The Atta-Galata Story time!

Over the weekend, we went to a unique story time hosted by Pratham publications at Atta-Galatta, Koramangala, Bangalore. Usually a story hour is followed by a craft activity for kids, but this one had a theatre based activity both before and after the story time. Inspired by the book slated to be the centerpiece of the session, the story tellers, Padmaja Nagarur and Madhu Shukle had the audience, comprising of kids and their parents introduce themselves with an action that was to be reciprocated by the whole group. So Abhay did his signature “chamak challo” hand movement as he introduced himselfJ  Soon were asked to play a one of kind game of “statue or freeze” so as to make different shapes with one’s body! Abhay found himself fully warmed up for the interactive story time that followed and was surprisingly an active participant at the session. He seemed to enjoy making different shapes with the satin tapes that the kids had been given as an after story-time activity. Hmmm!……I’m hoping it had nothing to do with our promise to buy his birthday gift later that day :-)

The storybook featured was “Susheela Kolams” by Sridala Swami and illustrated by Priya Kuriyan, a Level 1 Early Reader by Pratham publications. This is a story of Susheela who learn to draw rangolis, called Kolams in Tamil Nadu from her mother. On the auspicious festival of Pongal, she was allowed to make one Kolam all by herself when she discovered that she loved to draw Kolams. She drew them everywhere – on the outer walls of her house, on the sides of tall buildings, on trains and even on kites that people flew across the sky! Susheela became so famous for her kolams that the Indian Air Force Pilots asked her to help them make a kolam in the sky. Susheela was thrilled to explain how to dip, dive and turn their planes to make saffron-green-white kolams in the sky! Susheela gets inspired to take her kolams to another level, she tries to imagine kolams in between the twinkling stars in the night sky. A nice little book to tell your creative little one that truly sky is the limit!