Tag: Children

Free Play: Free to Play? Play to be Free? Just Play!

“Many animals learn by playing.”, my professor said, as she laid things out on the floor.

I nodded. I knew it. I have watched children play, I remember playing for many pleasurable hours myself. It is why I can be entranced watching squirrels play. I have always appreciated imaginative play.

What I did not realize is that I have forgotten how to do so myself.

I watched with a little awe and some glee as our professor set out things for free play. There were sticks, magnetic stickers, crochet scarves, yarn, finger puppets, lego blocks, kidney beans. Piles of things to play with, and I suddenly felt a sense of overwhelm. You see? I don’t remember when I played without an expected outcome. Years? Decades?

Didn’t I have to make something?

What do you mean – I can just do something that I like?

It was then that the activity really hit me. Unstructured play is a luxury – even for the children. When told to do anything, we do not know how to do that.

AI generated from article

Play morphs with age too

Thinking back, even play has morphed with time and age. Rules came into play – team games, board games, level-based games: they all tried to make their way into your life. But playing just so we could? The more adult we became, the less we did that. Even though, we tried our best to incorporate games into our lives, the nature of the games morphed. There were competitive games, skill-based games, team-based games. But just playing with the materials available to us?

How long since you just took some play-doh and squished it? Without making a fish or a heart out of it?

At the end of the 20 minute session, I realized that I was still quite confused. Did I play correctly? Our training to play it right meant we have forgotten what it is to play.

Did I feel happy? I genuinely do not know.

Did I feel satisfied? I am not sure.

Did I have a good time? Maybe – I meandered, but I was assured that was the right thing.

I came home, expecting to regale the husband and children and ask if they are willing to entertain free play. The son had gone for his running practice, the husband had gone for tennis, and came home miffed about a game they should have won but didn’t. And I stood there, running awfully late behind my dinner making schedule to be chatting about playing.

Is Play the Basis of Culture?

I remember writing about the recess being the basis of culture in an article over a decade ago. I relished that thought now. Why do we not have scheduled recesses in offices and work spots? A time when everybody is expected to be doing nothing?

I spent the next hour and a half cooking, cleaning, scrubbing and taking out the trash, with no energy left to think of playing. But I thought to myself. How wonderful it would be if household robots enabled us to play again. Just for the sake of it.

Wishful thinking I know. But I did know that of all the laments of adulthood, the fact that we no longer skip while walking, prance while doing the laundry, or twirl while making toast, or have free play  sessions with our pals is my biggest lament.

As I sank into bed, exhausted by my day, I reflected on the unstructured play session: Did I enjoy it? I still do not know. But I remember golden shining moments like little fireflies in a jar of moments when we played as children. Joyously, without agenda, and without expectations.

It is a happy talent to know how to play.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

How do we relearn that art, and embrace it in our lives again?

Sunsets, Asanas & Aces: A Magical June 21st

Yesterday was a beautiful summer day – it was a culmination of 3 days that are all uniquely loved in the nourish-n-cherish household. Any guesses?

Father’s Day:

This year, father’s day coincided with the summer solstice, which means the loved father in the house got to play his tennis, lounge around with the kids in the pool, and enjoy a quiet evening while the sun was still out.  

Other Father’s Day posts: Fathers

International Yoga Day:

June 21st is also International Yoga Day. So I was genuinely thrilled to start the day with an early yoga class. My muscles were just waking up- sure. The limbs not yet nimble enough – yes. The breaths not yet the even meditative quality – of course. But in spite of that, or may be because of that, the yoga class felt amazing. For all these elements had somehow been made even better by the end of the class.

Buddha in Lotus?

 

Summer Solstice:

June 21st is the summer solstice. We love the summer solstice. The son, even as a young boy, would have his friends out all day playing dawn to dusk on the longest day of the year. It was something that strangely excited him. Osmosis of energy – is that a thing? But in time, we all look forward to seeing the sunrise and sunset on summer solstice too.

When it turns out to be a pleasant day temperature-wise, breeze-wise, clouds-wise, moons-and-planets-shimmering-wise, it turns into a magical day. We went swimming, lazed around watching the sunset, moonrise, and the beautiful cosmic planets shining near the moon. Jupiter, Venus and the moon truly look beautiful in the evening skies.

