What a way to start the day!
Twenty-six children from Kailash Vidyamandir, Anandan, Women’s Interlink Foundation (Kalighat Burning Ghat centre) and Birla High School for Boys celebrated ‘One Nation Reading Together’, along with Ken Spillman and Scholastic on 24 November 2016.
Held at The Seagull Foundation for the Arts, the morning saw poems being recited by the children followed by storytelling by Chitralekha Bhaskar of Scholastic. Akash and Rohan, both middle school students at Kailash Vidyamandir, recited poems-one titled ‘Ma’ and the other a poem on science and learning science. Rekha from Anandan recited a poem by Rabindranath Tagore and Tanisha from the Women’s Interlink Foundation recited a short poem in Hindi. One of the students from Birla High School also recited a poem-one that he had written just this morning! Kailash Vidyamandir, Anandan and Women’s Interlink Foundation are all part of the PeaceWorks Share Stories Open Minds project.
This was followed by a very interesting and fun musical performance by junior school students from Birla High School for Boys. Their instruments were buckets, a plastic bottle filled with rice grains and a large plastic bowl!
Ken Spillman, renowned children’s book author from Australia spoke with the children, particularly about what they liked doing, whether they all enjoyed reading and the importance of letting your imagination and creativity run free.
Much to the delight of the children, Chitralekha, accompanied by Thea Stilton (the sister of the very famous children’s book character-Geronimo Stilton), narrated the story of Thea going to school and the hilarity that ensues.Thea’s antics (kudos to the staff at Scholastic for being such a fun Thea) and Chitralekha’s engaging storytelling style combined made it extremely fun for the children.
Scholastic had brought a 100 books each for the centres- a beginning of a library in two, and what a lovely start to inculcating a reading habit in children.
We ended the program with a few songs by the children.
–Paroma Sengupta