Syona's Dream Academy

The last couple of weeks have been an adventure. Syona started going to school and as much as we thought that she was independent and ready for school, those first few days put us (mainly Syona) through the ringer.

That said, I think the transition could have been smoother and that we should have stuck with our first instinct. The story goes like this, we visit 4-5 schools around the area and ended up likely this one school call myDreamAcademy in cupertino. We like the neatness, teachers/front desk, and the cameras.

However, when it came time to enroll, the toddler program was about to shut down at that site (due to not enough kids), and we were referred to the sister school (same owner, different location). After a cursory look and kind of being put on a spot to decide, we just went with it. Bigger premises, and the one floating teacher we spent talking to on the visiting day was nice. Month later when it came to bringing Syona to school, the main teacher in the room assigned didn't meet our same type of TLC requirement. We gave it a try and after 2 days of constant crying and a weekend of Syona's acting out we knew that we needed to rectify the situation. Then, to keep long story short, we talked to the owner and found out that the Cupertino location is open for toddlers and decided to move back there. Turns out that the teacher we talked to in the 2nd location is now going to be main teacher there.

Side note, the interesting story is during this period of time when Syona went to school, she got really attached to her hat such that all morning and afternoon, she would keep her HAT on. She would keep it on as her security at least until we pick her up. Right before I drop her off to school, she would ask for it to be put on when we got into the car...

Fast forward to today, Syona has now been in this new location for over 1 week and her transition here as been wonderful. She immediately took to the new place and people much faster and better. The good thing is that we can peek in on her any time through this webcam that we have (see her napping, eating, playing, etc...) The main measure is that she is back to having fun over the weekends and weeknights. What a relief!

She still rather stay and play at home, but she knows that it's okay to go to school and is not scared of the place any more.

Good things to note, when doing this transition, it's a good idea to set up a friendly routine. Spend more time in the morning, dressing/feeding/playing. Make sure that the little one knows that she will be cared for, hand kid off to caring teacher to be picked up so that she is comfortable, sing a song of choice before leaving the room. Of course, don't forget the HAT (or any other security item) :)

Montessori at Home

So after visiting all the different preschools, we decided to invoke the Montessori (allowing children to learn through self direction and exploration with guidance) at home. I used basic materials in our house (baking pans, golf balls, corks, old containers, beans, plastic cups, paper cards, etc) and made her 5 basic lessons. I may have blogged about this before, I can't remember. It's been about 3 months since I first made the lessons. But she still wants to do them at least every other day and has really mastered some of them really well. What really impresses me is how she can recognize numbers out of order. Oh and she remembers to always do her lessons on her mat. If someone sits down with her with lessons without the mat, she goes to get it.

So many changes...

In Life and in Syona that we haven't kept up with the blog! Since we last left off, Syona has turned 18 months, Masi and Bij have got engaged! And Paul and Shilpa went to Paris for the first time leaving Syona at home with her ba and dadu.

Paris was great. I cried in the plane missing her, but soon as we settled down to some nice meals and good wine, the tears subsided and it was certainly nice relaxing for a change. I think the first night we slept in until 2PM. We hadn't slept like that since Syona was born, it was fantastic. We missed her terribly but she did well with Ba and Dadu and even though she asked for us a few times a day, she never cried for us which was reassuring.

Syona now not only can count to 20 she has a really strong grasp on what counting means. At my mom's house she counts all the dadu's in the golf picture which is really cute.

She can spell her own name now S*Y*O*N*A - we have to put some videos up here on that front. And we are teaching her her last name also.

When she was 17 months, she took her easter eggs and laid them out on her block toy like this. We thought it was pretty artistic of her to put those two toys together.