My school

So, things have been a little irregular lately since I was sick for a while and then mama became sick... so I missed many days of school. But recently I have been attending more regularly and have slowly been starting to get used to the whole idea. Every morning we take an auto rickshaw to school... it takes about 20 minutes with traffic. The downsides? Sitting in traffic and breathing in the fumes from the cars and motorcycles and the noise factor (with all the honking and traffic zooming past). But it's OK... the school has proven to be well worth that hassle. Here I am on my way to school in the morning. We've been starting a little late.. around 10:00 so I have unfortunately been missing a big chunk of the Montessori activity time... but I get right in time for snack time, singing and song time, and then after that again back to Montessori. I love the singing time and LOVE learning the new songs and the dance moves! And snack time always proves to be enjoyable (mainly because mama puts cookies in my lunch box to entice me to stay seated and enjoy the snack time with the other children).


Before I go upstairs to my classroom, I take off my shoes and place them on a shoe rack downstairs. No one wears shoes inside the school.I sit down on one of these colorful chairs to take off my shoes :-D

Snack time... everyone brings their own food and drink. When they pass around our backpacks... I unzip my bag, take out my Barbie lunch box (which I picked out myself!), and my water bottle and a napkin and I place them all on the lunch mat (or as we call it in Persian "sofreh").


This is my teacher... Ms. Lubna.. she is so friendly and nice! All the students call her "auntie" (a custom in India... you call older women auntie and older men uncle... even though they're not related to you... it's a way of showing some relationship between everybody). I must admit though I am still a little confused... but mama is trying to explain to me why I should call her auntie and not teacher or Ms. Lubna.... hmmm...

After snack time we sing songs and dance along with the teacher! I LOVE LOVE LOVE it!!! A couple of the songs are in Hindi (or Kannada, the local dialect) and I sing along just the same.
During Montessori activity time... we have learned to come to these shelves where the little rugs are.. we take them ourselves and find a place on the floor where we unroll them. We then find an activity to do... puzzles, drawing, etc... and we do it on our little rug.
This is an adjacent classroom... mama has been sitting outside my classroom out of sight while I get adjusted to the idea of her not being with me for a couple of hours. Since she didn't want to disrupt the class by taking so many pictures... she started taking pictures of the other classrooms.
Their Montessori activity shelves.... still need to learn from the teacher how to use some of them. But so far I love those yellow puzzles with the blue shapes.... each one has a variation in size and shape of the same shape... takes some thinking.. but I always get it.



Mama noticed this sweet little girl with Down Syndrome being tutored... she is so cute!

They've added my picture and birth date on the birthday poster! Can you find me???
The little playground area in the front yard of the school...
The man in the grey suit... he's very nice! He stands at the gate during the whole school day and guards it from outside people.. an added security to ease the minds of parents :-) He also has a microphone and whenever a parent comes to pick up his/her child he checks their ID (which has a picture of the student on it) and then uses the mic to call the child. An assistant to the teacher helps the child get their backpack, put on their shoes and bring them to the gate.. where every day they are allowed to pick from a basket of candy as they leave! A very nice touch that I REALLY enjoy :-D