Stories from Pratham Books Champions: July 2014

Wednesday, 16 July 2014

Pratham Books Champion : Promita Bhowmick

Promita Bhowmick started her 1st storytelling session with kids at Auro Mirra International School.She used 2 stories for her session - Rain Rain and Bheema Gadha.

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Thank you Promita for helping us spread the joy of reading!

In 2014, Pratham Books is inviting people to become TENTASTIC Champions. This year's champions initiative is a year-long storytelling drive. Join our tribe of champions and commit to conducting ten storytelling sessions for children during the year (including the main one on International Literacy Day). Lets make reading contagious!

Register to be a TENTASTIC Champion.

Pratham Books Champion : Arthi Anand-Navaneeth

With her 9th storytelling session, Arthi Anand is close to completing her ten sessions for the TENTASTIC Campaign.

She shared the following details about her latest session:

Session at Anand Vidyalaya
Around 50 kids
Hindi and English session
Missing Bat and Turtle Tales apart from mythological tales for Guru Poornima

A lover of stories, a Tulika author, a weekend story teller (Art's Tales) , a Saffrontree reviewer, this mom of two ensures she gets her fill of stories and shares the joy they bring. She also blogs at http://artstales.blogspot.in and http://abouttimenow.blogspot.in.

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Thank you Arthi for helping us spread the joy of reading!

In 2014, Pratham Books is inviting people to become TENTASTIC Champions. This year's champions initiative is a year-long storytelling drive. Join our tribe of champions and commit to conducting ten storytelling sessions for children during the year (including the main one on International Literacy Day). Lets make reading contagious!

Pratham Books Champion : Arthi Anand-Navaneeth

Arthi Anand breaks her previous record of conducting a storytelling session with 92 kids. This time, she is back after conducting a session with 130 kids!

Arthi's short note included the following:

GMS Shishukunj Vidyalaya run by the Bharatiya Grameen Mahila Sangh at Vibhutipura

Kids aged 7 to 16 participated and there were over 130 of them in all!!

- The Missing bat, Chuskit, Seventh Sun & Paplu

- We did the Paplu craft to show the power of togetherness for the younger kids

- Older kids did map activity

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Thank you Arthi for helping us spread the joy of reading!

Pratham Books Champion : TALEescope

Lavanya Prasad writes to tell us about the storytelling session she conducted as part of TALEescope.

TALEescope is a small initiative of Lavanya Prasad, a professional storyteller and educator based in Bangalore. As the name suggests, TALEescope's aim is to reach out to children and adults by providing a clearer vision through stories.This four month old initiative,has been going around Bangalore and also tamilnadu spreading the joy of stories.You can see TALEescope's events at http://www.facebook.com/Taleescope. Basically an engineer,she discovered her passion for teaching and has been in the teaching line for the past seven years.An ardent believer in the power of stories,she now uses the same in bringing about a positive change in children and adults.She conducts storytelling sessions and workshops in various schools, bookstores and libraries for children, trains teachers and adults in the area of storytelling, and also volunteers in old age homes, orphanages, hospitals and other charitable trusts in bringing smiles through stories.

Rains and traffic on a Saturday evening did not stop the bubbly, adorable and enthusiastic children from eagerly coming to a cozy AttaGalatta (with equally energetic parents). Stories in a place with cozy mats, surrounded by bookshelves stacked with lovely children books, and yummy pastries..now that is heaven!.

Our session started with some “break the ice warm ups”..and when the children were all ears they were transported to Gujarat…. for it was folk tales from Gujarat that evening from the book “PHOO PHOO BABA and OTHER STORIES”, a pratham publication.

The chosen three were “Uncle Lion’s song” , “ The maha trickiyum kavyum” and “Silence is Golden”.

We started off with the Uncle Lion’s story..roaring and growling and singing the song with uncle lion. We had a brave bubbly bunch there, singing to the Uncle to run away for his life. This was followed by a quick intermediate game for fun..and then we were back again in Gujarat this time listening to the “Hare Namaha”. What lovely sight it was to watch the children try to meditate like swamijis in Varnasi, standing on one leg..! Phurrr…and Hare Namaha..echoed the place for the next 20 minutes.

We followed that up with a funny” think quick” game involing panditji,swamiji and bhagwan ji!! ( I bet you want to know what it was ! ). We had the whole place roaring with laughter as we did this game. Ah! And after all the laugh we were all ears for the next and the last story of the day..”Silence is Golden”. We had the Children name the uncle and the nephew as Takala bukala mama and kalla! ( that’s creative isn’t?). And yes we had fun standing like statues , not moving ,not talking, because we wanted to eat the ladoos!!!

We played the Silent telephone game after this to see if silence was really golden!. Children and parents were amazed to see the results of the game and agreed after all silence is golden!