Summer Solstice related posts

How did you spend the summer solstice, father’s day & yoga day?

Up to my neck!

The Giraffologist 

I sat with a set of children’s books in my arms. I looked down fondly at the one in my hands. The first one was about a giraffologist – the title pulling my attention almost immediately. What a delightful sounding profession?

The Giraffologist – Anne and her Tower of Giraffes – by Karlin Gray and Aparna Varma

The book is based on Dr Annie Innis Dagg who was the world’s first giraffologist. The world’s first primatologist, Dr Jane Goodall, is of course well-known. But Dr Annie, who went to Africa to study her favorite animals, giraffes, just 4 years later is practically unheard of. That is the weird nature of public attention.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/new-heritage-minute-anne-innis-dagg-giraffes-1.7648146

Dr Annie’s life and work was made into a documentary in Canada honoring her work towards preserving these tall creatures.

The daughter’s drawing of a giraffe:

Bill Bryson’s book, The Body – A Guide for Occupants

I was thinking of giraffes and their beautiful necks one day after reading Bill Bryson’s book, The Body – A Guide for Occupants. One section of the book dealt with how prone we are to choke. One particularly sad anecdote about a person who had a gold coin lodged in his throat was especially excruciating. If nothing else, I am glad we now live in a time and age when surgical techniques have come so far from the ones outlined in the book. (The coin only fell out when he was hoisted by his foot and swung like a pendulum. )

Beautiful Necks Everywhere!

Our evolution into bipedalism means that necks took on a truly unique structure to support the head, and provide a forward looking face for navigation. I stopped and chuckled at that. I was on a walk, and just like that, I started noticing necks everywhere. The crane, the gray heron, the hummingbird, the dog, squirrel and the cat.

I got home to look up the giraffe’s neck again.

Did you know that both giraffes and humans have the exact same number of bones in our necks : 7

Yet, the giraffe’s neck supports its long neck, and its heart supports pumping blood all the way up there. All those jokes about tall folks( How’s-the-weather-up-there?) suddenly feels biologically profound.

In any case, the understanding of our biology, our evolution, and our unique places in the planet is shaped by so many factors –  How many giraffes with weird ears and longer tails evolved before the long necked ones that we know and love?

I craned my neck to look at a white egret crook its neck and plunge into the waters with precision and force for its breakfast, and gently massaged my own neck. ‘Up to my neck with worries’ took on a new meaning too, and I hoped giraffes and herons never had to use that phrase, when worried.

21 Years of Blogging – My Blog is now an Adult!

21 years of blogging

Just like that, my blog has become a proper functioning adult. 

21 years of selectively writing about what matters to an ordinary person. Somehow, reflecting on the writing makes it seem like our lives were more adventurous, humorous, and fun-filled. 

Now, isn’t that a lovely gift? 

I was reading Bill Bryson’s book, The Body, and in it, he says something incredible about memories – that we can predominantly choose what we want to remember. That often our most colorful memories aren’t the original ones at all – but rather deepened by the feeling and retelling of it. We’ve seen it in the stories we love to tell each other all the time. Every time we laugh about our own foibles, it makes the memory a more endearing one, doesn’t it? 

Where am I going with all this?

Curating the blog’s theme

I realize that I am probably tending to what gets on my blog. I tend to actively gravitate towards what I want to cherish in life – beautiful moments, humorous moments, peaceful moments, intellectual moments: in short, moments of awe, curiosity, love, levity, and transformation. The negative rooted out like weeds (which is not to say that I don’t have them. I do, of course. Just in measured quantities on the blog.) 

Anyway.

There are no awards given for 21 years of writing 1-2 blog posts a week, every week for 1092 weeks. 5-9 posts a month for 252 months. The award is the writing, and the wholly generous readers who stop by to wave, hopefully feel a moment of peace, get a laugh or two, and encourage me endlessly. 

So, go ahead – this is a party! 

Get drunk – I mean on the posts in the blog. I don’t actually offer alcohol. Please head on over and randomly click on any month, read a few, and let me know what you think, or you know, just have fun. 

“I mused for a few moments on the question of which was worse, to lead a life so boring that you are easily enchanted, or a life so full of stimulus that you are easily bored.”

― Bill Bryson, Lost Continent: Travels In Small-Town America

Is there more to life?

