Tails and Tales

(posted by Shruti Murali)

We thanked the heavens as we stepped from the scorching heat into the draft of the air conditioner at the Central State Library. The number of kids at the children’s section seemed more than usual at the first glance and I grinned internally.

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The Reading Adventure had been tweaked now, and now we had colour coded cards, arranged level and age wise. As we meticulously laid out the cards and books, we were greeted by familiar faces. Yash, Tushal and Mohit were already waiting for us to complete our arrangement so that they could start with the ‘new’ adventure. In no time, there were around fifteen kids, on the quest of going from level 1 to level 3, performing all the individual activities listed in the cards diligently. 12 year old Calvin wrote one of the most fascinating short stories I’ve read in a long time. It told me that an autobiography of a tree could be so much more than just an obvious representation of related ideas.

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The reading time was extended because of the added impetus of the levels. Also, the drawing and writing activities saw to it that the book created a value and helped the kids connect to the book in various ways. 

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The kids then made a circle and we started with introductions and sang a couple of songs. We also played the amusing ‘make a face’ game that Sujata had introduced to us. Moving on to the next game, keeping the theme of the read aloud in mind, the kids had to plot the tail on a sketch of an elephant. It was a really pretty elephant with 12 colourful tails at the end of ten minutes!

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The story ‘ How can you hide an elephant?’ was read aloud by me. I wanted to hear their views about animals in zoos and there was a unanimous view about it being completely wrong.

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The session ended with the kids decorating and sticking elephants on a paper and a word building activity.

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I smiled as Pratik promised to be there on Monday as we left. 























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