Today I am publishing a draft saved from June 27, 2013....
I have been having a ton of summer fun with the kids since the end of the school year. This summer, Shreya will be taking a break from attending summer camps. Till last summer, she had no choice but to attend camp so I could play with Aditya and train/ feedback volunteers. I decided that this year would be different. With both kids home, we all wanted a little structure to our day. I came up with the idea of having my own summer camp with a different theme each week.
The first week, we started with the theme "India". We learnt to read and write Marathi, played games typically played in India, cooked Indian snacks, dressed up, played Bollywood music and danced! A fun four hours each day!
The theme this week was "Play to grow" We played, played and played! On Thursday, we went on a field trip to the Tech Museum. This trip was miles removed from the one we took about 6 months ago! I cannot contain my excitement and decided to share it with everybody here!
I started off asking the kids how long they wanted to be at the museum. Shreya wanted to spend three hours, Aditya one. We negotiated it to 2 hours. Aditya would have a turn to pick activities for the first 30 minutes, followed by Shreya and then keep going in 30 minute increments. We left around noon, after a heavy brunch. We also decided to have our late lunch (which I had packed) on our way back, to save on time. With all agreements in place, we headed out.
Walking to the museum after parking the car, I happened to mention that the building in front of us was the downtown library branch, the one which had Mickey Mouse books available when we had last checked online. Aditya jumped up with joy and wanted to change the plans for the day! But we stuck our original plans:)
Once inside the museum, Aditya chose to go to downstairs, I guess, because he loves the earthquakes exhibit. As we walked by, I encouraged them to read about the different hands-on activities going on. He saw a hands-on workshop designing doodling robots! He chose that as his activity for the first half hour. He was completely engaged, enthusiastic and raring to go, asking volunteers appropriate questions, not holding back if he didn't understand and clarifying if he had a doubt. I have never seen him as proud as today, when he built the robot!
Shreya then got to choose her activities. Aditya was fully engaged and enthusiastic about her activities too. When he saw that the next activity she was moving to was crowded, he decided to stay where he was and later joined us, when the crowd had receded. Just like Shreya, he was fascinated by the Google Earth app where he could go places like Mount Everest, Taj Mahal and his own home :) He even explored the various land forms on Mars and wondered how they took pictures in valleys on Mars!
By the time he chose his next activity, we were at the museum for almost an hour and a half. He voted to stay longer. Since we had left our lunch in the car, I surprised the kids with a visit to the cafe. We haven't had random outside food for a really loooooong time and both were amazed that I got an order of French fries for everyone to share. (To be honest, this was the second time ever we ate french fries!) Then I gave them some organic mint I pulled out of the purse :) I decided to keep my beliefs about food away and see how he did. And guess what, he was teary eyed and said that he felt like any other family!
We then moved to the energy exhibit. He approached it like a science experiment and was so absorbed in changing different parameters and analyzing the results that it amazed me. He also was able to clearly explain what his hypothesis was, how it was wrong (or at times correct), why he thought it was wrong and how he changed the next steps based on the results he now saw. I had never seen him give so much thought to the whys and relating them to the results before!
We ended the day experiencing earthquake simulations based on actual earthquake data, including magnitude, movement, and duration of the earthquake.
As we walked out, sister asked to visit the gift shop. Aditya wandered around till he found a "Motors and generators" kit on sale. He wanted to use his money to buy it. I suggested that we look up the price online. We entered a deal that he could get it here if it was cheaper than Amazon. He then called up Baba to find out how much it cost on Amazon. Beaming with joy as he hung up, he announced that he could get it!
We got back home really exhausted but sooooo happy! As soon as we entered, he was so charged up to start his experiments that he walked into the kitchen, looked around and came to me saying, "Thankfully you cooked dinner before we left, now you can supervise me while I work on my experiments :)"
As of now, he is through with 20 of the 25 projects! He is reading instructions, UNDERSTANDING what he reads and following directions .. simply AMAZING!!!
