Welcome to the 'eleze' abode!

'eleze' is an initiative to share the educative

 activities I do with my daughter ZEEL with 

zeal :) . It all started one day, when I wanted

to make her practice English words. She, a 

grade 1 student, seemed uninterested in 

writing those. It compelled me to think 

how to make such sessions appealing for 

her.

Here’s one such “Fun n Learn” (as my daughter calls it :) ) session we did in Diwali vacation.

 Thank you as you are reading this post.!

 ## eleze# 1

 Stories, at home, are a routine just like reading newspaper. Only this time, I took it a step further.

A couple of days before, I had watched the movie “Junglee” (starring Vidyut Jamwal). From it, I picked up the idea of ‘Saving Animals’ and weaved a story for my doll. She loved it. No, I am not saying it, she actually remarked when it got over. Liking is important, as it makes it easy to move to the learning part. For what I did next, just follow these steps.

1)   Ask the child to name the characters in the story. Ask then, to write those on black/white board or on a paper with sketch pen or on sticky notes. (Use these freely as it excites the child). Avoid using notebook. Let it be something different than what they use at school.

2)   Ask the child to name the objects/things and places. Repeat the writing part as mentioned above.

 3)   Ask to name the actions that characters performed. The idea here is to get the child to say and write action words. 

Make sure the total words are limited to 10-12.

 4) Once the writing part is over, ask a variety of questions on the written words. E.g.

If BIG is written, ask, what is the opposite of big?
         GRASS - what is the rhyming of grass?
         SWEET – Which sweet do you like?
         CITY – What is the name of your city?
         ANIMAL – Which is your favorite animal?
         TRAIN – Where did you go last by train?
         SAD - What makes you sad?
         ROAD – Which are the vehicles that run on the road? 

This 2-3 minutes activity is a rapid fire round for the child to get a thrill.

 5) Final step. This is the FUN part of the ‘fun n learn’! Ask the child to say her favorite thing/object/character/place from the day’s story or Q&A. And ask to draw and color it. This is the time you move on to your usual chores, do not monitor. Let the child come later and show you. Give feedback, appreciate the task. 

Note that every eleze session should have only FUN(sans LEARNING) part at the end.

So my 1st eleze huddle was for English language and went on for 60 mins (storytelling-30 mins and writing-15-20 mins takes major time). Sometimes I tell stories in parts – 2 or 3 parts, one part a day. In that case on the day of the last part, I do the above activity.

This is all for today’s Welcome blog. Do try it with your child and do not forget to share your experience in blog comments!