Is there more to life? Our lives? Most lives? I don’t know. But I know that ‘this one precious life’, as Mary Oliver puts it demands our attention. What you value, and what you remember over the moments of your life, becomes you, doesn’t it?

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work. – Mary Oliver

P.S: WordPress tells me I have a significant achievement: World Domination – for receiving visitors from over 150 countries – with the sweet caption: The United Nations has nothing on you.

Imaginating Nothing

 

Nothing Good!

“How was your day?”

“Good!”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing!” 

For years, this was the standard response I got. It takes grit and determination to get past that answer every day for years. My school’s motto was Never Give In for a reason. I plunge on. “So when is Dr Seuss week? Should we buy a Dr Seuss hat?” (We still have the hat somewhere I think.) “It’s read-across-America week right? What should we read for our read-a-thon?”

You see? The thing is, I cannot imagine their school to be a place where nothing happens. It can’t be when they are making diasporas of dinosaur habitats, writing book reports of The Magic Tree House, learning about exotic animals – supposedly in preparation for their field trip to the zoo, and making art so their little fingers look like they dipped their hands into a rainbow. 

Yet. Nothing and Good. Good for Nothing answers both.

Then, something wonderful happened. 

Literature Lives

I started volunteering in elementary school classrooms. Sometimes, as a volunteer teaching experimental science, other times as a connoisseur introducing fine books of literature. 

“Oh! You’re a Booklegger lady now? Cool Amma! I used to love when they came to school.” said the son one day when I told him that I had signed up to become a Booklegger volunteer at the local library. 

“You knew about this program?” I said, stunned.

“Yeah, of course! It was always fun when the Booklegger people came.” He said.

“All those years I asked you, how was your day? And you never said a thing!” I said, somewhat stung at this omission. The children knew I would have loved to hear about volunteers from the library coming to introduce new books to them. Especially when I had to beg them to read books other than Captain Underpants and Dog Man all the time. He shrugged, and said “Eh!”, good-naturedly and moved on.

Nothing – by Michael Molinet

One day, I read the book, NOTHING – By Michael Molinet

“You have to read this. “ I said pressing the book to the son as he pranced into the house after biking with his friends one evening. 

https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Michael-Molinet/dp/1733354840/ – NOTHING by Michael Molliner Book 

You see? The book even starts off with the exact sequence I wrote about earlier. How was your day? Fine! What did you do? Nothing.

The book captures the spirit behind the word ‘Nothing’ the way the son says it so perfectly, it is like the author has been around watching the son imaginate.

Imaginating Nothing

He loves to imaginate. A verb he coined himself and a word that has become a household word in the nourish-n-cherish home. It means actively imagining scenarios and living them. I know he fights off pirates and takes on armies when he leaps off the bed to the carpeted floor. The fake swords may not survive an actual duel on the battlefield, but the cushions in the house don’t stand a chance! 

So many times, the only thing that has stopped me from running out of the house fearing an earthquake, is the fact that earthquakes are felt from the earth, not from the bedroom upstairs. When his friends are over to play, the Richter scale shivers and stutters. 

Please head on over to the book to see what Nothing means when your child says they did ‘Nothing’ all day. I assure you it is more exciting than anything any of us do.

If only the Good days on which we do Nothing are half as exciting!

Good! Nothing! Good-For-Nothing Answers!

Nothing Good!

“How was your day?”
“Good!”

“What did you do?”
“Nothing!”

For years, this was the standard response I got from the children after school. Never one to be deterred though, I’d redirect, prod, ask specific questions: What did Shriya say about your new drawing pencils? Did Shrinik do somersaults after lunch today also?

You see? The thing is, I could not imagine their school to be a place where nothing happened, and the best adjective for the day was ‘Good!’. I knew for a fact that they listened to their teacher read out stories, they hopped along the number line, slid up and down through graphs, chased butterflies, had turf wars with sticks and stones, played sharks and minnows in the playground, were enthralled as they enacted civil wars, made the artwork that papered the walls of their colorful classroom, and so much more.

Yet. Nothing and Good. Good for Nothing answers both.

Then, something wonderful happened.

Dancers Move!

I started volunteering in elementary school classrooms, as a volunteer – sometimes reading out books, other times, teaching experimental science.

