GPB Writers Contest Win!!!

Story title

It was the year 2013 and we were living in Nashville. My older son Aarav was about 9 months. We had the very basic Comcast TV service where you got the very basic free channels to watch. We barely watched any TV and one random day while he was crawling around and fidgeting with the remote, he hit a button and the PBS channel number 9, I so well remember, came on. 

There was a show called Super Why going on and he got hooked on to it so quickly; these characters with big eyes and it was a wonderful show teaching about letters and building small words and the sounds of each letter! So, I figured out that it came at certain times during the day, twice actually and I would selectively put on the TV for him to watch because he really got engrossed into it.

So that's how our relationship with PBS started. From there and of course we moved on to other shows also like Daniel tiger, Curious George, and the dinosaur show.

The Monster Blackhole

 And cut to 8 years now, we got to know about the GPB writers contest which is held from kindergarten till third grade and my son was in second grade this summer. So, one month before the submit date, we got to know about the contest and we thought, sure we can give it a try. Why not!

Planets meeting for the escape plan

Some of Aarav's fav subjects are space, maps, music, reading books!!! 

So, I pushed him a bit saying he's read so many books until now, he can easily come up with something... Anything using his fav topic. 

From there he quickly thought of space and planets and black holes. And soon he had a rough idea of what's the plot of the story. The technicalities are known best to him. He built the story around the plot - How to escape a black hole monster! 

A fictional story of all the planets and Sun planning how to escape a black hole monster!  

At the onset only, I really loved his story. I deeply wished for him to win. And if he didn't win, at least get his handwritten story back.

And guess what! Aarav won! 1st place in second grade! How proud and elated we are to share this! 😃

He won a certificate, a medal n lot of goodies from PBS!

Back in 2013, I would've never thought of being so closely connected with PBS in future! 

This was a great opportunity for Aarav, and we are glad he participated! 

Here is a link to his story in his own voice!

2021 Winner: 2nd Grade 1st Place – "How to Escape a Black Hole Monster" by Aarav Dharmaraj | Georgia Public Broadcasting (gpb.org)

 And her is the link to his story pdf!

Meet The Winners Of GPB's 2021 PBS KIDS Writers Contest | Georgia Public Broadcasting

Thank you PBS and GPB!🙏

Wheels on the bus – 1st Birthday theme

Center stage for cake cutting.

Hello all! Since the recent birthday theme of continents was so popular, I am back with another birthday theme! I designed a “Wheels on the bus” theme for my second son, Amay’s first birthday in 2019. 🚌🚏

At age 1, he was fond of Wheels on the bus song. We have seen so many versions of them on youtube!!! So, I had to search a lot on Pinterest and google for ideas! What you find mostly is the school bus theme online. So, I made it work for my theme of colorful bus around the town.

Bus table for cake cutting

Again, a whole lot of paper cutting DIY to do. The birthday banner was to look like a road with HAPPY BIRTHDAY letters. I chose a blue sheet for sky, pasted strip of black sheet with white bits for representing road. Drew the letters on each sheet and then put them thru a string. At the beginning and end of this banner I added a bus cutout made from thin craft foam sheets, drew windows and doors in it to look like a bus. I cut out his name using Styrofoam that I had at home.

Theme words

I mostly make stuff with whatever I have at hand and buy craft things as I need.😁

So, next was the theme specific words like BEEP BEEP, DING DING. I cut out these 
letters using poster sheets. Basically, I chose the smallest words from the song. I used regular white stitching thread to make the streamer. Because it’s a road theme, there’s a lot of sign boards that can be made. Along with the words, I made signal light streamers with octagon shaped STOP fillers. I used regular construction paper for this.

All signs ready to go

I used pizza boxes to make the sign boards. The words were party specific like DUMP GIFTS HERE, PARTY ZONE for lunchroom, STOP and AMAY IS ONE. Sprayed the yellow and used markers to write. Painted the STOP board and AMAY boards.

