Aashini's First Piano Recital

Aashini has been taking piano lessons for about a year now.  In December she had her first piano recital :)  She is in a group class and they are going through a cute book (Music for Little Mozarts) that is great for kids their age!

We had a party after the recital and Anoop's mom made this awesome cake!!  Awesome hunh?  (That's Mozart Mouse and Beethoven Bear on the cake).

 Here is everyone ready for the recital!

Here is Aashini performing her first piece :)

 After they performed each kid bowed or curtsied.   Aashini did a "bow and bolt" - haha! :)

 The book they are using has lots of different songs that they sing and dance to that teach all sorts of things about music.  Here they are acting out one of the songs, "Hey Mr. Elephant" :)

 Here they are singing the "Do Re Me" song :)

 Here is Aashini doing her 2nd piece.  This one she played with her teacher Mrs. Aimee :)

 Aashini getting her certificate :) 

 Aashini selected her outfit and her accessories all on her own for this event :) haha!

 Here is their class :)

And here's a short video of the performance :)

Taekwondo Competition - Aashini!

Aashini had her first Taekwondo Competition a couple of months ago.  Parents weren't invited, but we knew the venue so we went anyway :) haha!  They didn't have it set up for people watching, so we didn't get the best view... but it was fun :)   Here's the venue :)  (you can see the other parents that broke the rules and came :) haha!)

We weren't sure if they would let us in or not, so we told Aashini we weren't sure if we would be able to come... she was sad we might not get to see her... When she walked into the stadium, she looked all around for us... this is her face when she saw us :) haha!  She was happy!

A few kids from her class were selected to be in the competition... here she is with the kids from her class.

Taking a bow before beginning :)

We didn't have a great view... but here is Aashini in action!

... a nice kick! :)

And more... :)

... and another rockin' kick :)

She was really excited when she was finished :)

Here she is receiving her medal :)

She was so proud :)

Here is the video (not so great, but better than nothing) :)

Good Job Aashini!

Funny Diya!

Diya "Speaking Hindi".  I'm not sure if she's really speaking Hindi or just saying some real Hindi with some "made-up words" mixed in, but she says it with such inflection (or drama) haha!  She cracks me up :) (oh, and we had just taken her hair down, that's why it looks crazy)...

 

Aashini the Storyteller - Part 2

Here's a video of Aashini telling the Jonah Story before bedtime (notice the crazy bedtime hair!) :)

 

Aashini the Storyteller

Aashini loves stories and telling stories!  She also loves princesses, so the the other day we let her watch Ella Enchanted (another twist on the Cinderella story).  This is her re-telling ("reading") that story the next morning (and singing the closing song .. haha!).

Shining Star Summer Camp

Aashini has had a super fun summer!  There are only 2 weeks left of summer now.  For the first 4 weeks of summer Aashini went to Shining Star Camp (which she seemed to think was called "Treasure Camp").  It was super awesome!  It was put on by her school.

Here she is waiting for the school transport to pick her up one morning :)

 This was the last week of Summer Camp... On Friday we got to go to the school and watch them perform and show us all the things they learned this summer.  The Shining Star Camp had 4 Tracks...

The first Track was Dancing.  Dance is a big part of the culture here and we love it!  They taught them multiple styles of dance.  In her dance performance she showed 3 different styles of dance (Hip Hop, Jazz and Bollywood I think)...   Here she is about to begin her performance :)

 Here she is during her dance :)  I like the bottom picture... she's being a DJ :)

 She always has her tongue sticking out when she's concentrating :)  haha!

 Here's a VIDEO of the dance!  It was awesome! Aashini learned the choreography pretty easily :)  Go Aashini!!!

Here are some of the bigger kids doing one of their dances :)  They were super fun :)

One of the other tracks of the Summer Camp was "Skills for Life".   This is where they learn how to model and showcase themselves :), personality developement, self discovery, mass communication, etc...

For this part of the performance, each kid walked across the stage smiling and waving and then came to the middle, did their "introduction" and said a few lines.  It was cute :)

Here is the Video of her speaking:

Another track of the camp was Theatre.  They did all sorts of fun things in this track.  They did puppets, voice modulation, using props, miming, and all kinds of creative things... One day they gave all the kids magic wands and when they came to the front they would turn the rest of their group into something and the group would have to act that way... pretty fun :)

For the Performance, they did a play where everyone was a vegetable :)  Aashini was the Gobi (Cauliflower)... Her hat (which had the cauliflower on it) didn't stay on, so they took it off before she got on stage :)  Here she is speaking her lines as the "Chorus".