One day, we were experimenting with air pressure and force with the kindergarten children. One of the experiments was to blow bubbles to see how the bubbles stayed airborne. It was a lovely windy day, and the bubbles were a joy to teacher, volunteers, and students alike. There were delighted gasps as large bubbles drifted off into the air, and much chasing after the smaller bubbles.

When finally, the class was done, and we headed back into the classroom, the teacher said, “Oh! They have too much energy. They’ll never settle down to sit and do anything now. Let me get them to release some energy first!” I wondered what she would do, as recess was behind us, and lunch time was a while away.

I started laughing when I saw her switching on some music. “Dancers Move!”, she said, and the children seemed to know what to do. I watched mesmerized as the little ones danced to the music. What a wonderful way to blow off some extra energy?

“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.” —Albert Einstein

I thought everyone danced!

I narrated the whole thing to the teenaged son later that day as went on a windy day walk, and he laughed, “Yes! I remember doing that all the time!”

I tell you.

“All those times I asked you how was your day, and you said ‘Good!’, you danced in school?” I said, flustered more by this than the whipping winds.

“Yes…but don’t you see? It was good. Yes. But we did it all the time. It was nothing new.”

“Why do you think I yearned to hear about your days? We didn’t dance in the office!”

“Yes, but we didn’t know that! I thought every one danced!”

I couldn’t help it. I started laughing. It is true isn’t it? He didn’t know what our days were like. If anything, our days were good too. Just not listening-to-stories, playing-with-air-bubbles on windy days, and dancing to let-off-steam good.

So, what do your good days look like? You know? The days you do nothing.

Please share, I’d love to hear.

Ephemeral Fashion: The Humor in Childhood Wardrobes

We were sitting around waiting for an event to start, huddled under a shamiyana-like structure. The rain was pouring – the way it pours in the Nilgiris. All the metaphors and mythos of Great Rains seem very likely, and just like that the skies clear up, and one wonders what happened. Where the rains went and how life goes on as though nothing happened. Dramatic skies are truly nature’s mystics. 

Anyway, there we were, sitting around under a canopy waiting for the event to begin, when a young fellow walked past us in his too-big uniform. The seams of his pants were getting wet from the puddles from the recent rains, his shoes a size bigger, his blazer two sizes bigger, and I couldn’t help smiling. 

I caught the smile on my friends faces too, and we exchanged a quiet moment of reflection. How as children, we were really never properly dressed. All our new clothes were slightly big. Prudence, economic necessity, environmental concerns – whatever the name given, ‘too big’ was the style. 

Goldilocks Style

There was a phase in life when we were dressed in either too-big-new-clothes or too-small-old-clothes. Goldilocks could’ve had a philosophical lesson or two if she’d stopped by and seen us. Life truly taught us the beauty of ephemeral pleasures with clothes – that brief, all-too-quick time when your clothes fit perfectly is never long enough to feel well-dressed. Sigh. 

“Those dreaded hand-me-downs!” I said and shuddered, exchanging a look with the sister, and she gave me one of her joyous cackles. You see? The sister and I have very different bone structures. Hers was what my mother approved of and called Healthy. Mine, on the other hand, made my mother scrunch up her nose, and wonder about what she could be doing better to help things along. But such is fate. The sister’s hand-me-downs, therefore, swamped my scrawny frame (Oh! How I miss those days of being nonchalantly petite and being able to tuck into stacks of buttered toasts without a second thought?!). I perennially looked like I was dressed in pillow covers. Very house-elfish fashions for Yours Truly. 

Nostalgia

That’s how we found ourselves going down the path of “Oh gosh – do you remember?”

And “It should’ve been outlawed. Remember when …” 

The mother was a self taught seamstress and she spent her evenings after school (she was also a high school Physics and Maths teacher) sitting and stitching all manner of clothes for her children and herself. The father escaped. Men’s fashions were where she drew the line. The lucky man! 

https://nourishncherish.org/2012/06/12/what-the-well-dressed-man-is-wearing/

It was a matter of great pride for my mother who learnt tailoring so she could stitch our clothes, alter them when necessary etc.

Frilly Fashions

The mother had no access to fashion magazines, and in those days of Doordarshan, one could not get many inspirations from television either. So there we were. There was a phase when she learned how to stitch Frills. Victorian tailors couldn’t compete when she was in this phase. All our clothes had frills all over.  Years later, I pointed to one monstrous pink dress in a photograph, and asked her what she was thinking of, and she looked confused. 

