Book Club meeting Archives

31/08/201415/04/2017

Observations from the book club

Last week was the fourth meeting of the Book Club. And so it’s been a month I’m still at it, that makes me pretty happy. The children had been asking when they would get to act out a sequence and so I thought it would be a good idea to do a bit from Swami and Friends during the Book Club Meeting. Since it was the first time and I didn’t want to disappoint any of the kids, I made up 7 speaking parts. Don’t even ask how difficult that was. However, as I was to find out, that turned out to be the easy bit.

Chaos reigned..

…as none of the kids, except the one playing Swami, were happy with their parts. They argued and argued and argued. The most unhappy were H and N. N couldn’t fathom why, when it was her mum giving out the parts, she couldn’t have the lead. H wanted to be the sole narrator. Uff… it was crazy. Finally, after much changing and exchanging, a whole lot of appeasement and a few tears too we had our cast in place. And then the fun began.

They really are an acting, dancing, singing bunch. The bits where they had to raise ‘Quit India’ slogans were the most fun. It still puzzles me why kids revel in so much noise! They sang ‘Sare jahan se achchha’ with gusto and refused to stop after one stanza each time we practised. Despite the tears and the disagreement it turned out to be a fun meeting.

Learnings for next time:

– A chat with H and N on not expecting special treatment (Promises to be a tough one since I still have no clue how to go about it. Suggestions are so welcome!)
– Ask for volunteers for each part and draw chits.
– Since I’m no playwrite I’d hardly done a good job with the dialogues. They need to be shorter and simpler. I could let the kids go extempore with a few guidelines and leave them to improvise.

An observation

What I thought was a personal problem with H and N seems to be a pretty universal phenomenon – most kids lack listening skills. They are too impatient, too excited, too curious about too many things to give their total attention to one thing.

And so this week…

… we started off with a game that would encourage listening as well as creativity – a story spinning game. I started off a story and each child took turns taking it forward. Since we didn’t follow an order and any child could be asked to take up the story, they paid attention. Happily enough, they also questioned the improbable bits and built up the characters pretty well.

Also, the two boys in the club had asked for adventurous stories so the poor Happy Prince was put on hold (yet again) and I picked a Russian folk tale for this week – Ivan Tsarevich and the Grey Wolf with a firebird thrown in for good measure. It was a personal childhood favourite and the kids seemed to like it too.

We also practiced saying ‘Thank You’ in various languages including Russian. That was super fun. For a change I didn’t have to remind the kids to say a ‘thank you’ to me, which I always have to otherwise, but that’s another post.

23/08/201415/04/2017

Independence Day at The Book Club

I missed updating about the last book club meeting and as Saturday is here I don’t want to have two meetings on my conscience, so here I am.

Remember, the weekend before Independence Day I had been awaiting my package from Amazon? Well they did oblige and I got my copy of We the children of India by Leila Seth just in time for our meeting. It is an amazing book for kids 8 years and above and a wonderful way to acquaint them with the constitution and the preamble. We had a great time reading it. I wish I could have handed out a copy to each of the kids but a photocopy of an excerpt had to suffice. We were so engrossed in reading it that we had no time left for an activity.

So then last week we started off with a craft activity. We made these super cute book readers. Check them out. The kids drew their favourite book cover and pasted them on.

We read an excerpt from Swami and Friends by RK Narayan; the bit when he throws his cap in the fire. It’s a wonderfully warm story of a child’s first taste of the war for independence. The idea was as hazy in Swami’s head as in the kids of today. I hope they do imbibe his enthusiasm and love for his country.
This week we intend to act out the passage. I’m ready with the dialogues. It was quite a challenge to make sure all the kids have almost the same number of dialogues.

Before I sign off let me show off these covers too which we did for the kids’ Book Club Files.

They get to fill in details and colours to personalise them while retaining some bit of uniformity.

The story for the coming week will be, finally, The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde again. However I have a feeling in today’s session we’ll not manage much reading. The play acting’s going to be too much fun. Looking forward to a happy session.

04/08/201415/04/2017

Dragons and giants at the book club

Come Saturday and it was the second meeting of The Book Club. Since our last story was about a dragon we kicked off with a craft activity – making a dragon out of paper cups. It was fun if a little chaotic, but the kids seem to thrive on the confusion.

Hard at work

This is what they looked like.. Not very ‘scary dragonish’ but dragons nonetheless. As one of the kids put it, ‘It doesn’t need to look scary since the dragon of our story was a nice one.’ Which was of course undebatable!

I have to add that N behaved perfectly while H was as much trouble as possible. Twice I turned him out and twice I took him back in.

Story of the week

The story for the day was The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde. The older kids were thrilled because apparently they were doing it in school too. Like last time, they were all eager to read, which is suprising since I thought that would be too much like school and they wouldn’t like it. Rather than an exercise in reading it turned out to be an exercise in patience as they waited for their turn.

Over chips and biscuits we dealt with some interesting words. We took turns trying to talk in a ‘gruff’ voice like a giant. We discussed the difference between frost and snow. The kids wanted to know what hail was too. One of the girls wondered what a peach looked like and because we happened to have one it was seen and duly appreciated. The demand for more chips was firmly declined because often mouths were found to be too full to read!

Then we stumbled upon some similes and metaphors and so we talked about them. Here’s how the kids figured out the difference.

Simile: H is as naughty as a monkey.

Metaphor: H is a monkey.

So his naughtiness wasn’t in vain after all!

We had barely done half the story and it was way past our stipulated time of one hour so it was a wrap.

For next week..

Activity on The Selfish Giant

I’m at a bit of a loss on this. I thought we could maybe…

1. Make a ‘perfect garden’ diorama together. However, it’s the ‘together’ that might pose problems unless I plan and allocate tasks.

2. Or maybe they could make their own gardens out of playdough but that would involve arranging for boxes. I definitely do not want to pressure the mums at home.

3. Or we could do something on winter fruits and flowers.

What do you think? Which one should I go with? Do drop a line if you can think of anything else to do with giants, winter, selfishness, gardens. I’m hoping I can figure something out till the next meeting.

The story for next week

…is almost decided – The Happy Prince. Another one from Oscar Wilde. Maybe I can tell them a bit about the author too then. Or, if Amazon obliges, I’ll take up We the Children of India by Leila Seth. This one is suggested by my sister. Thank you S.

Huge thanks to all of you too for your suggestions from last week. I’m already on the lookout for a story that can be acted out like Cathy suggested. Uma, special thanks to you. Pratham books has some great titles as well as Art Tales. Sangeetha those quizzes are a great idea but I’m keeping them for later. For a month at least the focus is completely on having fun. Taking baby steps.