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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Duration - 6 months extendable up to 1 year 

About Us 
Pratham Books (www.prathambooks.org) is a not-for-profit children's book publisher that was set up in 2004 to publish good quality, affordable books in many Indian languages. Our mission is to see ‘a book in every child’s hand’ and we have spread the joy of reading to millions of children in India. As a publisher serving every child in India, Pratham Books has always pushed the boundaries when it comes to exploring innovative ways in which to create access to joyful stories and have been fortunate in finding partners to collaborate with who share this vision. 
In 2015, Pratham Books increased its footprint by going digital. StoryWeaver (www.storyweaver.org.in)is a digital platform that hosts stories in languages from India and beyond so that every child can have an endless stream of stories in her mother tongue to read and enjoy. The stories can be read, translated, versioned, or downloaded for free. All stories on the platform are openly licensed. 

We are looking for a Project Manager based out of Chhattisgarh who can spearhead a statewide campaign. The person is responsible to successfully implement the campaign and deliver on the KPIs while managing internal and external stakeholders. 
An ideal candidate should have proven experience in campaign and project management. 

Key Responsibilities: 
As a Project Manager, you will manage the day-to-day communication and operational aspects of the project. Your core responsibilities will be to: 
● Create and maintain detailed timelines/work plans for all project deliverables and key milestones; hold internal and external teams accountable to project plans. 
● Serve as the primary point of contact for all operational questions about the project internally and externally 
● Establish and nurture government relationships in the state education department to further the campaign outreach and impact 
● Design and deliver campaign outreach initiatives in the state and ensure mobilization of resources at the ground level 
● Identify stakeholders and attendees for crucial recurring and ad-hoc discussions; capture meeting notes and escalate communications to align on deliverables and troubleshoot roadblocks. 
● Deliver project status updates to internal and external teams 
● Undertake ad-hoc translation requests for short messages and social media posts. 
● Support in preparing project launch, weekly check-ins, to identify and capture recommendations for future execution.
● Working closely with other team members to capture feedback throughout the project lifecycle and to contribute to the iteration of existing processes aimed at making project delivery more effective. 
● Support the organization in monitoring and evaluation exercises 
● Gathering and summarizing key takeaways for monthly project reports 

Required skills and experiences: 
● Minimum 2 years of experience in the education sector, project management or social media outreach campaigns 
● Bachelors / Masters degree with relevant experience will be considered for the role 
● Proven experience in project management, social campaigns, digital marketing campaigns and/ or project management preferably in the education sector 
● Exceptional communication and project-management / organisational skills 
● Proven ability to build consensus and work effectively within a cross-departmental team 
● Excellent track record of time management, systems organization, and follow-up

● Agility and flexibility towards evolving responsibilities and last-minute project changes 
● A confident facilitator to coordinate discussions between multiple internal stakeholders (such as an interdisciplinary team of different specialists across different geographies) 

Language Skills: 
Excellent proficiency in reading, writing and speaking Hindi. Additional knowledge of local languages of the state is desirable 

Nice to have but not mandatory: 
● Past experience in the education sector. 
● Masters degree with past work experience in social sector organising and advocacy. 
● Experience running lean campaigns that emphasize scaling of success, ideally within the education/social sector 
● Willingness to travel around the state if required 

Location: Raipur 

Write to us: 
Email your resume with the Project Manager (Chhattisgarh) -StoryWeaver in the subject line to [email protected]. Also, send us a short paragraph on why you think you are suitable for the position.
 

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Tenzin Choedon is a teacher, who is presently working as the headmistress at Mewoen Tsuglag Petoen School run by Sambhota Tibetan Schools Society under the Department of Education, CTA, Dharamsala. She loves reading and writing poetry. Her husband, Tenzin Dorjee has been working as the head of Traditional and Modern Academic Section, Department of Education, CTA since June 2016. 

In this blog post, the husband-wife duo write about being part of a translation sprint to translate storybooks into Tibetan for Pratham Books. 

Our relation with Pratham Books had been really wonderful and we owe this to MES (Manjushri Educational Services) for providing us the opportunity to translate 5 of their STEM stories. Our relation became stronger later after the interactive session we had in the Tibet Fund office at Mcleod Ganj followed by another informal meeting at Dhauladhar, Dharamshala. Just recently we translated four of the stories on the theme 'Water' for Pratham Books. We are grateful to the Pratham Books team for believing in us for this important translation work.

On 3rd September, I along with five teachers and 25 students from our school had the opportunity to be part of a translation sprint during which we translated a total of 15 level 1 storybooks from Pratham Books with Mr. Buddha Kyab and Mr. Ngawang Tsetan (MES Team members). It was a wonderful experience.

Pictures from the Tibetan translation sprint conducted by MES with teachers and students of Piteon school in Dharamshala.

Before being part of the translation team for the translation of STEM stories into Tibetan language, my husband and I had no experience of translating stories. Only after being involved in the translation work, many facts about translation work gradually unfolded for us. The translation of children storybooks may appear to be easy one for those who are not involved in the process but our past experiences had made one thing very clear - writing and translating children stories is not at all an easy task. It requires a lot of thoughtful considerations and patience to draft, reread, review and edit the story at your end as the translator before making the final draft to be reviewed by the reviewing team.

The most difficult part in translating a story from English to another language is deciding on a child-friendly language which does not affect the grammatical structure of the language or the flavour of the story. The most challenging part is the time you have to devote for the translation work but if you are interested then you will be able to meet this challenge happily. Moreover, to be able to do well in translating children stories one has to have a good understanding of children's language and their taste.

Stories translated by Tenzin Dorjee into Tibetan

Being a part of the translation team for STEM stories and our experience thereafter with Pratham Books had really changed our outlook towards children literature besides giving us a very rich learning experience. We are highly indebted and grateful to everyone involved in our journey as translators (beginners), though not full fledged.  We are also grateful to our daughters for reading each of our translated stories as a trial for further changes before our final drafts, on behalf of the rest of the children. Their reading of the stories reflect their understanding, and this has been really very helpful in making the necessary changes that we as adults might have failed to see. 

We thank Pratham Books for this wonderful initiative and for your contribution towards Children Literature. Lastly, we wish the whole team of Pratham Books a very Happy Translation Day!

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