There was a grand finale to the show with a game based on our first story, “Catch the singing Lion’s Tail”. We had children running and chasing and singing and wanting to play more, but just that it was already more than an hour….so we said next time for sure!.

TALEescope then briefed the parents about the tentastic champion programme and showed the “ Phoo Phoo baba book “ . We saw parents leaving with a “copy of phoo phoo book” and other pratham books for their little ones, enthusiastic about inculcating reading in their children. TALEescope thanks Pratham Books for this lovely initiative. My days have become more creative, more funfilled and fulfilled as I work towards spreading the joy of stories and reading. Stay tuned for more!

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Thank you Lavanya and TALEescope for helping us spread the joy of reading!

In 2014, Pratham Books is inviting people to become TENTASTIC Champions. This year's champions initiative is a year-long storytelling drive. Join our tribe of champions and commit to conducting ten storytelling sessions for children during the year (including the main one on International Literacy Day). Lets make reading contagious!

Register to be a TENTASTIC Champion.

Pratham Books Champion : C. Mangalam Senthil

C. Mangalam Senthil shares photos and notes from her first storytelling session at Yadalamma Govt School, Kanakpura Road, Uttrahalli.

Yadalamma Govt School, Uttrahalli is a place where I have previously been to conduct a storytelling session.

When I reached there and asked the kids if they remembered me, they shouted....puppet, monkey, butterfly, caterpillar.

They had forgotten my name as I it had been a few months since I met them. However, the story (Monkey Puzzle) remained in their memory and I was happy.

We played the 'idli, vada, tea' game and then we all settled down.

And I then told them that I would be telling them two stories from Pratham Books. The 35-40 children of class 1-3 were all ears for the story of "Mimi & the Buffalo".

There was one little girl of Class 2 who had brought along her sibling who was around 8 months old. The baby slept off after some time of the start of the story.. :)

The children thoroughly enjoyed doing the actions of the boy on the bike, the lady trying to lever the buffalo, the injection of the vet being stamped by the buffalo, the policeman who went flying off when the buffalo said bhooooooo.....

Then they all hugged each other like how Mimi hugged the buffalo.

Then two children came up and told the whole story again in front of the whole class.

I told the stories in English as I am not fluent in Kannada. So, if the children said that they did not follow any part, the teachers there would translate those parts into Kannada for them to understand.

The second story started off with them saying ABCD... and then when I asked Y for .. they all went YAK....

Told them the story of Yakity Yak... They all went Yak, Yak, Yak.

On the board, then drew the picture of a Yak with all its friends.

The children enjoyed looking at the colorful illustrations of both the books and they had a great time. Many of them came and shook hands with me and asked when I would be coming next. I was humbled!

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Thank you Mangalam for helping us spread the joy of reading!

Tuesday, 15 July 2014

Pratham Books Champions : Neela Gupta, Pooja Motwani and Shweta Dave

Neela Gupta writes in to share how she, Pooja and Shweta conducted a storytelling session to celebrate their friend's birthday. Neela has worked as a librarian for about 30 years in different kinds of libraries (research library, an industrial library, a public library, a college library and school libraries). Neela has also volunteered with different underprivileged groups and tried to introduce them to the world of books. Pooja and Shweta are currently studying in third year of MSU BBA and works as helpers at AURA.

We, Pooja, Shweta and self celebrated friend Vaishali's birthday by sharing a story and then playing games with children and adults of a rag pickers' community. (Instead of using the the word 'rag pickers', we call them the Eagles group). These children do not go to any regular school for various reasons. When Vaishali came to know about this, she started giving them her time twice a week. We too decided to gift our time to her Bacchas instead of buying any material gift for her.

2 years ago we had celebrated her birthday by gifting a library of Pratham Books for her under served children's center. This year, she is also serving the Eagles group and teaching them to read and write. Often, she carries Pratham Books among many other books for them to read and for some who can not read, they love to look at the beautiful illustrations and touch, smell books.

It was so touching for me when I saw how mothers left their work and slowly the group became bigger. Couple of them who could read, started reading and they also requested us to come again with books so that they can also learn with their children. We realized how hungry they are for learning!

Thank you, Pratham Books for giving us this opportunity.

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Thank you Neela, Pooja and Shweta for helping us spread the joy of reading!

Pratham Books Champion : Storipur

Priya Muthukumar from Storipur is back with tales from her 3rd and 4th storytelling sessions.

Priya conducted this storytelling session as part of Storipur. As a student counselor and educator, she enjoys all her interactions with kids. Writing, telling stories and simply being with Mother Nature are few of the many things she loves to do! Storipur intends to fill up the gaps, through the ancient art form, storytelling. Sharing stories about environment, countries, societies, cultures and about all ourselves: it's Storipur's humble attempt to build responsible communities.

