“Ooh! I see something suspicious!” one child cried out, holding up her copy of The Monster Hunters. “Look! A monster at the window! Page 2!”
“On page 33 of Bookasura, Bakasura is so big. How did he become so small on page 39?”
“I don’t think Mr Hoppy should have lied to Mrs Silver about Alfie. How can you make friends based on lies?” This from a seven-year-old reading Esio Trot.
“This is so funny; I want to read the next book about Zain & Ana,” says one child.
“I didn’t like the book,” says another. “They say dogs are a nuisance and they call the dog Buddhu! That’s not nice.”
What fun I had at both batches of the June edition of my reading programme! Take a look at what all we did.
The Monster Hunters
From the very first reading programme onwards, I’ve begun each edition with a hOle book. This time, it was The Monster Hunters. What fun we had spotting monsters right through the book! I think that was the highlight of our sessions together. We did a fun activity imagining things under our beds – I see a monster’s eye! What could it be? Ah, it’s just an old torch. This book was a treat!
Bookasura
Among the most exciting activities we did with Bookasura was growing something of our own. At Navaneeth Uncle’s farm, Bala discovers fruit trees; he digs a compost pit and fills it with kitchen waste, and he cleans the fish pond. What can we, in our urban setups grow? I grew mustard (picture below!). Some of the children grew moong, corn, oregano … Oh, and of course it helps that one of the children logged in from a cardamom plantation in Idukki! He had firsthand experience of a kind that none of us do!
Esio Trot
Speaking backwards is almost like speaking in code. Mrs Silver makes it even more fun by calling her backwards chant magic words. What magic can you do by saying things backwards?
emoceb elbisivni!
nrut otni a taog!
raeppasid!
At Least a Fish
There was so much that I wanted to do with At Least a Fish, but the reading itself took longer than I anticipated because of the number of discussions we had about fish, dogs and dragons! But page 8 of the book is just too much fun to ignore. We laughed, yes, but I was also astounded at how much children know about all kinds of animals! We discussed differences between an elephant and a duck, an octopus and a rat, and a lion and a platypus. We then looked at similarities and that was fun too! How are a hedgehog and a monkey similar? What about a seahorse and a dog?
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