As promised to Chellu I finished my cooking real fast today to be able to take the girls to Aditi Garden on our way back from her camp. The girls were very happy & kept reminding me that today there should not hurry.
We visited it from the Deccan Harvest side and chanced upon a tree fully abloom with beautiful orange flowers. A lot of them were fallen down & so it struck me that we could gather these flowers & others to try to make home-made dye/color. The Mystery of Blue is a story book that talks about traditional dye making in India and that's what came to my mind when I saw all the diffn colors of flowers. On sharing my idea with the girls they were as usual very enthusiastic. Chellu immemdiately remembered the name of the little girl in the story as Kanku and we talked a little about it. I chose a shady spot and the girls went about collecting the flowers with great enthusiasm. One thing led to the other & they soon started to collect leaves ( for green), dried leaves ( for brown), pink flowers ( for pink)..Chellu even crushed the pink petals in her fingers & was thrilled to note that pink dye does come out!! then came twigs and seed pods etc..Finally they were off collecting their favorite - baby coconuts and stuffing it into their pockets!
I always love taking them to Aditi Garden and leaving them loose..They invariably end up checking out a lot of plants and other stuff- a lot of observation & reporting and collection happens automatically. I think this is real science. Where one's curiosity is piqued.
After all the collection they wanted a picnic from the snack that Chellu had saved in her camp. We chose a cool spot & sat down. We tried out a small thing from Science Play! I asked the kids to go hug the trees nearby and tell me their experience. They did so & precisely labeled the coconut bark as soft & the other tree as rough. I asked them as to what the tree told them and kunju went" Amma it asked me to take it to the park to do jhoola!" & Chellu went" Amma it asked me to go away from here since there is a lot of smell" ( from the recycled water used to water plants in Magarpatata). When asked what was the uses of trees they gave some very interesting answers..Kunju answered that the coconut tree gave coconut..Chellu gave a few uses of the coconut tree- monkeys use the shell to scoop & eat stuff ( again from a story), the brown hair on top of the coconut can be used in art & craft for representing a brown moon , it can also be painted white & then be used a white moon. then it was Kunju's turn..she said that one can paint their hands with pink paint and make its impressions on the bark..she showed it with action ....I loved their out of the box thinking..this is what i really want !! ;)) We then talked about how villagers use the coconut hair for washing vessels and the ecological sense behind it and recycling of water in Magarpatta.
We talked briefly about what we could do tomorrow when Chellu asked if we could act as animals..She asked us to mention our favorite animals..myself- elephant, her- giraffe & kunju- Rory the tiger ( again from a story)..She mentioned that we could act like these animals waking up in the morning, eating their favorite foods which she mentioned precisely ( sugarcane, leaves from treetops & hunted animals) respectively & then going to sleep in the forest..Then came a request for acting like butterflies back home. Kunju wanted to do drama of amma tiget, appa tiger, akka tiger and thangai ( younger sister) tiger too...Well i guess this evening will see a lot of theater in my house!! :))
We read the "Desert Contest" in the afternoon and talked a lot about desert life, how diffn life forms conserve water,God's wonderful & clever design, water scarcity etc...
I look forward to another day at Aditi Garden! One of my favorites of HSing..Nature study. :))
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