Hello parents,
Wish you all a very happy “Ganesh Festival”.
I hope you are at home, safe and enjoying the company of your little ones that you were craving for since his/her birth. And it’s real fun to be with your family especially during festive time.
Regarding this pandemic, right from March till now we see the shift in the mindset of people. Initially any new case that we heard in our town used to scare us so much. It was difficult to adjust our self to this new situation. Children were not ready to stay in house and wanted to go back to their routine of visiting school, neighbors, park and so on.
Eventually online sessions started and in no time children became pro in using technology. Everything that was new during first few months became new normal for them as well as for us. And now we are so conditioned that we have made up our mind to stay with “CORONA”.
During all these phases I watched different videos of children doing home chores. They helped in cleaning the house, folding clothes and even exploring cooking.
Recently I saw a video sent by one of my relative. In this video two sisters, Radhika and Natasha age 8 and 5 respectively were trying to make Pizza. Radhika, the elder sister kneaded the dough, chopped the vegetables, rolled the dough (which she was finding very difficult initially as the dough was hard to roll), applied sauces, grated cheese.During this whole process Natasha was cutely explaining the recipe and recording the video.
The mother was around but was not seen in the video.
The toughest task was when Radhika had to shift the rolled dough to the preheated pan for baking. She was not able to pick it up and shift to the pan. After several attempts she finally succeeded. Natasha was cheering her up for this successful attempt. What I loved the most was her running commentary, cheering her Didi Radhika and their beautiful chemistry.During this whole process though mother was around, she did not offer any help to both of them, neither she instructed nor interfered.
The girl used knife, turned on the gas and made pizza without any help from adult.
I felt there is lot to learn from this video.
- Children imitate. The girls must have seen their mother trying recipes from YouTube
- Allow children to take challenges. The girls used knife, grater, gas which can be very risky at this age. But with proper guidance, they can be empowered to use them.
- Last but not the least, facilitate them, guide them but do not interfere and over instruct at all. Do not expect great results at one go. Did we ever master anything at one go? We used trial and error method, Right? Though Radhika was finding difficulty in rolling the dough, shifting it to pan, the mother who was around, didn’t offer any help and Radhika struggled hard to complete the task.