Next was the cutest task of making bus cut outs. I used entire poster sheets. Drew a light outline of a bus such that there was minimal cutting and wastage of paper. I used black and white sheets for making the window shields, eyes, bumper, smile, and tires; drew whatever was needed on them with sketch pens and crayons.

Photo frame prop

For the cake cutting table, I decorated it to look like a bus. Used a blue table cover, pasted white paper using black masking tape to make door and windows and used 2 round boards to make wheels. 

The last thing to make was a photo frame prop. I used a foam poster sheet. Cut out two large window shields for people to pose through. Painted it with yellow color and added the other details like lights, tires, and mirrors; I used aluminum sheets to make it look like mirrors.

 

Bus stapled to spirals

To add more buses to the room, I cut out small sized foam sheet buses and stapled them to the decorative party spirals and hung them from the ceiling, windows etc.

The cake was bus theme too. I just placed a toy bus on it to complete the theme. I also kept a tray of chocolate donuts with a label of ‘Extra Tires’!😄😄

The entrance door of our house had the signs – STOP the BUS AMAY is ONE!

The photo frame and the donuts were a hit. And because most of the kids visiting were my older son’s friends, I had rented a jumping house for their entertainment in our backyard.

I hope you enjoy this theme and the work done and find these ideas useful. Thank you for reading.😊

 

 

Around the world through 7 continents – Birthday Party

Cake Cutting - North America station

My eldest son Aarav turned 8 this year and I had planned this birthday theme for last year on his 7^th birthday – Travel the 7 continents. You see, 7^th birthday and 7 continents would have been such a wonderful coincidence. But along came Covid in 2020 and it were the initial scary months . I had to scrap off the whole celebration. I had finished a bunch of DIY decorations, ready to print material I created on my PC. I didn’t feel like wasting all that effort.

So, 8^th birthday was “Around the 7 continents”, instead of 8 planets, another favorite topic of Aarav.

To me this theme was so much fun that I decided to share it, for anybody who’d like to use it. I shall link the items I got from Amazon and OrientalTrading.com.

So here goes the whole plan and execution.

7 continents = 7 table stations. Each table would be unique in décor to represent the continent. Each table would have some interactive games or activities and as we leave each station, the kids get a souvenir, just like we do on vacations 😊 Easy!

Passport prep

Before any vacation you’d need a passport, a boarding pass, a suitcase of course to load up the souvenirs and a stamp on your passport indicating you visited!

Placards for each station

First I started with the labels for each station. I used carboard boxes to cut out the large placards for each continent name.  Painted each in an obvious theme color representing the continent (that came to my mind) like ex. Europe is a lovely pink board with letters written in red.

Continent	Décor	Activity	Souvenir
Australia	Koalas, brown table cover	Kangaroo hop race	Boomerangs
Asia	Chinese doll, dragon, elephant, buddha etc	Pick gummy fish with chopsticks in 30 sec	Paper fans
Africa	Pyramid, hieroglyphs chart	Animal bingo	Hieroglyph bookmarks for each kid’s name
Europe	Eifel tower, Pisa tower, valentine décor	Lunch – pizza	Eifel tower painting kit
South America	Multi color décor, skull	Making Maracas	Carnival eye masks
Antarctica	Paper Penguins and whale, white table cover	De-freeze frozen dinosaurs	Arctic animal string bags
North America	Globe, birthday banner, flags streamer	Cake cutting	Flag Pencil and erasers

DIY Pyramid for Egypt

Then I decided the décor and activities for each, that relate to the continent. Luckily, my parents have been touring around the world since couple of years. And I have free souvenirs from them!!! 😄

Africa and Antarctica are where they haven’t visited and those I really had to create something from scratch.

Passport, boarding pass and pretend suitcase

On the event day, I used my Instax camera to click instant photos of each kid and paste them on each passport, that I had ready with their name and other common details in the passport for them to fill later. I had made sure to label pages with each continent name so it would be easy to paste the stamps on the go. I designed and printed boarding passes which were the invite to the party. Stapled those to each passport! 

