Dum Dum-a-Dum Biryani

Basha and Sainabi are in a panic. Ammi is ill, and Saira aunty has just announced that she is arriving for lunch - with 23 other people! Budding chef Basha thinks he can cook Ammi's Dum Biryani, but her recipe only makes enough for 4 people. Math wiz Sainabi jumps in to help, declaring that she knows how to turn a 4-person recipe to a 24-person recipe. Do the siblings succeed in serving up a truly Dum Dum-a-Dum biryani?

ACTIVITIES 

Ball Toss! 

Resources

 A ball

How to play

• Have the children stand around in a circle.

• Toss the ball to the next child, or any child if you want to make it mad.

• Say a food ingredient while tossing the ball (keep this open across languages, for eg: haldi will do).

• Every time the ball is tossed the child who catches it has to say the name of an ingredient.

• First child to repeat or blank is out.

Play till you get 3 winners.

Weave-A-Story

Resources

• Paper

• Pens

What to do

• Put up a picture or a first sentence as a writing prompt.

• Prompts: My pet kangaroo was hungry and all I had in the fridge was a pod of garlic….

• More Prompts: We, my sister and I, were making our first ‘all-by-ourselves’ cake for my mother’s birthday. What started out as a special day soon turned bizarre…to say the least…

• And more:  Remember the summer break when we managed to catch the ‘milk stealing thief’ of our colony.

• Divide the children into small groups and have them create the story from that prompt.

• Each child takes a turn writing one sentence to add to the story and passes it on to the next.

• Keep it going in the group until they have finished it (maybe helpful to have a length or a time limit so that the stories don’t go toooo out of control)

• When all the groups have finished, ask a volunteer to come up and read the story out!

This isn't a spoon! it's a...

Materials needed: A bunch of kitchen utensils (10): ladle/spoon, pressure cooker whistle, lid of a pan, fork, wooden spatula, lemon squeezer

What to do

• Divide the group into clusters of 5 kids each

• Hand over 2 utensils to each group.

• Give the teams 15 minutes of preparation time to devise a play and use the utensils as creative props; use them for creative purposes other than their regular use. Is it a ladle or a microphone?

• Other Teams and you act as judges and award points to each other.

Team with the highest points wins!

 

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Welcome to day 2 of #WonderWhyWeek! Today's book is 'Let's Go Seed Collecting' by Neha Sumitran and Archana Sreenivasan and guest edited by Bijal Vaccharajani. Join Tooka, Poi, and their best friend Inji the dog, as they go around collecting seeds. The adventure begins when the three friends meet Pacha the tamarind tree.

After you read the story why not step outside and take a walk around the neighbourhood to see how many trees you can spot? Plus, here are a few super fun activities to try!

ACTIVITIES

Tree 20 Questions 

Resources

● Blank visitings cards

● Cellotape

● Markers 

● Timer 

How to play 

● Write down the names of trees and plants on blank visiting cards. 

● Divide the group into batches of 4-5 children each. 

● A volunteer from the group will come up and choose a card without seeing what’s written on it

● Stick the card to the volunteer’s forehead without letting them see the name of the tree.

● The volunteer returns to their group. Everyone else in the group can see the name of the tree. 

● The volunteer then begins to ask questions about their plant. The team can only answer yes or no. Egs Do I produce an oil? Am I fruit bearing? Do I grow in India? The volunteer has to guess which tree he is in 20 questions or in under 90 seconds. 

Hopping Corn

You’ve heard about pop corn what about hopping corn? This experiment makes corn hop up and down repeatedly in a container for over an hour. It’s so much fun to watch! 

Resources 

• A clear glass container

• Popping corn 

• 2 1/2 – 3 cups of water 

• 2 Tbsp. of baking soda 

• 6 Tbsp. of white vinegar 

• Food colouring (optional) 

What to do

 ● Fill the glass container with water and add a couple drops of food colouring. 

● Add baking soda and stir well until it has completely dissolved. 

● Add a small handful of popping corn kernels. 

● Add the vinegar and watch the corn start to hop up and down! 

This is a terrific way to work on measurement concepts, listening skills, and practising patience too! 

The science behind it 

When the baking soda and vinegar combine, they react to form carbon dioxide (CO2) gas. The gas forms bubbles in the water which circle around the corn kernels. The bubbles lift the kernels up to the surface and when they get there they pop and the kernels sink again. The “hopping” continues until the vinegar and baking soda have finished reacting. 

Seed Search

Resources

• Printed Word Searches 
• Timer 
• Highlighter pens 
• Divide the group into teams give them a pre-printed word search or crosswords with a seed/plant theme. The first team to finish in 10 minutes gets a prize! 

Here are some links to ready made word searches

• http://www.havefunteaching.com/worksheets/word-search-puzzles/plants-word-search-worksheet 
• https://www.teachervision.com/tv/printables/seedsword.pdf 
• http://www.education.com/worksheet/article/seeds-seedlings-word-search/ 

Do you have ideas of your own for seed themed activities? Share them with us in the comments section below or on Twitter or Facebook.

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Do best friends always have to be alike? Devi and Bonda are best friends, but Devi is a little girl, while Bonda is a… Well, he can lift heavy boxes, he can extend his arms and legs, he never forgets anything he’s told, he can be turned on and off. Can you guess what he is? 

Written by acclaimed children's author Roopa Pai and illustrated by the wildly talent Jit Chowdhury, 'Bonda and Devi' invites children to step in to the future to see what might be in store for them. 

Follow up activities

There's a whole host of fun things to do with children after you've read the book together, here are a few that we loved! 

Meet My Robot

Resources

● Paper 

● Pen 

● Colour pencils 

Imagine if you had a robot of your very own! What would you call it? What would it look like? What would you programme it to do?

Ask children to spend a little time thinking about the answers to these questions and then write a creative piece about their very own robot friend. They can then draw their robot and colour it in too!

Cereal Box Robot

Reuse, recycle and recreate!  We love the idea of taking old things and making something new with it... especially if that something new, is a shiny robot! Be prepared to get your hands messy with the children, as you create your very own Cereal Box Robot!

Resources 

• Old cereal boxes of different shapes and sizes 
• Bottle caps 
• Toilet paper rolls
• Aluminium foil, old newspaper 
• Paint 
• Glue 
• Scissors 
• Cello Tape 
• Bowls 
• Paintbrushes 
• Loads of imagination!

What to Do 

● Create small workstations by spreading newspaper on the ground 

● On each workstation leave a collection of supplies 

● Let the kids go crazy and create their own robots! 

Need a little inspiration? Head to Kids Activities Blog for some! 

Maker Space Ideas

If you have slightly older children in your group, do check out these links on making simple robots that actually move!

Resarch Parent has two awesome 'My First Robotics' ideas - a Wigglebot and a Wobblebot! We absolutely love the names, don't you?

Do you have ideas for activities to do after reading 'Bonda and Devi'?  Leave us a comment on the blog or share them with us on Twitter or FaceBook.

 

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