My past, Ram's future · Sunday May 6, 2007 by Abbie
Today was a calmer day after yesterday’s stressful Family Meeting. It is a good thing we only have them once a month!
We watched some of the educational programmes that we have recorded. We used to stay up to ten at night to watch them live but now we go up to bed to read at nine and have to catch up with the recording during the day.
On of the programmes we watched was the Yusuf Islam concert. When he was Cat Stevens I was a huge fan and had all his records and music books. I played guitar just like him and found out as much about him as I could. Yes, I even had a crush on him!
My first exposure to education by project rather than subject was when my older cousin was at university doing her degree in teaching. She thought that Cat Stevens might be a good subject and I readily agreed to help her. English was easily covered as his lyrics are really proper poems, as well as music and different instruments, including those from other countries. Foreign language was covered as one of the songs had lyrics in Greek. As he explored religion so to could that be explored with the children. Art, from the art work of the albums, maths from the Numbers album, geography and history from the various places he had been or where the albums were recorded, and I am sure there was more!
I won’t be doing this with Ram for two reasons. Firstly, because his attention span is too short for project work, and secondly because all my albums and music books were left in Canada when I came over here, and have since disappeared! Oh, and thirdly, it has nothing to do with Lego!
But he did like the music, and was interested to know why Yusuf converted to Islam, so I think we may get to watch the interview as well.
Ram also played Bookworm Adventures again. About half way through the Yusuf Islam concert he decided to go back to the computer. It was good that I didn’t rush in to help straight away, as he had to try to work out the spelling of the words himself. He did keep running into me and asking how to spell words, so eventually I gave up and joined him.
We finished the day with our monthly bath. This is the second month we have had it. It was supposed to be something that we started after Ram’s birthday, but somehow we never quite remembered to have it. We have now decided to have it the same weekend of the Family Meeting and it is working out quite well.
Usually he insists on using all his baby bath toys, but this month he was more grown up and it was only at the very end that he got one wind up fish out to play with. I can’t really fault that as it was the fish that Father Christmas put in my stocking!
Ram still needs me in the bath, and we touched lightly on when he might be ready to have me out of the bath but in the room with him. He isn’t there yet, but I can see the signs that the time will come in the future when he will be able to handle that.