Boarding pass

I prepared pretend suitcases using brown gift bags,  labelled their names and stamped some pictures for beauty effect!

Australia Station

1st Stop: Australia – Koala show pieces. Kangaroos belong there, so the activity was Kangaroo hop race using pillow covers in the backyard on lawn, so we have no scratches on driveways and kids are safe! Souvenir was plastic boomerangs I got from Oriental trading site. Candies for being a sport! Stamp on passport and move on!

Asia Station

2nd Stop: Asia – I have lots of Indian and Chinese dragon décor. I used my colorful dupattas to decorate the wall and the table! Activity was a game of chopsticks used to fish out “fish gummies” in 30 seconds! Must say kids are good at using chopsticks! Souvenir was handmade paper fans (I made them) because paper was invented in China – Asia! Stamp on passport and move on!

Africa Station

3rd Stop: Africa – no ready décor, so I had to make my own pyramid using 4 ‘Your Pie’ pizza boxes!!! Picked the easiest design on the internet and added the brick details using markers! Done! Activity was animal bingo sheets that I created on my laptop such that everyone is a winner in the end! Basically, same animals shuffled around to make different combinations of sheets! Candies to ALL winners! Africa = Egypt = hieroglyphs. So, I created, printed and laminated personalized bookmarks for each kid using the symbols and setup a poster for all the letter symbols for each kid to identify their name in the form of hieroglyphs! That’s their souvenir! Stamp on passport and move on!

Europe Station

4^th Stop: Europe – This is the land of love. So, I bought some heart shaped doilies a month ago during Valentine’s month! Pasted them on pink sheets and they made wonderful wall décor. I had leaning tower of Pisa and Eifel Tower show pieces. So, décor was done. Italy = Pizza so, Europe was a pit stop to have lunch!!! 

Souvenir was a 5x7 canvas boards with Eifel Tower drawn on them by me, paint, and a heart candy! Stamp on passport and move on!

South America Station

5th Stop: South America – It was colorful shimmery floor-length wall streamers! Just a pottery skull décor my son had made a while ago! Used a colorful dupatta to cover the table! Activity was using the plastic Easter eggs I had, to make maracas. I drew designs on them using permanent markers. Spoons, beads, tape and voilà-  you have maracas ready! Souvenir was carnival eye masks ! Stamp on passport and move on!

6^th Stop: Antarctica – Again no ready décor, so I made simple penguins and drew a cute whale using cereal boxes! Used a white tablecloth. Activity was excavation. I used small sized paper cups and inserted small plastic dinosaurs, poured water, and froze them! The kids had to crack the ice to discover the dinosaurs. Souvenir was these arctic animal string bags! Stamp on passport and move on!

Birthday cake from Walmart - Edible map

7^th Stop: North America –   This was our final party place where we cut the cake because, we are literally in N America! Décor was a globe, a liberty statue craft my son made in the past and the entire party wall décor! Activity was cake cutting and souvenir was flag printed pencils and eraser!

DIY road map banner

Cake cutting décor – I made the birthday banner using simple black poster sheets, pasted the highway road maps on each and then painted each letter of HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Bought the flag streamer and taped Aarav’s world map sheet on the wall!

 

Note: Thru the party, between each continent I sanitized the kid’s hands! They were provided inflight refreshments like chips and juice at different stops!

The kids had a great time. I was nervous if even one kid would get bored, but luckily no one was bored. They were excited for every next continent. It worked out perfectly because it was one of a kind party! No one could guess what to expect next! Kudos to all kids for their full participation and enjoyment! 

DIY souvenirs

Party Invite

It was a whole lot of DIY work for this party, but at the end of the day the kids had so much fun, I am so thankful for that! It was WORTH all the effort put in! 

PS: Anyone here in Savannah/Pooler would like to use any of the posters or placards are welcome to take!

I hope the readers got a fair idea of each detail per continent! Questions are welcome too! Thank you for reading!