Healium, a story by Ira

                            Ira with her art

Ira has been learning about plants in her Science class and her teacher encouraged the children to write a story imagining that they are a tree. She gave the little one prompts every week and they had to build on the story. Along with writing this story, there were nature walks, observations and experiential learnings galore. 

This Children’s Day, am sharing Ira’s tree story. 

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I am a Tree

I am a healing tree, I have wide branches and a medium trunk. The colour of my leaves are white. White I feel is the colour of Life. My leaves have and give the healing power. If you are hurt, pluck a leaf and squeeze the water. I live on a short hill, surrounded by grass. I have birds that sit and make their nest. I also have rainbow coloured fruits.

My name is Healium.

My bark is a medium share of brown and it has wavy patterns. It feels hard and nice. Animals, birds and humans eat my fruits. My seeds are heart shaped. They are covered by my fruits, which are floret shaped. They taste sweet. 

I was a heart shaped seed. Someone planted me but I did not see. I was also happy when the birds made my fruits their feast.

Monkeys share my fruits with the whole animal kingdom. 

(Message to Humans) Take care of yourself.

Illustrated by Ira

#Ira #Iraisms #IraAtSeven #StoriesAtSeven #ExperientialLearning #ScienceStories #Observation #NatureWalks #ArtByIra #StoriesByIra #Parenting

Discovering Little Readers, the Ira way

 

 Finding her reading nook at our holiday in Balur

We all at home enjoy reading. For me, the reading habit goes back to childhood. Ma would read a lot of Bangla stories to Bhai and me. And I read my first abridged classics, Black Beauty and Great Expectations, when I was about 8 years old. Baba never got me comics saying that reading classics would help me have a better grasp on English. Trips to Sapna Book House, Gangarams and even the booksales at Safina plaza over the years just enriched the habit of reading. While travelling to Kolkata by train, a mandatory visit to the Higginbothams stall at Chennai Railway Station would mean I pick up a Hardy Boys. I still have those at home :) 

When I first met Prashant and we got talking. I realised he reads primarily non-fiction and biographies. While that habit continues, he has over the years also explored the fiction books and I have picked up the habit of reading non-fiction. He is also into audio books, which am yet to explore. Just getting to the kindle was a journey for me. Every year, our reading lists have some common books. 

Now, the question we are often asked is how did we make Ira take to books. What is the parenting hack to creating little readers? 

The honest answer is we hoped that she takes to them and so we began reading to her really really early. Prashant even would read the newspaper editorial page aloud to her. It was all about the sounds to start with. 

                            Our Mornings

Read to the child. Read a bit everyday. 

Read books yourself. 

Have  a family reading time as part of the day. 

Ours is the morning time as we do our coffee and she does her milk. 

Also, read aloud with them once in a while even as they transition to reading on their own. 

We often buy books and keep and just gift her on random days. 

We read on our travels and now, she does too. 

Soon, doing all this, you will discover that they have discovered some favourites. 

Ira loved Dr. Suezz books, we spent days reading How I met My Mother and Guess How much I love you multiple times. We also introduced her to Pratham and Tulika books. 

She then transitioned to Ladybird books, all types of titles. Fairy tales to dragon stories to ones on planets and earth. 

Julia Donaldson and Peppa Pig books also took up space in her reading shelf. 

Along with these, books bought from exhibitions by authors across the world. 

The last 2 years saw her exploring Enid Blytons, Geronimo Stiltons and this year, she took to the Harry Potter Series.  Prashant has also been reading Mahabharata and Ramayana by Arshia Sattar to her and we also discovered Khyrunnisa's books during the pandemic. For now, she is smitten by a book that talks about India's space explorations by Spoorthy Raman. 

Ira even likes reading random pamphlets from stores, diagnostic centres and even salons! 

She at times picks up some of the books we read to her as a toddler and reads them, saying that she feels like reading her baby books. :) 

We are also specialising in Mehendi designs based on book themes. 

                      Potterhead at home

We can only hope that this reading habit stays and grows. For now, we have a reader who finds her favourite nook even on holidays to read! 

So, here to discovering stories, magic and new worlds through books! 

                          Holidaying at Coorg

#Ira #Iraisms #IraAtSeven #StoriesAtSeven #ReadingHabit #LoveBooks #LoveReading #DiscoveringBooks #Parenting #Gratitude #Happiness #Pramadhs