Kids Ralley...

Mobile Creches celebrated 'Bal Adhikar Diwas'

This saturday was somewhat different. It was late morning and we all reached Mobile Creches with the usual plan of teaching kids. To our suprise what we all saw was something different!!! All the kids instead of being inside school, were standing outside with posters and banners in their hand. It seemed as if some army is ready to attack.



I was surprized but then someone told us that there is a awareness rally organized today. All the kids were supposed to form a group and walk in their community. Kids were carrying posters in their hands with different messages written on it.

This was their fight for education.

Whoops... then what to think, I also took a poster in my hand and became part of the rally.





I could imagine the rallies in 1940s for the fight for freedom. This was very much the same for these kids.

However, this was fun!! fun for them and fun for all the volunteers.

We all were moving in the small lanes of the community (designed like jalebi, we were moving round and round from one lane to the other) with shouting aloud the messages that were written on the posters. Everyone from the community were looking us (which we all wanted) and trying to read what was written on posters.

Though there was no teaching that day, we were not able to teach something to kids, but i learnt one thing from the ralley "We don't value things that we get with ease, the value of those things are only known to those who are deprived of them"

Bhaiyya aa Gaye :)

A wave of enthusiasm ran through the kids as we reached the Mobile creche - our lethargic bodies too got charged the moment a loud "bhaiyaa aa gaye" fell on our ears. This seems to have become a routine now (no wonder we are excited to meet our little friends every saturday).

This time Shashank got a jigsaw puzzle (animal pictures in every jigsaw) with him that attracted a lot of kids [chorus: bhaiyya main bhi khelunga]. We thought of fostering team work in the kids and divided the ones that were interested into three teams. Each team was given a separate jigsaw puzzle to solve. The desire of being the first one to solve was so strong that they focussed on our lip movement and waited for the "Start" signal. Some of them of-course did not wait :D.


Initially we thought that this exercise would be difficult for the kids. However they proved us wrong. One of the team was extremely quick at knitting the pieces together. I could see the glitter in their eyes everytime they were able to piece an animal together. They quickly finished their jigsaw and I began telling them the animal names. There was haathi, saanp, cheetah, sher and another one whose name I was unable to recall. Without much hope I asked if any one of them knew it's name. No one replied. I let it go by.

While some of the kids were busy with the jigsaw I looked around to see what others were up to. One of the groups that was being taught by Priyanka was making a lot of noise. I went closer to see that Priyanka had drawn a human figure (it looked more like a ghost..he he- don't tell Priyanka ;)) and marked the various body parts. She was explaining where nose, hair, teeth etc. fit in. She asked me if I could take a quiz since she had finished teaching. I agreed and quizzed the kids by placing my finger on the body parts. They answered quickly confirming once again that they are quick learners. Priyanka had already taught the kids Twinkle twinkle little star (with actions) so I tried my luck with teaching "Johnny Johhnny Yes Papa". Frankly I had forgotten the verse when Priyanka remined me the lyrics. My actions combined with my verse's hindi translation ("jonny beta tumhe cheeni khaee hai- nahi papa" ;) ) made the kids laugh and gag. I am hoping that they would remember the song (and the hilarious actions :D) the next time I pay them a visit.

Priyanka then taught the kids how to write their names in English, which they picked up quickly.


Meanwhile it was Munish's turn to teach the younger kids and face the heat :D. It really is not easy teaching kids alphabets however he did a good job.


Ashwini (aka Dhoni - as suggested by the Mobile Creche teachers :D) taught another group extremely deligently.


Rajesh too taught kids in his very unique and energetic "samajh aa raha hai na bhaisahab" andaaz.


As we were about to leave , one of the kids came to me and said "Bhaiyya wo nevla tha". Quickly the animal whose name I had forgotten flashed before my eyes. I cursed myself for not being able to relate the figure to the word. I looked at the kid and mumured "Hats off buddy - way to go!".

Get up everyone its time for Yoga!!!

Yoga time for all of you!!..

For those who didn't go to Mobile Creches this time really missed the joy of Yoga. This Saturday I planned to do something which is different from mathematics, science and all, so I thought why not experiment 'Yoga'. The nice weather and the raining mood raise the excitement.

When I reached there everyone was studying, so the first step was to get everyone in a circle so that everyone could see everybody else (I didn't knew what would be the repercussion of this). The very first thing turned out to be very difficult for me, phew!!.. I told everybody to cross their legs and Doh!! Believe me this was the first time in my life I found that there are 15 different ways in which you can cross your legs. Every kid has its own way of sitting. So the few minutes went in getting all the kids sit in a similar pose. It looks easy but buddy it was not. Some of the kids have legs like rubber band (I know you wouldn't believe), you make them cross their legs and just turn around and you would find their legs (Wooops!!.. ) again in the same state as they were before. But finally I managed to get everyone in the same position.

Now it was time to get their thumb and middle finger together (big mistake!!). I told them the same line which I just wrote here and made the mistake of my life. I forgot that every kid had two middle fingers and everyone was ready with his own combination. But, I found a quick and easy solution to this problem by telling everyone to get their thumb and 'first finger' together. Sigh!!.. Thank God you have given us only one 'first finger'.

So now everyone was ready to start and sitting straight in Yoga position.

Now it was the time for the first exercise. I instructed everyone to close their eyes and take deep breath in.

