“Who says you can have problems and you can’t smile also?”

 

Definitely you can…I saw and learnt this from these small kids who although came from a weak socioeconomic background, often separated families still had a smile on their faces and zeal to learn and change the way their life was.

While they were introducing themselves I noticed that they had family problems, e. g death of a parent or separated families. Most of the mothers worked in other houses doing the household chores to earn a living or fathers worked in factories or buildings as laborers.

It was an urge to teach small children which made me to join Colorss as a volunteer. My task which seemed to be very easy to me initially turned out to be a challenge for me. I was supposed to take a 45 min class, making children of class 6-9 standard write articles on a few topics.

I started with an article on My Ambition, where I had not only to explain the meaning of ambition to children but also had to assist each of them in framing sentences ,making them spell every word properly and translating their thoughts from Hindi to English. This took 30 min for me and there was hardly any time left for any other activity. It was a kind of surprise for me to see children of 8th grade unable to  spell  “will”  “have”  “doctor”  “because”.  I felt the presence of a loop hole in the education system where students of an English medium school were not well versed in spellings and general English.

I thought of doing it another way. Next day I divided them into teams and told them to ask spellings from the opponent team. This sense of competition made some of them to find difficult words from their text books such as “environment” and learn them. This little effort of the children was encouraging for me. I also introduced some games in the class such as “Bring a thing” where students had to bring specific objects from their teammates such as “A black Reynolds pen or a paper boat”. Although I could not work for a long time as my vacations were going to be over, but it was an experience I would cherish forever.Something definitely needs to be done somewhere and Colorss is an attempt to do it. After joining Colorss as a volunteer, with Anand sir’s support I was more than comfortable and enjoyed every bit of work. Anand sir’s briefing of everything about children, their background, talents, general behavorial tendencies were helpful to know children better. I would like to thank Anand Sir for giving me the opportunity and believing in me. It was something very different and satisfying I could have done in 4 years of my college life. I enjoyed it and learnt a lot from it.

Priyanka Trivedi

VIT Vellore

Volunteered with Colorss at Pune

Picture story activity giving an opportunity for inward journey...| Baroda Updates

Picture story is an activity which requires creative thinking. As the name suggests one is required to write a story based on a given picture. To explain this concept to the students we decided to give them an example using one picture for the whole class. They came up with ideas for the story and all they needed from us was a little guidance. This exercise helped them to understand that a story needs an introduction, plot and a believable end, but otherwise one can let their imagination fly.

In the next class, as planned, we held a small competition in which the class was divided in groups of four or five. Each group came up with their own story (they were given separate pictures) without any external help. We were delighted to see that they were enthusiastic about the activity and seemed to enjoy themselves.

The girl students taking active participation in the on-going  Picture -story  activity

The best thing about that class was that when left to them the children did not waste their time but concentrated on completing their work. We were really surprised to see the group of girls who were actively involved in the process of writing the story, who otherwise used to passive throughout the class.

Shreya and Ankita

Team Baroda

note: the stories written would be published soon

Students created their own story...moving ahead..

Create your own story with the help of an image was held at Baroda 'Colors of Life' project, by the Team Baroda. Here the volunteers showed the students the image below. Here the children were asked to look at the image and think what they can perceive.  They were asked to come-up with a story. This unconsious method has helped in creative thinking and opening the children. 

Image used for creating your own story.

The students came up with this story..

'There was a village called Rampur. A fair was held there one day. Everybody from the village went there. Rohit, a four year old boy, also went there with his parents. Rohit was delighted to be at the fair. He wanted to go to the balloon-seller, food-stalls, the magician, toy stall and the snake-charmer. In his excitement, he left his mother’s hand and got lost. When he couldn’t find them after a while he got scared and started crying. He cried so much that he became tired and fell asleep. His parents made an announcement in the fair asking people to find Rohit and bring him to them. A man found Rohit sleeping and brought him to his parents. His parents were very happy and grateful.'

We were delighted to read this and we hope even you would have enjoyed.

Team Baroda

Colorss

Girl students at Enhance learnt 'Sudoku' along with Martial Arts

Since the children were already burdened with unit tests, I thought of conducting some activity which would be new, fun and beneficial at the same time. I came up with “Sudoku”, which provides an overall exercise for the brain, helping in  keeping it active, focused and sharp.

The girls were very excited at the prospect of learning a new ‘game’. Smriti and I started with first explaining the various terms associated with the game, followed by the concept. Most of the girls, except 2-3 were quick to grasp it, and were able to solve a 4 X 4 grid within minutes.

Neha and Smriti teaching Sudoku at Project Enhance, Pune

Further when I asked them should I increase the difficulty level by giving a 6 X 6 grid to solve, ALL of them answered in the positive.  2 girls who were giggling and not paying attention, I called upon them to solve the grid on the blackboard, and contrary to what was told by Anand, I did not find them to be shy at all, since most of them were literally jumping and asking for a chance to come and solve on the board.


So basically, I found that if the girls have the knowledge, and when they know what to do and how to do, they become confident automatically.


And when around at quarter to four, I asked them if they would like to have a 9X9 grid to solve at their homes, in case they wanted a break from studying, there was a unanimous yes. On the downside, 3 girls told me that they were bored [its positive in the way that they could freely express what they actually felt].

Neha and Smriti
Team Pune