Here she is speaking her lines.  

This is what her costume was supposed to look like :)

Here is a video of the play (Not the whole play... mostly just the part she is in... her part is about halfway through the video):

So... the 4th track was "Sports and Adventure"!  This one was totally fun!!!  They had an amazing team of sports professionals that did everything.  The kids did Team Building Games, Skill Building in Sports and Adventure Sports.   In the Skill Building in Sports she did Skating, Table Tennis, learned how to dribble a basketball and play Cricket!!!  

Adventure Sports was super fun!!  They did Artificial River Crossing (it was a small zip-line from tree to tree on platforms), Rock Climbing, Rappelling and Flying Fox.  What is "Flying Fox you ask?".... 

Here is Aashini suited up and ready to show us how she did the "Flying Fox" all summer...

Here is the climbing wall (it's 5 stories tall!!!!!)...  Flying Fox is an AWESOME Zipline sliding from the top of this tower!!!!!!!

Here's one kid going down :)

For the younger kids, they didn't have them climb up the stairs to the top of the climbing wall to slide down... they connected them at the bottom of the zipline and pulled them up and then sent them down (they kind-of got two rides :)) 

Here's Aashini on her way up!!

She's super high up!! :)

Here she is on her way back down!!

Aashini is a bit of a scaredy-cat... just the other day she screamed and cried when we put her on top of a camel because it was too high up!  She wasn't scared at all on the Flying Fox!  She LOVED it!  She said she did it a lot!  How fun!!!  

Here's a video of Aashini going up and down the zip line :)

Afterwards we celebrated with some McDonald's :)

We're definitely going to do this again!!!

Videos of the Girls ;)

I've been bad at posting lately, but I'm finally starting to feel good and have energy again! :)  Anyway, here are videos of the girls...

This is a video of Diya learning to click her tongue (in the bath) :) haha!  She makes some funny faces :)

 Here's a video of Aashini playing with a friend at the play place near our house :) You can hear her speaking a little bit of Hindi with her friend in this video :)

Aashini's School Annual Day!

Aashini's school's Annual Day was just a few weeks ago.  It's quite a big deal.  Here are a few pictures from the 4+ hours of fun :) haha!

 Aashini's performance was with the "hoopla".   

 They moved it up, down and around to the beat. 

 It was a little boring, but Aashini did great :)  She had fun doing it!

 This picture cracks me up :)  Aashini looks funny and the kid in the middle is making a funny face! haha!

 At the end of the Annual day they did awards for the different classes for the children's performances from the year.   Aashini came in "first position" in her entire class!  Go Aashini!!!   

 She was so proud of her award!  Here she is with her teachers :)

And, for your viewing enjoyment.... Here is a video of Aashini's performance from Annual day.   The performance is very long, so feel free to fast forward a little and you can see her get her award and talk a little at the end of the video :)

Aashini's Speaking Competition

Aashini had a speaking competition at school in November.  With all my vertigo, I'm quite behind on some things (like blog posts) but I really wanted to post about this :)

For this speaking competition, the kids were supposed to tell a story.

 I think this little boy is so cute :)  His name is Ranveer and he has a twin brother in another class :)   He told the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  Every kid had to have a visual aid to go with their story.  I thought his was funny with The Little Mermaid as Goldilocks and Whinnie the Pooh as the three bears :)

 This is Aashini's little friend Kritika.

 This is Aashini's "best friend" Aura.  She's super cute :)  Look at her "visual aid" :)  The bear is eating a man! haha!

 Aashini told "The Boy who Cried Wolf".  Most kids told Aesop Fable stories.  We thought this one was a good one for her to know :)  That's her teacher in the purple adjusting her mic.

 Aashini telling her story!  (oh, and in case you're wondering... I'm not sure what happened to her hair this day... it's rough! haha!)

 After they all told their "introduction" and their stories, the teachers tallied the results.  There were 3 judges that wrote up scores for the kids.  While we were waiting for the results, they turned on the music and had the kids all go on stage and dance :)  It was hilarious!   You can see Aashini doing some of her "white girl dance moves here" :)

 Aashini and Aura dancing together :)

 These are the first place winners!  Aashini, Myra and Ranveer!  Diya ran up on stage with Aashini but once she saw the large audience looking at her, she freaked out and cried - haha!  poor thing!

And.... for your viewing enjoyment.... here is a video of her speaking competition (and some of the funny dancing and the award part) :)