Holiday Cultural Camp for Kids

This school holidays I managed to teach my two nephews aged 5 and 3 quite a bit about Indian culture. First I organized trips to the temple and walked them through the different stories painted on the temple ceilings and started them writing personal letters to Ganesha. They became really quick study. On the second visit they very quickly picked up all the new things I taught them to do in the temple. Second I taught them basic movements and mudras. I explained to them the difference between Bharatanatyam and Oddissi and got them to try a few different poses centered around their favorite Gods and Goddess ie Shiva, Sita and Rama. That was a complete hit. I was a bit worried about boys and dance. There is such a bias against boys learning dance. But they did not suffer any of that and picked up the mudras and the basic vocabulary with much eagerness. As a teacher this also inspired me to teach them more and to experiment with more effective ways of transmitting knowledge to them. Thirdly I told them bilingual stories. My nephew is a major fan of Ghost stories - so I decided to use that as a platform to situate the stories in rural villages in India like Thirumakottai or sari-weaving centers like Thirbuvanam. The whole idea is to get them exposed to language and names and thereby build linguistic familiarity. Lastly I taught them simple sentences in Tamil. And I got them to practice it and captured it on video so that we could have fun playing back their Tamil and also using that to correct the language.