Home Term: Book-buying

As part of the home term, Tarang and Isaura, along with Angie and Shalini, went book-buying for the library! We sold a whole lot of books and bought books with the money we received. We bought books worth Rs. 4300 altogether (without actually spending a rupee). Here are images of all the books we bought. Sorry, we are having trouble making the first group of book covers appear larger on the blog!

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Our Pond

The pond at Shibumi has held everyone's attention ever since it was built. It was a project taken up by some 12-13 year old children who worked at it with much enthusiasm. It took some time and a mason's help to finish the structure, and then it was time to fill it.It wasn't very easy to get it filled up and keep it that way as it was the peak of the dry season, and there were doubts that the pond was leaking. Questions about, weather to keep it filled, what plants to put in, whether to put in fish or not and weather a re-plastering was needed, were heating up. Well, all this kept happening and one evening the pond was filled. Some fish were put in and from one of the walks the children brought a lily plant. The fish thrived but the lily was struggling. Soon there was no sign of the lily plant. It wasn't there anymore. Mostly, after this, the pond has been alone, except for getting filled up occasionally during the dry season. We were all, of course, con...

Mask-making at School

The theatre workshop planned for Kiri on Tuesday could not happen because Saraswati, who was going to conduct it was ill. So we planned a half-day mask-making workshop using collected junk and natural material, to be followed by a film screening for the children. Angie and I were going to conduct the activities for the day. The mask making activity was something I had done in college and enjoyed tremendously, so I was very excited to do it with the kids, but of course there was no knowing how it would actually go! I started the day by showing the group photos of several different kinds of masks from different parts of the world and some junk art, just to get some juices flowing in the kids’ minds. They were quite enthralled and fascinated, and in hindsight it did feel like a useful presentation to have made. We then went out for a walk around school armed with plastic bags to collect interesting things from the roadside. Some of the children had chosen to pair up for the activity, ot...

Parent Teacher Meeting: the Aftermath

Jaidip, Parent Parents and teachers getting together to talk about a common concern: the child. At school, at home and in the wider world. The hope being that, together, one arrives at some measure of insight into the Childs life, which could help everyone. How then, should we as parents approach these meetings? I would think that objectivity and a certain absence of identification with the child would be very important. An ability to see ‘a’child and not’My’child. We have just been to the meeting and I’m sad to say the above is much easier said than done. I was frankly astonished at the extent of my perception of Sagar as an extension of myself. To say I preened every time I thought of an observation as ‘positive’ and was pretty downcast (or felt argumentative) when the opposite happened would not be entirely untrue. In short: Sagar was Me. Does it not then follow that I was talking about myself most of the time and not about Sagar at all? If one says that the be...

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