Millennium Community

I have been *bad* at updating the blog for the past few months. We had many exciting events in the school in the past few months.

To start off, we had the Science Exhibition, where we gave students a chance to build projects or put up study papers regarding stuff that they see everyday. A lot of drip irrigation projects came in, but what surprised us was the number of projects related to the climate. It shows that our kids are very sensitive to changes in the climate, and hopefully they will responsible citizens (unlike our generation!). A parent, Mr. Jayant Deshpande says this about the exhibition:

My son Eshaan Deshpande is studying in the 7 A class. I pleasantly find that for the last couple of days he is quizzing me on the various experiments which were put on display at the exhibition. This tells me that in half a day the children have learnt a lot, in an informal manner.

Congratulations to the school management and staff for such an event.

The high point of the event was the visit by Dr. Phatak to every stall and spending 10 to 15 min with the kids asking them about their experiments. These 10 to 15 min gave the children the confidence of presenting their work to an authority and the joy that I “told Phatak sir so”.

Dinner at home is now a session on science for all of us, and of course we are not complaining. In true sense your idea of this and its innovative execution is a learning experience for we parents as well.

This is indeed very pleasing! The students got quizzed by us (Nikhil and Arpita) before Dr. Phatak went and quizzed them – so they were kind of prepared 😉

This year was a trial, and looking at the response, we will now make it a part of the yearly activity. I will put up some pictures on Picasa in some time.

Next, we had the Fun Fair. This was as usual a great event, where we were stuffed at the end of the event! (we had to eat at every stall – paid of course!) There were tons of games and a group was also selling plants! That was a wonderful thing.

Then, we had our 10th Annual Gathering. We celebrated the 10th year of the school this year, and so the gathering was *different*. The theme was on Marathi Culture and boy was it good! The children showcased various traditions of the Marathi community like bhajans, bharuds and koli’s. And of course, our unique Powada’s! The mood was very upbeat, and the parents really enjoyed the show. Cultural Theme based annual gatherings are great. They instil a sense of respect about the culture in children, and are quite informative. The kids personally like to dance to Bollywood tunes, but we decided to cut that out this year (for primary and secondary children). Overall, a great event, and a great response!

Next, came our most wanted event, which differentiates us from the rest – The Treasure Hunt! This year, we had almost a thousand students participating in the hunt! The mood before the trasure hunt began was impatient – the kids couldn’t wait to get started! The 5th std kids were participating for the first time, so they needed a little hand holding. The rest were working like pro’s! Solving quizzes is one of the main attractions of the hunt. The 9th std kids had to rack their brains, as the quizzes were the most difficult for them! The younger kids of class 4 and below were almost ready to cry, as they were not participating in the event, and could see all the older children run about! We had to mollify them by telling them that they would have to wait a few years before they got to play it too!

The last different activity we conducted this year was the Prize distribution ceremony. Every year, we traditionally held the prize distribution in the Annual Gathering, where grandparents would come and distribute the prizes to children. This year, the children requested that they wanted to have a prize distribution ceremony in front of all the other school children. So, that’s what we did! Children were thrilled to get a prize from Dr. Phatak and in front of all their friends! There were prizes for winners in our sports week, prizes for academics, prizes for the fancy dress competitions, and prize for our academic events like elocution, essay writing, handwriting, arts etc. I must actually write about each of these events, but that will be at a later time.

Oh well, I guess better late than never! I shall try my best to be more active from the next academic year!

Happy Holidays!