A to-do list of engaging summer activities for kids

Summer brings with it a certain ennui—there is a sudden break from the whirlwind daily routine of school. Friends too seem to be away on trips with family or engaged in enrichment classes. However, why not spend this time simply exploring different interests and having fun along the way? Creative practitioners across the country are offering activities—from walks and micro fairs to book clubs, movie evenings, art and craft sessions—to add a certain vibrance to languid summer days.

On a journey through history

Each summer, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art organises ‘Craftopia’ for kids aged 6 to 14. This year, the theme promises to whisk you away in a time machine along ancient trade routes, workshops of scribes and royal courts where board games were played. Titled ‘Travel Through Time’, the summer arts programme will see young participants respond to various historical periods through art and craft. The workshops include ‘Tales of Trade’,as part of which children will get to create magic boxes inspired by the merchants of yore. They will delve into ancient scripts and communication systems in ‘When Marks Became a Message’, and will create paintings inspired by historical manuscripts in ‘Mythic Miniatures’. The idea is to bring history alive through story-led explorations so that kids can reimagine the past through their own creative expression. At the National Museum, New Delhi, from 3-14 June.

Unlocking creativity

The annual summer theatre workshops are back at Mumbai’s Prithvi Theatre. This year too the lineup includes theatre, storytelling, music and movement workshops for kids and young adults. Summertime@Prithvi encourages children to step away from the screen into fantastical worlds that they create with their peers and mentors. This year, some of the workshops will be conducted by stalwarts such as Makarand Deshpande, Anita Salim, Heeba Shah and Divya Jagdale. For instance, between 18-24 May, Jagdale will be conducting ‘Be Your Story Inside Out’, which is all about listening to oneself and connecting feelings with words. 11-17 May onwards, Anita and Aaryama Salim will be taking the participants through secrets and tricks of bringing the make-believe world alive by improvising with costumes, property and sets. In June, you will get to reimagine classic tales with Fable Street in ‘Once Upon a Twist’. All through May and June at Prithvi Theatre, Mumbai.

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Self-exploration

Don’t go by the name of ‘Summer School’. Nothing about it is pedantic, formal or boring. Rather, this initiative by the British Council is all about developing self-expression in a fun and friendly environment. This year’s programme, meant for kids aged 6 to 17, is based on two themes—communicating with clarity and engaging with confidence through writing, pitching of ideas and discussions. Different tasks, spread across two weeks, have been tailored for different age groups. To be held at the British Council Centres between 19-30 May and 2-13 June in Delhi and Kolkata, and between 19-30 May in Chennai.

A dose of nostalgia

Parsi Dairy Farm in Mumbai promises to introduce kids to the good ol’ holidays of the 1990s when vacations meant playing Stapoo, Four Corners and parlour games with friends. As part of the ‘Summerland’ experience, this age-old Mumbai dairy is organising a mela-like environment at its four stores for visitors of all ages—all you need to do is to have a childlike enthusiasm for life. Games such as ‘Lassi Landslide’, ‘Toss-a-Toffee’, ‘Pin-the-Tail’ and Hopscotch on the footpath are part of the lineup. And if you get tired, there are chilled mango desserts for the perfect ending to a hot summer day. At outlets in Marine Lines, Borivali, Ghatkopar and Varwada, Mumbai, till 25 May, 10 am to midnight.

Games, plays and fun

Theatre professional Vaishali Bisht has been conducting workshops for kids, aged 6 to 12, in Hyderabad for the past two decades now. A scriptwriter and actor by profession, she strives to help children articulate their emotions physically and verbally through interesting role plays, fun games and movement exercises. “By focusing on concentration, confidence, creative thinking and teamwork, the workshop equips them to deal with the unexpected twists and turns of life, both onstage and offstage,” she says. The next batch starts on 19 May in Hyderabad.

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The vibrant world of books

Bookworm, a library-focused organisation in Goa, doesn’t just offer reading programmes but takes the engagement with books a notch further. This summer it is organising a host of activities across spaces that it works out of in Mala (Fontainhas), Seraulim, Vinay & Jean Kalgutkar Community Centre (Saligao) and the Aldona Institute Library and Alban & Aurora Couto Community Library (Aldona). So, if there is a summer camp at Mala from 13-17 June, kids can explore storytelling through cinema at movie screenings such as Wolfwalkers in Seraulim on 17 May and Ponyo in Saligao on 26 May. For those who enjoy thrills and chills, there is a mystery reading club at the Seraulim space for kids aged 11 to 13 on 16, 23 and 30 May. There is a fascinating session on the Turkish map fold—a sculptural book form made from one piece of paper—at Mala on 28 May. Again in Seraulim, there is a sketchwalk on 28 May and a session exploring the non-fiction genre. Interesting read-alouds have been organised for 7 to 10-year-olds. All through May at various Bookworm venues in Goa.

Art for everyone

The Art Room, a collaborative artistic space, is back with another season of summer camps for kids on diverse media and forms ranging from painting on canvas and mixed media to print making and bookmaking. Especially interesting is the paper pulp workshop in which participants will be introduced to two techniques of creating two-dimensional relief art projects using paper pulp and mixed media. There are engaging modules on Western and Indian art history—in the former you get to know about great Masters and their inspirations while learning the techniques that they favoured. The latter promises an immersive journey through the lives of 5 Indian artists from the modern and contemporary period. If it is the form and structure of books that interests the kids then the artist book making workshop is for them. They will get to look at the works of contemporary artists, who are using book making as their primary form. And then there is Dry Point, which will see the participants create etchings on plates and create two projects around printmaking. At Art Room, Sector 44, Gurugram, with different modules taking place between 19 May and 13 June.

A rendezvous with Mumbai

Khaki Tours, which helps people discover the heritage of Mumbai and beyond, regularly organises walks for children—besides people of other age groups—every weekend. This May, kids can try two walks taking place on alternate weekends: #Fort4Kids and #Bandra4Kids. The former is a 1.5-hour-long sojourn that takes one back to the time when there used to be an actual fort with a moat in the Fort area. The walk takes you through the streets of the neighbourhood to understand how the city began. #Bandra4Kids is all about family secrets, fishermen and farmers, villages enclosed by a city, and more. The idea is to understand why Bandra looks and feels so different from the rest of Mumbai. Kids would love to soak in stories behind the churches, crosses and grottos that populate the neighbourhood. All kids below 15 for both the walks in Mumbai need to be accompanied by an adult. To take place all through May; the calendar is available at khakitours.com

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