with that and then we make a train and go outside for outside play.

  The outside energy is very different from the indoor energy. We have added a lot of cut logs and unbalanced pieces of wood to their play. We make an obstacle course with a wobbly �bridge� which they must cross to get to the other side of the river. They then jump in and out of a lake made of blue rope. Then they have a forest path of leaves through which they have to journey to a big mountain log which they cross over. They have lots of challenges to meet on the way—ropes under which they have to crawl like caterpillars and jump over, sometimes two ropes. Their jumping has improved immensely. Now they can jump larger and larger stretches of rope. We also have a hanging ladder and a climbing one as well as a swinging log. The sandpit has many shovels and bowls which have endless possibilities. The garden needs a lot of tending, and we are creating with the children, a vegetable patch, which they have helped to form by digging out the rose bushes and planting them elsewhere and creating the grooves for the seeds. Our earth mountain is marvelous for kneading and preparing mud sculptures. There is a raining tree whose leaves must be gathered and a compost heap to which they get added. Mohammad has created a wonderful game for us. He wants to be rolled in our reed mat as a Kabab roll, and the others can sprinkle on onions and other condiments with the leaves lying around. Now they all love to become Kabab rolls or hot dogs. The garden is a haven for butterflies and bees these days and we have many ladybugs to admire and play with.

  Wednesday is our walk day, and this week for the first time, we made a train and went outside, crossed the road and went into the park. We walked along the path admiring the flowers, and then found a lovely little part of the park, which is hedged in and quite protected. So the train was parked and the passengers could run freely. They had so much fun, just running free, chasing each other and playing blind man�s bluff. They also found a high bench to jump off—there was quite a queue to manage. We had a picnic of bread and water, and then headed back.

  We celebrated the festival of Eid Milad Nabi, the birthday of our Prophet, peace be upon him, on the 10^th of March, quite soon after we started our school. We are trying to find meaningful festivals to celebrate through the year with our children. Without making an overtly religious statement, we decided that it was a very important festival to celebrate. We had been making lanterns with the children, and on the day itself, we had no school in the morning. The children came with their parents, aunts and grandparents at dusk. The room had been darkened and we had a central basket with some lit diyas and roses. The room smelled beautiful with incense and the roses. The children�s lanterns had been lit and were arranged around the central arrangement of the roses and diyas. Around that were cushions for the children and then chairs for the grown ups in a circle. The children each took their lanterns and went outside with their parents. Outside, a path had been created with leaves and flowers, and the children, holding their parents� hand, walked quietly along the garden on the path. We came around to the sandpit, which had been transformed into a magical place of sand dunes and floating flowers, and flickering diyas. It was simply beautiful. We made a circle, from the darkness into the light and everyone was welcomed by me. Then we quietly filed indoors and took our places around the lit diyas. Farooq told a very simple story of our Prophet�s (PBUH) birth, about how all the birds and animals and plants rejoiced at his birth. We then went to the table, made a circle and sang the blessing. We then had some dates and oranges, washed down by mint tea. It was a lovely, magical evening. We sat around while Saleema and Zainab charmed us by singing us Sindhi folk songs to the beat of the Duff. It was really hard for us to disassemble everything that night, and long after the children had left, Farah, Farooq and I sat quietly by the flickering lights and roses by the sandpit, drinking in the magic.