Recently we visited Ishaan's school for parent teacher meeting and Ishaan's teacher Ms. Angie gave us Ishaan's feedback on few broad categories, as listed below.
1. Social Behavior : They call Ishaan as the mayor of the class, he is the one who insures no one does anything wrong, he follows all the rules and asks everyone to do the same. He never opposes a plan, so if teachers asks everyone to go out and play he will ensure that everyone follows the instructions. He is a good friend to everyone but is best friend to just one, Dillon, whom he will follow religiously and wait for him to finish his task so that they both can play. Ishaan also has a couple of followers in the class but we dont hear much from Ishaan about them and they madly follow Ishaan.
2. Language: We were told Ishaan is very good at language, he has good command on his words and uses right words to communicate. He is a bit ahead of his age as far as language is concerned, he is never shy in his group, usually loud and frank to communicate his likes and dislikes.
We feel language also includes being able to communicate by different ways, speaking different languages, hence we have been working to teach him hindi but haven't yet found any success. He is very comfortable talking in English and always prefers using it unless we strictly tell him not to speak English, only then he will try few words in Hindi. Since last few days we have been playing hindi game in car where everyone has to reply in Hindi, Ishaan is trying but at times he will ask us how should I say this in Hindi. We have also been trying 3 words (usually verbs) in hindi before he goes to bed, so we will discuss the meaning of a word in hindi and make several sentences of it. Hope he learns some hindi before we visit India in coming month.
Another important language that we try is language of expressions, when we ask Ishaan to express different feeling without speaking anything like express happy, sad, surprise he is very good at expressing all these feelings.
3. Maths : We were told Ishaan is fond of numbers, he is very good at them and knows most of the numbers, again he is much ahead of his age on this skill. But one thing that he will really need now is writing so that he can record and remember, to improve on his skill. We were recommended several activities that would help in strengthening his finger so that he can hold the pencil and write. Never thought those exercises are so important for a kid to write.
With maths we have always tried to pick Ishaans brain with most complex scenarios, at times before he goes to bed we discuss about shopping items and I ask him to count, teach him addition and subtraction and further to make his memory sharp I assign a name (one of his friend's name) to all his car and then scatter then ask him to pick them one by one and call it by name. He can remember 20-22 names assigned to his car at a time, its a very interesting activity. Also have started playing games like criss cross, snakes and ladder so that he can play more and more with numbers.
4. Miscellaneous: Other observations were Public speaking, Decision making, creative thinking and he was good at all those activities as well.
Recently at home me and Ishaan made a schedule that we refer for our daily projects. The schedule gives Ishaan a sense of responsibility to complete all the tasks assigned to him. It mostly targets at finishing all his activities by himself without any help, like complete his letter chart, take bath and finish his dinner before I come back from Gym and then we both will sit to do a science project everyday. Although we call it a science project but it includes everything a few examples of what we do are
1. Making and boat and floating it on water
2. Generating static electricity using a comb
3. Talking and referring a chart to understand human body and different organs in body.
4. Understanding gravity and magnetism
5. Taking about different countries and finding them on Map.
Etc etc.
He is always very excited about the science project and waits for me to come and talk about it. Although learning for Ishaan will be an ongoing process and he will learn at each stage of his life, but everyday when you see him learning something new and reacting to it, the kind of excitement you see in his eyes is memorable and that is what motivates me to come up with new ideas everyday that would surprise him.
