Changing perceptions- one book at a time

On a day when several women across the world marched in unison to stand up for their rights, we in our own little way felt empowered. My three year old picked up this book from the library  “Every-Day Dress-Up” by Selina Alko. From the name of it,I just dismissed it as yet another girly book alluring the  little girls into a world of princesses but I was WRONG! This book is amazing. This is probably the first picture book for girls I have read that goes beyond the princess. The book basically talks about how a young girl’s mom lets her dress up as a real life women – aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart , Justice Sonia Sotomayor, chef Julia Child etc. Many thanks to my inquisitive daughter, I was excited to actually learn more about these women myself.Had to answer her questions on what they did and how they did it. This book has now  inspired me to look out for books that offer our girls a diversity of thought on hero(ine) figures to adore and look up to.The search is on....

Kitchen Inspired Solar System

My three year old daughter has been learning about the Solar System in her pre-school this week.I was very elated to find her asking questions and it was one such question in the kitchen which was the inspiration for this super fun Solar System project. Through this project she learnt
1.Relative Size of each planet
2.The order of planets from the Sun
3.Some fun facts about each planet

While I was making dough for chapati,she asked me pointing to a ball of dough if this were earth how would Mars be? Soon one thing lead to another and the next three days we were both kept inspired and engaged in making a salt dough solar system. Here's how it went

Day 1-Learning the colors of the Planet

I got her to color the planets in the solar system,we picked up this one from the internet.
P.S: Pluto is no longer considered a planet in the solar system and has been reduced to a dwarf planet.My daughter was taught the same at school and so she asked me to cut the dwarf planet Pluto off. She's a little picky:-). For the purpose of this project we maintained that the solar system has only 8 planets.

After some googling we chose to color the planets as below since it appears there is no consensus among the various google sources on the colors.

Chosen Planet colors

Planet	Color
Mercury	Grey
Venus	Mix of yellow,white and orange
Earth	Blue with a little white to show clouds
Mars	Red
Jupiter	Light Brown and light Orange
Saturn	Dark Orange with little brown.The wings yellow
Uranus	Dark Blue
Neptune	Light blue

This formed the basis for coloring our future dough planets.

Day 2-Learning the sizes of the planet and creating them

We decided to make the dough planets the next day.Since we planned to keep them as a memory, we decided to make them from salt dough,we had previously made foot prints for fathers day from the same.
Recipe for salt dough
1 Cup Maida
1/2 cup Salt
Little less than 1/2 cup water

We mixed all the ingredients to form a chapati like dough.Then we made the planets.For the sizing of the planets,we decided to go by relative sizing as in if Mercury(smallest planet currently in the Solar system)was dimension of 1,Mars was 2,Earth and Venus were around 5,Uranus and Neptune around 10,Jupiter around 20 and Saturn just a little smaller than Jupiter.If you want to follow accurate measures you could use the sizing mentioned in this site.We also added a small wing to Saturn.
Once the planet balls(yes we retained our chapati inspiration) were made we set them to bake at 450.The larger planets(jupiter,Saturn,Neptune and Uranus) were kept for 10 minutes and the smaller for 4-5 minutes since they began to turn black.You can also do the smaller ones in the microwave for 3 minutes though you will need to let them cool down a bit.

Once the planets cooled down(hehehe feels funny to put it that way with global warming on the rise),my daughter began coloring them based on the sheet we prepared the day before.We used Washable Colors,the only ones I feel safe giving her.We then let them dry overnight.

Day 3 -Putting the planets in orbit

Honestly when we started out,the idea was to simply have fun but on day 3,we decided why not go one stretch and put together a display for her pre-school class.Since we didn't want to make a Sun as well(Sun=lots of dough),my daugther with some help figured the spelling of sun and wrote in a sheet of paper and colored it yellow.I cut that into a quarter circle.Inspired by this picture on google,we cut out a piece of black cardboard and began drawing out some orbits from one corner where we stuck the sun.Then came the super fun part.I asked her to pick out the planets we made and place in the orbits in correct order.She did a great job of not only remembering their names but also the order.Grandad helped stick the planets on the orbit and finally added some tiny label for each planet.

We have been having a lot of fun referring to this model each time we read a book about Space. My husband was shocked when my daughter pointed to one side of earth and said "Our house is here daddy.Thatha's house is here( pointing to the other side),thats why we go in airplane for 1 day. They also live on earth".She of course added "Everybody lives on earth but not the bad guys".Well that is just wishful thinking for now.We had a fun filled week and a great inspiration to get me to blog after more than 6 long years.

An inspiring night....

Whats more blissful than having a driving dream that wakes you up every morning feeling that today is yet another opportunity to get closer to it.Sometimes like a weary hungry traveler,I am constantly looking for inspiration that brightens the fire within and directs it towards a purposeful course.Last night was one such day.

I was attending a fund raising event for a non profit organization called the Junior Achievement.The guest of honor,Andy Ball CEO of Webcor Builders narrated on how education was today becoming a privilege from being a human right as stated by UN.It hurts to realize then that only a few amongst us even has the opportunity to work towards our true potentials and dreams.When Andy pointed out the statistics in US of the number of high school drop-outs and the number of people actually graduating,it made me think about back home.While keeping students motivated to continue education is a problem in the US,even to get a child to see the very interior of a school is an issue in India.The bigger issue back home is not about inspiring kids but about making education more accessible to the many who only dream about basic amenities like food and clothing.It reminds me how a friend of mine always told "what will a beggar hungry and tired choose-a soul stirring poem or a bowl of rotten food".Such is the case back home.Even the mid-day meal system has failed to get the hungry kids to school.And add to that food poisoning by providing sub-standard food...Sub-standard staff and course curriculum are a different thing altogether.Lets not get into that now....

I sat there listening to how Andy was inspired as a little kid to pursue his dreams and be motivated and later went on to become such an inspiring leader.Then came the anecdote about Diego Perez an enterprising middle school student.His brimming confidence and networking skills just made me feel so small.Hats off to Junior Achievement for striving to inspire future leaders.

I dreamed....

I dream that one day I would be making a significant difference by my existence in this world.I dream some day I know what I was born for and cling on to that mission dearly cause what is life without a purpose to die for:-)