Happy birthday to The Book Club

It’s been some time since I posted news from The Book Club. This week it needs to be written about since we turned ONE! Isn't that wonderful? I had forgotten about it till facebook memories sent me a reminder. I do love the idea of revisiting memories.


This last weekend the meeting was pretty special what with birthday celebrations as well as Friendship Day on Sunday.




After much sifting through stories on friendship from Harry Potter to Kabuliwala to Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn I settled on a relatively obscure one about a young Irani girl who finds friendship in London even while retaining her uniqueness. With pre-teens staring us in the face that's an important aspect of friendship - this idea of loving and retaining your difference even while being best friends. 

The Friendship drawing

The funnest part was the 'friendship drawing activity'. (I modified the idea from a book of the 'My Weird School' series. Review coming up soon on my other blog, do watch out). Each of the kids were asked to think up something they'd like to draw - it could be anything. They came up with a flower, a bird, a train, a boat, a scene from the Irani girls life, a robot, a scenery etc. 

I then paired them up making sure the bete noires were put together. You should have heard the protests!! 'Aunty I can go with ANYONE but her!' (Oh they can be rude and blunt) 'Aunty may we PLEASE exchange our partners'. But I stuck to the plan telling them none of them was so intolerable/intolerant that they couldn't be with each other for 15-20 minutes. And then I asked them to  put together their two ideas and make up one drawing. It was amazing how quickly they settled down and got to work with absolute concentration. Even H and N who are always at loggerheads and who I'd paired together worked like a team.



We ended up with a bird-shaped boat, a robotic flower, a girl playing with a toy train while hiding under the bed during a bombing (That was from the story of the day) and bombs destroying a pretty scenery.

These kids are seriously brilliant.

If you work with kids anywhere this is an exercise I completely recommend. Not just does it teach children to work with people they don't much like, it also prompts them to align their thoughts and ideas with completely divergent ones and work towards a common goal,towards a common win. Those are skills they'll need to hone in life. 

I was pretty pleased with myself. The problem is I made it out to be a contest and now I have to pick the best drawing and I'm stumped.

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