yet again ... getting lost ... then enjoying self-discovery ...

  Adi and Anku Learn to stay safe: The body safety guide for preschoolers   Authors: Aditi Gupta and Tuhin Paul Illustrators: Tuhin Paul, Aishwarya Shah, Siddhanth Verma Age: 3 years and above Price: 295/- Publisher: Menstrupedia Technologies Pvt. Ltd. Pages: 20   Touch me not! Arti Pandey, Anshumalika Rai and Nimesh Ved   Thanks to   Teacher Plus   for publishing and Richa for comments on the draft. The authors are well-known names in puberty education. Their previous books  Menstrupedia  (2014) and  Gulu  (2021) have been well received. These books are a big help to parents and teachers to discuss topics like growing up years and changes in our bodies during these years!   The book   This book talks to an age group that is younger – preschoolers. It focuses on touch, privacy, and safety.  The text is well thought of and sensitively written. Two pages, towards the end, have notes for parents and t...

  Taking stock of books (and ourselves) When kids help in taking stock of books Text and images: Anshumalika Rai and Nimesh Ved Published at the Deccan Herald .   What happens when we go with our guts and trust children? A quick look at our school before we jump on to the details. We focus on languages , Hindi and English . The book room is a favoured place; many of the 250 children and 15 teachers can be seen reading here. Children of classes 7 and 8, the senior most children, also join us in taking care of the book room. The idea is to deepen their engagement with books . This year we got a tad ambitious. The annual stock-taking turned into a project: 1 room, 5 days, 1,500 books and 30 children of class 7. As we look back, we realize, that throughout the project it was not the children assisting us, as we had once envisaged, but the other way around - we were assisting the children. This brings smiles to our faces and reminds us of P L Travers’ , “ you should t...

About the children, for the children Nimesh Ved and Anshumalika Rai  This is a part of Teacher Plus, April 2024 issue Thank you: Colleagues at APS and Teacher Plus   For this set of books from Pratham we have tried a fresh approach. We received the books in English and also read them in Hindi, online . We read the books individually and then together. It was an experience to read these books aloud together, in multiple languages, and to discuss, agree, and disagree.   During the past few years that we have had Pratham books at our book room , the quality of translation has only gone up. A Song in Space, for example, has terms like naayaab, roohani, parhej, and dastoor which succinctly capture the essence of the original English text. Similarly, What the Dark Sounds Like has ‘ bahon me bhar lein’ for hugging. The translation here is simple, and like a lot which is simple, it works. Images had us engrossed. Some of them appeared all the more captivating...

A journey with books Nimesh Ved and Anshumalika Rai  Published in Teacher Plus’ July 2020 issue here . Thanks are due to the team at Teacher Plus. We remain indebted to colleagues and friends who are an integral part of the journey. Thanks are due to the teams at PARAG , Tata Trusts , Pratham and Ektara .  We are associated with a school, catering to 300 students, in Eastern Uttar Pradesh. Together with colleagues we have undertaken an invigorating journey over the past two years. A journey to bring children and books closer to each other. This we share below.  Phase one To begin with, the library was located on the first floor while the classrooms were on the ground floor. Also, most of the time it was behind a closed door; a door with two big locks. If you entered you would come came across a board that said, ‘please be silent’. The library did not have a friendly ambience.  Colleagues associated with the library clearly di...