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!

**********

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.