Learning to read - First Sounds activity

Phonics is a very beautiful way to teach children how to read. However, even within that, activities have to be made interesting for children to enjoy and imbibe the learning.

One lovely activity is for children to find different objects in the environment which begin with different sounds.

The children lay out the sandpaper letters. Then they go around the environment and find objects beginning with that letter.

Here is some of their work - letters and the objects they found - H - Hundreds, C- Colour Tablets, F - Flag, G - Globe, etc

How cool is that?

Al Qamar kids visit an old age home for Daan Utsav

Al Qamar students went to visit Vishranti, an old age home in Palavakkam today as a part of Al Qamar's "Rent A Grandkid" scheme for the Daan Utsav week long celebration.

It was a mind blowing experience for both the old ladies and the young children.Children interacted with the ladies - "What's your name?" "What did you eat today?" and more. 

The ladies were delighted to meet the kids. One old lady wept. They narrated their stories - how they've been left here,  some despite having families who are well off.

Our kids carried gifts of provisions for the Home. They came back "loving their grandparents" even more. Surely they wouldn't want such loneliness for them.

Vishranti itself was amazing - clean, neat, with good amenities,  round the clock nursing etc.

Wonderful effort from young children who went to spread happiness as a part of Daan Utsav - the Week of Giving.

Ecology class with a difference - 6th Class

After having learned about Forests, our Ecology classes with PFC have moved to Water.  As children have already covered a lot on properties and importance of water in their Small Science classes, the teaching moved onto deeper topics.

Here's the blog written by Shahana Shameer of Grade 6: 

Okay so today we learned about….. water. On the way to the classroom, we stopped by the wetlands. We had to observe whatever we saw about the water. We saw fish, water birds, ripples in the water. 

So imagine you are falling off from Angel Falls and you are flown in to a river as a drop of water and then you end up in Pacific Ocean. And then you make realy beautiful carvings. They..ugh! The sun is bright. You are getting  what? Evaporated? And you are a cloud.  These are all the things that may happen with the water. Its the water cycle!

We  looked at maps of old Chennai and current Chennai. We saw the water bodies what has changed. A lot of water bodies just aren’t there anymore.

We learned about big dams. Did you know dams have a negative impact on the ecosystem.  So when a dam is built that area behind it gets flooded. And all the animal there die. And there are special trees – mangroves - that fish lay eggs near it. And because of the dam, those special trees can’t grow because of the water that can’t be reached. And because the trees won’t grow, the fish won’t feel safe to lay eggs because it thinks it won’t be protected. So even the fish population goes down. And the other fish that feed on that fish will starve and die and it goes on. And what is happening over there? The Ecosystem is getting ruined.

Now the question is how will we store water now if there are no dams well we can use the Eri system. So the Eri system where you dig up a whole acre of land like a dent in the ground. When people dug Eris in the olden times in Tamil Nadu, (they did not have dams) they used their hands or simple tools to dig it unlike today when we use machines. When we dig, what do we get? Silt. People used that silt on their fields for agriculture. 

The way Eris are structured, is on one side there is Bandh like a closing so it won’t go to other places and if it is over flowing, it will flow to another Eri by a creek. And so every Eri will be connected. Now since every creek will be connected to some Eri and finally it will flow into a river. So help to not make dams! Please…….