Just imagine, with complete concentration you are writing down the notes being dictated on the ‘ Parts of A Plant’ and then quite unexpectedly (definitely , a first time of sorts) a stranger along with the Headmistress walks in....and what unfolds is a funtabulous ( fun+fantastic+ fabulous) storytelling session! Now, today’s storytelling session (03rd July, 2014) was a complete surprise for my little friends in Class 1 and 2 at Sujana Convent.

Well, this time, I’m not telling you much ... the pictures speak for themselves, volumes and volumes!

Two sessions for classes 1 and 2 . Paplu , The Giant and The Missing Bat were the stories told. Several interesting conversations were triggered ~ ‘ what do you call a cricket bat in Kannada?’, ‘ would you like to have a giant like Paplu as your friend? ‘ ....etc.

Anyways, I loved the experience today at this school, every bit of it!

And Paplu undoubtedly, became their hero too!

Priya later sent a mail to share more details :

Well, the kids were even more excited when I told them that they had to become tailors stitching Paplu's imaginary dress. Once the dress was ready, I pretended to hold the dress and asked them what colours they could see...promptly, they named every possible colour! And I prodded further about what else they saw in this imaginary dress I held..they rattled non-stop about buttons, collars, ribbons etc. And the concoction of words they babbled to create the magic mantra, it was hilarious!

These were two classes of around 35 kids each.

Surprise Visitor

Totally charged

It is raining stories!

Saying the magic words to make Paplu big! ( their own twist to the tale)

Doubts in the story

We love stories....this much!!

expressions .....at the end!

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Thank you Priya and Storipur for helping us spread the joy of reading!

Wednesday, 9 July 2014

Pratham Books Champions : Smitha H S

Smitha H S sent us the following post about the storytelling sessions she has been conducting. Smitha is a mother of two kids who enjoy stories and reading Pratham Books and is a lawyer by profession.

As part of the Tentastic campaign, I am telling stories to children at SG International Public School, Nandini Layout, Bangalore.

The Principal and the school staff have shown great support and enthusiasm in allowing me to come in and share stories with the kids now and then. So far , I have conducted two sessions ; one for nursery kids and another for prep-I (LKG) students. Below is a brief report of each of the sessions and photos.

Session 1 : 10th June 2014

Story : Topsy-Turvy

Age group : 3-3.5yrs

The kiddies had just begun their first ever week in a school. The story of a boy dreaming/waking up to magic in the house kept them entertained! Even weepy ones paid attention to small details of the story and had something to share at the end. The teacher told me she will be telling them more Pratham Books stories during this year.

Session 2: 2nd July 2014

Stories: Smart Sona, The Generous Crow

Age group: 3.5-4.5yrs

All the kiddies, about 60 of them gathered in the school library and were a curious and happy bunch. Animal and bird stories are always a hit. So I started with The Generous Crow. Kids had a great time cooing and cawing like koels and crows. It was one noisy story telling session which I throughly enjoyed. Since they wanted one more story, I picked Smart Sona and they loved it too.

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Thank you Smitha for helping us spread the joy of reading!

Tuesday, 1 July 2014

Pratham Books Champion : Lopamudra Mohanty

Lopamudra conducted 3 storytelling sessions in one day. She went on to conduct 3 more sessions in the month of June. Lopamudra is a storyteller and an educator who loves to be surrounded by children and join them in shouting, jumping, running, dancing etc.

This is what Lopamudra had to say about her sessions:

17th June 2014

Session: 2 sessions for 1 hour each for children in the age group of 5-7 years

Book: Junior Kumbhakarna by Arundhati Venkatesh

Place: Mumbai

Language of Storytelling: English

Total Number of Children: 11

It was an action- based storytelling.

Concept 1: Exposure to new words from the book, meaniings and reading the words

This was done by finger-placed reading and actions of the words were done as it was uttered. Then they had to play dumbcharade with the same words to reinforce reading , understanding and enacting.

Concept 2: Concept of Title, Cover page and Author and characters

They were provided with book made of plain paper which was stapled into a book format. They had to write the title of their story and use any two charater from the story and create a story and they themselves are the author . ( This activity will continue in the next session )

Date: 19th June 2014

Session : 1 Session for 1 hour for Children in the age group of 3-4 years

Book: Junior Kumbhakarna by Arundhati Venkatesh

Place: Mumbai

Language of Storytelling: English

Total Number of Children: 6

It was an action- based storytelling.

Concept 1: Exposure to understanding the action words.

When I read the word, I enacted and children followed the action. Then played a game of " Fire in the mountain run children run with repeatation of action words and actions accordingly.

Concept of Character: Different characters drawn on a piece of paper. They had to identify the character and colour.