“Frills made you look bigger and better. “ she said.

Obviously. No irony, no sarcasm. I didn’t have the heart to tease her then. She was still so proud of her frills. Never mind that it made me look like a strawberry in pineapple clothing.

When finally I put my foot down and refused any more of her creations, she conceded to have the school tailor, Paada, stitch our clothes. A distinct improvement but still not exactly fashionable. Where would he get ideas in a village nestled in the Nilgiris with a population of less than a 1000 people?

I can’t tell you how grateful I was for uniforms. As we sat there looking at growing children dressed in slightly loose and big clothes, I felt like the universe really does have a sense of humor.

I truly understand now Bertie Wooster’s pride in his article he submitted to Aunt Dahlia’s newspapers on ‘What the Well-Dressed Man is Wearing’. Trying to capture the ephemeral is what Art is all about, isn’t it?

The Meaning of a Good Life

We went to visit our old school haunt – the home of our school days, and some of the best memories. If there is a utopia, I’d like to think it is very much like that place. There was plenty of ‘real’ life there too – It was by no means devoid of pain or jealousies or strife or suffering, but life still felt full of promise. Like the universe was conspiring and preparing us for a fantastic future. Maybe it was the optimism of youth, maybe it was the collective talent of the folks around us, or just the marvelous eucalyptus scented air around us in a beautiful location in the Nilgiri Hills.

Of course, one cannot help feeling like you’ve let down the school quite a bit, but what can you do? Luckily, most of our teachers have retired, but I felt I could feel their encouraging presence at every science lab and every playground. 

A visit there at this stage in life though, revitalized me in ways I did not comprehend till I had the quiet and solitude to mull things over after coming back to the USA. “You can still do a great many small things to make things better for the world around you, couldn’t you?”, a small voice whispered in my ears. Maybe after all these decades of striving, that is what you come to realize. That, as Mother Teresa said, there is greatness in small acts:

“Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love.”. – Mother Teresa

I asked my father what he thought at the time – he was a teacher there. Did he think any of his students would go on to win the Nobel Prize, or the Booker Prize or become the Finance Minister or make it big in the field of Arts/Drama/Acting?

He said that the markings of greatness were visible in few children at such a young age. Mostly, it was the potential that excited the teachers. You ask the pater a question, and he can turn it into an impromptu speech within seconds. So, I wrapped up and set off on a walk while talking to him. Always the best thing to do. He said,

To rephrase Shakespeare:

Some people are born into greatness, some acquire greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

In good schools with well to do parents (by that I mean parents who not only have the means but also the interest to invest in the success and achievements of their children), many children belong to the first category. Success is expected of them, and the tools are there for the taking. Barring any major life events or health issues, these children can build a life for themselves – that is not to say there isn’t struggle. For those very expectations of greatness can be a burden to overcome.

The second category of talent comes up despite their circumstances – the distance they go in life, the differential between where they started and where they end up is the yardstick for their success. Many children from modest means who go onto achieve success belong to this category.

The last and final category can come from either of the categories above – but these people are tested beyond what normal people endure. Their hurdles are frequent, gargantuan and any progress they make is a success in and of itself. Health issues, career issues or relationship issues (sometimes all three) test them. Many break under the stress and strain of it, but those who are thrust into greatness endure, secure in their understanding that small victories and sustained mindsets often tide them over better.

Many are the stories and epics written about these characters. But more importantly, we all know friends and family in this category. Even if it isn’t obvious, even if we aren’s writing songs about them, they are truly heroes of their stories. Being a stable parent in a tumultuous relationship, navigating health hurdles, being a steady breadwinner through times of economic upheavals, being a steady person when all around you have lost their minds – that is their greatness.

IF – By Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too; 

…

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Or more along the lines of: You’ll be a Human-being, my child!

The evening was drawing cold, and I knew I had to cut my walk short, even as I mulled on the father’s answer. Making the best of things, and Never Give In were the things they taught apart from Languages, Mathematics, Arts, Sports, Sciences and History. For those it served well, it was heartening that it had, and for those that it hadn’t, well there was still hope that they would learn to do so. That, right there, was the philosophy of a teacher in one grand stroke.

