Responding to requests from kids and parents and the positive feedback from our Kids Educamp in June, the Library Team presented another fun filled evening entitled LitTreasure Games.

On Sunday, 21 July, DI lined up an array of fun activities for its 6 to 16-year-old members. Twenty-nine kids, the library committee and volunteers got together to make the next three hours exciting and memorable.

Christabel set the ground rules as they stood in age order to be divided into 4 teams - yellow, red, blue and green. When asked if they knew about the Sorting Hat, a resounding "yes" echoed which clearly projected how popular the Harry Potter series was with them. 

Children were asked to introduce themselves using an adjective describing them, with the first letter of their names. This innovative adjective game resulted in very creative introductions. We had Rowdy and Righteous Raghav’s sitting beside each other. From Naughty Nitya to Active Aaron the array of adjectives we heard were remarkable and had us chuckling at the ingenuity.

Uncle Leslie had children match his tone and pitch as they replied to his Hello's and Hi's.
The four teams were now ready for the action to begin.

Treasure hunt
Participants from each team picked one clue each and excited children were seen running all around the club as they gathered more clues that would lead them to the treasure. Armed with these clues, each team sat together to figure out the name of the book, the treasure for which they were hunting. Soon participants from each team raced into the library and came back with the much-coveted treasure. The laughter and excitement was infectious as I too found myself trying to unscramble the clues. What an innovative way to make children learn about both books and our lovely DI library.

JAM & HAM
We all love our jam sessions, and although this one was not musical, it was no less loved. Each team was divided into juniors till 9 years of age and seniors from 10 to 16 years of age. Christabel, Nushrat and Rajashree conducted games for the Juniors while Rituparna, Mohore and Simran conducted the JAM (Just a Minute) for the Seniors.
Asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, little Nayantara declared that she wanted to be a teacher like her mummy. One after other children rose to the challenges and spoke on varied and very interesting topics like - if I had a superpower, 3 things I can't live without, What you love or hate about your brother or sister etc. We learnt that Suhana wanted to help others with her super powers, Skyla valued her senses as the 3 things she couldn't live without, and what Mishaal hated and loved about her brother Rayed and older sister Imaan.  

The Seniors had to speak themselves for a minute and had very creative and well thought topics like Griffindor or Slytherin, If it rains frogs one day, do we need schools, worst vegetable on the planet etc.

Alphabet Soup
This game needed the Juniors to find a book in the library based on the name of author shared. The code how to find the author was shared with the children thus teaching the children about how books in our DI library are coded and stacked. We hope our DI children will use their new found knowledge to find books by their favorite authors from the DI library.

Last word

While the Juniors learnt about coding and the library, the seniors learnt how to find information from books based on codes they were given. 'The world book encyclopedia' series was used and clues indicating volume numbers, series,  required the participants to use these treasured books correctly to get words which they had to explain to their teams. The seniors learnt the very important skill of using reference codes to find answers.

In this day, where most information is available readily at the click of a button, teaching the valuable art of referencing encyclopedias is a challenge which the DI team certainly rose to beautifully and the seniors thoroughly enjoyed the competitive learning experience. Words like geyser, agriculture were referenced, found and enacted with a lot of joy and cheer.

Out of Character

Now it was time for the teams to join back - the seniors and juniors joined back to form the four teams we started with. Points were being tallied on a board and the competitive nature of these interesting games and the children peek at their team scores occasionally.
Participants were asked to sit in 'half a circle' better known as semi-circle.
After an interesting demo of the game which required them to guess the name of a character by asking a maximum of 20-yes or no questions, the game began.
Red team started and we soon had interesting questions ranging from if dragons are male to if Sherlock Holmes was an old, male beast, had all the organizers rolling on the floor. Finally, in the 20th question, Shaurya magnificently guessed the correct answer ‘Dracula’ to the old, male beast clues derived from the questions.
Harry Potter was a clear favorite and the blue team easily guessed their favorite character with 11 questions to spare.

Spell Bee

Again the teams broke into juniors and seniors. Soon both the whiteboards were filled with spellings - some correct, some creative and some corrected. Some challenging spellings like synthetic, galaxy, gorgeous, leather, chloroform etc. were spelt by our juniors. Simran had done a great job of sourcing 87 words, getting numbers in a hat to make it fair for the kids.

Whilst the juniors tested their spelling skills, the Seniors let their creative juices flow with 'Monsoon magic' their creative writing topic run by Sreemoyee.  They were limited to a single A4 page and while some creative juices overflowed, a couple couldn't write more than a line!

Lit Quiz
The last event of the evening had all the teams back together but divided into juniors and seniors to keep it fair and ensure all got a fair chance to participate and play. Christabel had prepared a Literature Quiz with a number of exciting and interesting questions.
The questions from favorite books and popular stories like What did Dorothy want?, Who said 'all for one and one for all' were asked and each team participated enthusiastically.

The blue team won with 48 points and the red team were runners up with 38 points. The winning team received useful and smart Quechua backpacks and the red team received the ultra-compact Quetcha bags. Special prizes were given to Faith Rocha, Adrian Tims, and Darshee Agarwal  for their excellent creative writing.  The expensive prizes were arranged by an anonymous donor - thank you!

All participants received chocolates and all too soon everyone was seen licking the melted chocolate. The hungry participants enjoyed the delicious cheese sandwiches, chips, pakoras and Mazaa which was organized by the club. Three hours had passed with much fun and abandon. All the organizers did a splendid job in making the evening a super success with children enjoying the games and learning about famous books, authors, characters, trying out their own creativity in writing and in getting it right with spellings. Learning and playing went hand in hand and the library committee endeavors to continue such activities which will invoke curious interest in the treasures our DI library and the world of literature beholds.

[Library Team notes:  Since these activities are engaging and popular, we will run one such every month. We are trying for the third Saturday every month, so the next one will be on August 17th, from 4pm to 7pm]