Susheela's Kolam - Pratham Books Storytelling Event on 8th September

Great enthusiasm, awesome participation, creativity, colors, children, staff, and teamwork brought beauty to the kolams drawn at the Eureka Smile Centre at Triplicane, Chennai. On 8th September, we started the session by sticking the readymade sticker kolams. Then one kid read out Susheela's Kolam story. Then other kids told stories from books and Eureka story cards. 

Next, we had a warm-up session and asked the children to draw a few kolams on the blackboard. Then the kids drew kolams on chart paper using crayons. The kids came out with different and intricate rangoli patterns. 

Next, we split the children into three groups and asked them to draw rangoli with colour powder. Again, they came out with beautiful and colorful patterns. Then we had biscuits. Two Eureka volunteers reviewed the crayon kolams and selected 10 winners. We gave away prizes to the kids. The day ended with a short motivational story in Tamil by the Eureka volunteer. 

Many thanks to Eureka's Meenakshi, the Smile Centre teaching staff, two Eureka volunteers, and the eager children who made the Susheela's Kolam event a big success. It was a fun-filled 2-hour session. Many thanks to Pratham Books staff Maya and Team for their motivational and informative e-mails. For more colorful event photos, click here.

External Evaluation of Eureka SuperKidz initiative in Villages

Eureka SuperKidz employs innovative teaching methods to improve the learning skills of school kids in village  schools from standard 1-8. A three hour class is conducted after school to improve the Math, English, and Tamil skills. The program started in 2008 and has now expanded to over 500 villages in Tamilnadu. The target is to reach kids in 1000 villages.

The external evaluation team conducted the research with students who attend Eureka Superkidz program and students from similar social background who attend only government schools. The latter group was named the Control Group. It was found that the "Accelerated Learning" offered by Eureka centres far exceeded the "Natural Progress" in government schools.  The students who attend Eureka Superkidz program learnt skills at the right age and class. But the kids in the Control Group lagged behind by 3 to 4 years in learning a new skill from the time it was introduced in a particular standard at school.

Read the complete report here.

Eureka SuperKidz - Bridging the Gap Between City and Village Kids

Kids in villages/ poor families lag way behind their city counterparts. The reasons for this knowledge and skills gap are many. Lack of good schools, good teachers, after-school training at home are few of the prominent reasons. And poor homes do not have toys, games, and books that encourage play-way method of learning.

So, Eureka conducts after-school program for the village kids for 2 or 3 hours. The program is named Eureka SuperKidz. Eureka is developing content for these classes. The content is simple and has lot of examples, experiments, worksheets, illustrations and is written in a conversational tone.

Eureka is looking for volunteers to write content for Maths, Science, English, Tamil or any other subject of your choice. You can write the content in English. Translators will convert the content into Tamil or Hindi based on regional needs.

A Booklet about Newton's Law of Motion

A conversation in the lesson

An experiment in the lesson

People who are interested in writing content can contact any of the following AID India staff:

Ms. Radha - radhaa@gmail.com

Ms. Mangayarkarasi Angamuthu - mangai.angamuthu@gmail.com

Mr. Selvanganapathy - aid.selva@gmail.com, +91-9790951652