The walk made me reflect on two of my favorite speeches:

On The Importance of Failure and Imagination – By J K Rowling

Harvard’s 80 year old Study on Happiness and Success (Harvard Study Article)

Greatness is something we are told to pursue, without properly knowing what it means, at a young age. For many, the pursuit of a living (and maybe fame or renown) occupies time and energy. But life is far more complicated and richer than that. It means good and close relationships with family and friends, good health, good wealth, good pursuits (intellectual, spiritual and physical), purposeful work, the ability to feel joy, and so much more.

Maybe this is why school reunions and such are planned at a certain stage in life. The environs can stimulate thoughts and spur us on towards growth and meaning.

Peeking out after the rains

Novembers in the Bay Area are beautiful. It is the time when the world around us turns colorful – assures us that the seasons are turning. The fall colors, never as resplendent as in the East Coast, are inviting, and the son & I spent more minutes walking gleefully into crunchy leaves in the past few days than was necessary. We also gazed upwards into maple trees – the greens, yellows, reds and maroons like a beautiful artist’s palette in the world around us. 

Regardless of how we started out, we’d come back smiling widely and happy to be out in the world. The days drawing in closer also means that we had to really try to catch all of this in a narrow window before the skies draw the screens on them. That sense of urgency adds to the thrill. 

“She had always loved that time of year. The November evenings had a sweet taste of expectation, peace and silence.

And she loved most of all the quiet of her house when the rain fell softly outside.”

– Louisa May Alcott’s, Little Women.

The squirrels, deer, water rats – they all seem to be more at ease with the time-change than we are. Probably because they don’t peer at the clocks before heading out for a walk. They rise with the sun, and rest with the dark. There is a profound kind of philosophical simplicity there.

img_3794img_3793

Yesterday was Veteran’s Day and a holiday for schools. So, we decided to make a song-and-dance of it, and headed out for a walk after lunch. The rains had lashed down all morning – the first rains in November in the Bay Area always make me feel warm and special. By afternoon, the clouds were scuttling away, leaving a delicious moist, clean Earth behind. We walked around a lakeside – watching the pelicans, sanderlings, geese and ducks catch the sunshine after the rains too. 

There is a strange solidarity amongst creatures in that simple act. Peeking out after the rains.

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The Fascinating Behavior of Songbirds: A Morning’s Musings

It was one of those mornings in May – clear skies, the sun’s rays dancing through windows, and replacing moans quickly with sharpness and dedication.

I stood there wondering how it was so thoroughly that we transition from a supine, sleepy form to an alert, going-about-the-day form. The demands of the clock are relentless indeed. 

For an instant, I stopped to hear the beautiful voice of the songbird on our garden fence. It was trilling and beautiful, and I could have sworn just a little inspired – that last note a little higher than a human would have envisioned for that piece. 

It was as I was musing thus, that I noticed the son charging down the driveway to get to school on time – a sock hanging in one hand, a school project in another, and off we went. The songbird flew from my mind as we navigated the traffic, spoke of this-and-that, and chose music for the ride there. 

When I came back, the songbird was still flitting about here and there. I stood mesmerized by the little flashes of movements that my phone camera would not be able to capture anyway, and listened as it chirped, and went about gathering its breakfast.

I remembered a book that I had from the library – patiently waiting its turn.

A Songbird Dreams of Singing – By Kate Hosford, Illustrated by Jennifer M Pottersongbird

I flicked open the book. The poem about the songbird was there:

Other birds may dream of worms 

Or flower beds or thunderstorms 

But every night this bird performs 

A concert in his mind.

How marvelous to imagine a songbird rehearsing and getting better at its craft subconsciously – every night.

The book goes on to talk about research made about sngbirds:

In the case of songbirds, scientists at the University of Chicago have done studies on zebra finches demonstrating that the males practice and refine their songs while dreaming, adding little flourishes to make their version of the song unique. Zebra finches are diurnal birds who rest in the afternoon and sleep for about ten hours a night. Like many other songbirds, when they awake in the morning, they sing with particular enthusiasm in what is known as the dawn chorus.

Children’s book illustrators are so wonderful at their craft. This book too has beautiful illustrations, color schemes, and an overall look and feel of a book that is all set to send us to our worlds of dreams too.

So, what should we dream about, and subconsciously try to get better at?