How Far is Far?

If you thought your friend's house on the other side of town was far away, you have clearly not read this book. Climb the Magic Math Ladder to get from where you are to the top of Mount Everest, to Kashmir, to the moon, the Sun, and ultimately, to the edge of the Universe, which is very, very, VERY far away indeed. Ready, steady, go!

ACTIVITIES

Use Your Body

Resources

• A Metre scale or strips of newspaper cut and taped together into meter long strips

What to do

• Find something long to measure. It could be a boundary wall, the length of garden pathway - anything you like!

• First ask the children to lie down head to toe, one after the other along the length of the item and find out how many ‘children’ it takes to measure the wall.

• Next, ask them to measure the same distance with their metre long strips of newspaper.

• What’s the difference in the measurement? Talk about how it’s important to have a standardised unit of measurement!

Globe Guesstimate!

Resources

• Globe

• Google

Ask the children to pick any two places on the globe and guesstimate how far apart they are. Then use Google to find the correct answer.

The closest guestimates win a prize!

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Where did Your Dimples Go

Langlen has curly hair like Appa and a cleft chin like Imma. It makes her wonder why brothers and sisters, or parents and children look alike. Is she just a collection of traits, then? So many questions, but Imma and Appa have all the answers. 'Where Did Your Dimples Go?' is a lovely book to introduce children to the concept of genetics and heredity.

Activities

Make Your Own Family Tree

(Source: Pinterest)

Ask the children to bring photos of their family members - siblings, parents, grandparents… may be even their pet dog!

Resources

1. Printouts of family tree template Click here for a template.

2. Glue stick

3. Colour pencils

What to do

• Children can stick their family members in the family tree template and colour it in.

• Afterward they can study each other’s tree and decide who they look like, or perhaps older children can discuss who they take after in their family.

What would happen if a..

Resources

• Paper

• Pencils

• Colour pencils/sketch pens

What would happen if a monkey and a giraffe had a baby together? What traits would it inherit from both its parents? Draw the results - which we promise will be hysterical!

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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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