As much as we love to share the love of reading, the children of Cacra in return share their love back to us by coming to the community library at Cacra twice a week.Keeping Bookworm’s vision alive, we try to create interesting activities for each session in order to keep the children’s engagement alive.
Some of the Highlights of the Cacra Mobile Outreach Program (MOP) in the month of September 2019, were:
Home Visit during the Ganesh Festival: On 6th September 2019, we had gone to different homes in the Cacra community to wish our MOP children and their families, a very happy Ganesh Chaturthi. It was an honour and privilege to witness some spectacular glimpses of Lord Ganesh along with the children and their families. It was a lovely moment for us to meet different families and parents and interact with them through this celebration. In these interactions with the parents, we came to know that the Ganesh Idol is immersed in the river itself which is attached to their house. There was cheer, laughter and a lot of positive energy amongst the community. A very special moment for us was to meet some of our old Cacra MOP members, all grown up. It was an absolute joy to meet these children.
Children’s interaction with an Author: On the 20th of September 2019, the children from Cacra were invited for an Author Interaction session with Author Leela Gour Broome at our main Bookworm library. Seven children from Cacra, aged 9 to 12 came for this session and had a lovely interactive evening with Leela, along with children from other MOP sites, namely – children from Chimbel and children from the Bethesda Life Center, Santa Cruz. There was discussion, presentation, craft, fun and excitement, and it was good to have children from all three community library sites join together and interact with each other and with the author, through this session.
Cacra junior children at Bookworm’s Preschool Morning Session: In order that the junior children at cacra also get an opportunity to visit our main library and interact with the space and books, Sujata & Geeta suggested that we invite them to participate in our weekly Preschool Morning sessions. On the 29th of September 2019, the Cacra junior group joined us in the library and enjoyed the story – “I Ain’t Gonna Paint No More” by Karen Beaumont and illustrated by David Catrow. They actively participated in games, the pre-story discussion, listened to a story, watched a short film and also did some painting. The session ended with an activity with fruit salad, cake and chips. Each one had a smile on their face as they made their way back to Cacra.
The Captain’s Hat: The children of Cacra participated and had lots of fun during a simple craft session making different types of newspaper hats while listening to an adventurous story – ‘The Captain’s Hat’, extracted from ‘Five Little Fingers’, by Arvind Gupta. The children enjoyed making different types of hats and wearing them as they listened to this story. There was this one segment in the story, where the boat was struck by lightning and was drowning. The reaction of the children as they struggled to save their ship and themselves, was precious. The speciality of this story is that it made the children do three things; One – they listened to the story, Two – they created different crafted hats while the story was read out. Three- they were part of the drama that revolved around the story.
All these special events in September brought a lot of excitement and engagement for the children at Cacra and we were glad to be part of this joy.
