Vegetables play their part in the BLF outreach program.

As a part of the BLF outreach program in association with Deccan Herald we went to Devamatha Central School, Vidyaranyapura.  Radha HS, author of Onion’s Shawl was there to tell the onion’s story to a bunch of happy kids of the 2nd and 3rd standard. She started with some chatter about how vegetables are different looking, how no one vegetable is the best or the greatest. Then she read the story, discussed how everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses.
Children looked in amazement as she added and subtracted words to form new words. With these rebus puzzles, she formed some vegetable names with pictures. She also asked children if they are aware of alternate uses for vegetables, as in dyes and decoration.
For the older class, she introduced them to parts of the book like the spine, the front page, the back page, the stapling, stitching, using gum for binding etc. She also talked about the process and the people involved namely the author, the illustrator, the printer, the publisher etc.
As the session drew to an end, the children had come up with many more words  and were brimming with happy smiles for they had learnt maths of a different kind.
(Car + (parrot-par)) = carrot! Have you ever tried addition and subtraction with words like this?  If not, give it a try.