Guess what!!..

Every kid had its one eye open and one closed, peeping to check that others have closed their eyes or not. Now every kid thinking in the similar fashion lead to a new form of Yoga ' Kid Yoga'. Keep one of your eyes open and one closed, Doh!!.. ( Hey hey I coined the term 'Kid Yoga' and I am the first person on this earth to teach that unusual thing.. lol.. I guess I can go for a patent!! Lol..)

Well, all the exercise kept on finishing one by one and ended with shavasan where every kid was lying still on the ground. Ok ok I accept they completed this asan again keeping their one eye open and one closed to see that other kids have closed both their eyes or not. And similar was the case with every kid.

So finally we completed all the exercises keeping one eye open and one closed.

And yeah how to forget a good dose of laugh that was attached with every exercise we did. Every kid was laughing looking at others performing yoga and he didn't knew that others are laughing on him lol..

I hope next time everyone who missed would be there.

Hooooooreeey!!!!!

Shahrukh is back in school!!!....

Moreover, Laxman's parents have agreed to send him to school.

Hip hip hooorey....

Attrition at School

This weekend we were quite disappointed to learn that a couple of the kids have dropped out of school and have started working at the shops in the slum; one of them being Shahrukh Khan.

It seems that the kids themselves would rather go to school than work, but their parents insist that they do otherwise. These kids earn anywhere b/w 400 and 800 rupees a month working at these places, which is not a very small amount of money for these guys.

The teachers at MC said that they will speak to their parents; if they fail to make an impact then we may have to step in. I’m quite appalled that it’s so terribly difficult for parents to understand that their kids tomorrow is more important that the extra money today.

Do people have suggestions on how we should try and tackle this issue? Swapna suggested that we try and teach then crafts which can be sold to generate money for these kids.

Like to go for Partying...

This time i'm not going to write what we did last Saturday, i'm going to show you. Let me take you through the world full of life:

Here is Prafulla teaching kids (Ooops... higher mathematics), but I guess kids were smarter than us, they started playing game (magic of numbers) with us and could guess any number that we think in our mind... (i was impressed)



While Ruchi was busy with small kids...



Saurabh was teaching the other group...



Now look at Prafulla and me, I guess instead of teching them we have learnt their way of greeting Doh!!.. Salaaaaaam Namaaaaste



Last time we taught all kids how to write their name in english. I was not sure if they would still remember but to my surprize when i told everyone to write their name they started laughing at me (one kid said "are bhiayaa aap bhi kyaa choti choti cheeze poochte ho.. ye lo..") and they all wrote their name correctly..

Now comes the twist, I guess everybody remember Shahrukh Khan, yes our own Shahrukh Khan. He stood up and asked me to write my name on his slate, well at that point of time I was clueless... but later I observed that he was trying to learn how to write our names. He wrote my name (frankly speaking his writing was much better than me, i think my school teachers were right, I need to improve my handwriting ...lol...) then it was turn of Prafulla and now look Shahrukh's concentration...



Here is our group



Oh i forgot, this time we had Dr. Rahul Verma and his wife Dr. Sumedha in Mobile Creches. They had a talk with MC coordinater Asha and discussed about the health of children. Now they would be visiting MC every week (Kudos for both of them). Asha was so hapy to see Doc that she couldn't stop herself thanking our group. I think we all should thank Dr. Rahul and his wife (three cheers for both of them).

Hey wait wait, can you guess who clicked all of these pictures..

I can bet you could not..


Kids of Mobile Creches :)

I never knew... Sun can be Blue!!

This weekend only three of us were there. Sapna was ready with some A4 sheets, Prashant brought some candies and I was entering there with "no ideas what to do" in my mind. But once you are in, you really don’t need any idea. Refreshing smiles, curious faces, "namaste bhaiya" sound in the air...and you are totally into a new world.

Our "A for apple" team was busy doing some hard-code math this time:-). Moment I think of teaching something, very next moment they make me realize that they already know much more and I can really learn a lot from them. I sat in the middle and they were jumping over me.."bhaiya meri book dekho..bhaiya meri book dekho". I took one of the notebook in hand.. "2+3=5" was first entry on it. I remembered the day when, to add 2 and 3, I used to draw two bars...and a circle and three bars and count them all together. From counting..to sums..I thought to teach them some tables. I asked.."2 ka pahada kisko kisko aata hai" and there was Lalit (he is really good at many things) behind "bhaiya mujhe 20 tak aate hai".. I said "kyaaaa????" and thought.."graduation ho gaya par aaj tak mujhe 20 tak pahade yaad nahi hue"... It was so much fun teaching them some math tricks. They loved the one..using which you can generate (without remembering) the table of 9 just by writing 0 to 9 forward and backward.

At the other end, where Prshant was busy with camera session with kids, Sapna was enjoying drawing classes with them. I sat with one group and asked one of them make my sketch. If you dont care about the ratio of my head to my tummy...I was looking
cool:) with 5-5 fingers in both my hands. I would really recommend all the advertisement agencies to meet such creative minds. Looking at many concentric circles on a paper.. I asked "ye kya hai".. and he replied in a soft voice "ghar". Who knows he might be the first in future to make circular pyramids with top views as concentric circles? There were multicolored Indian flags, orange stars, triangular kites, one wheel car.. I was really lost into those colors. When I came out... the sun was really blue!!!