How to conduct children's day activities and events for school children
Children's day in India is celebrated on November 14 coinciding with the birthday of the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru whom the children called Chacha Nehru (Nehru uncle) with love and affection. About a week long celebrations start in schools before 14th November. For this purpose, the schools plan and organize various games, sports and other events. This article deals with this aspect of the children's day celebrations.
Brief history of the day's celebration all over the world
Children are the future of the nation and the world at large. In fact, the first children's day was celebrated in Geneva in October 1953 which was sponsored by the International Union for Child Welfare. It was India's representative at the United Nations, Shri V.K. Krishna Menon who mooted the idea of celebrating children's day universally throughout the world. The United Nations General Assembly accepted the idea and decided to celebrate children's day in 1954 so as to bring about exchange and understanding among the children belonging to the different communities of the member countries of the UN. The United Nations also aimed at bringing about the benefits of development in the world to be utilized for the welfare of children globally. Thus children's day came to be universally celebrated in the month of October. However the date was changed to November 20 from the year 1959 for the children's day to be celebrated universally. This date was chosen since it marked the adoption by the UN General Assembly of Rights of the Child at the convention held for the purpose in 1989 which was signed by 191 countries. In India, the date of the celebration is changed from November 20 to November 14
The Indian government changed the date for celebration of Children's Day in India to 14th November to coincide the date with the birthday of the first Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who was born in November 14, 1889 and played a very crucial role in India's freedom struggle. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru is known to have a great love and affection for children who called him Chacha Nehru ( Uncle Nehru) with an equal love and respect. This is the reason that the date to celebrate children's day in India was changed to 14th November from 20th November. So, Nehru's birthday is celebrated all over India on Children's Day. How schools conduct various events and activities on the day
Several schools in India will start conducting various activities for the children's day a week or two before the children's day. The nature and duration of these activities and events will depend on the category of the school and the strength of a particular school. There are many Kindergarten and pre-primary schools in our country which will organise these activities suitable the small age groups. The primary, high and secondary schools will change the activities classified according to the age groups of the children studying in the schools. These activities and events generally include sports, rangoli, solo dance, singing of songs like patriotic songs, drawing, colouring and painting competitions; handwriting competition, quizzes, story writing, essay writing, fancy dress, crafts etc. The school canteen can also put stalls of various eatables of children's liking on the final day of celebrations. Also on the final day of the celebrations, children can put up many play stalls created by them and children can enjoy the fun by playing variety of games arranged in these stalls which shall be managed by the students themselves with the guidance of the teaching staff. The aim is to make the day full of fun and frolic for children
Since the aim of celebrating the children's day is to bring out the hidden talent of the children, the programme should be full of fun and frolic. The activities and events should be so arranged that the children enjoy them thoroughly. The sports activities can include races combined with various activities depending on the age-group of children. Some of these may include, biscuit race, chocolate race, jalebi race, blowing atta (flour), passing a number of rings over the body, recognising shapes, vegetables and fruits, running through tyres, walking blindfolded, running around chairs; running and writing alphabet, running and matching animals with their homes; running and joining the safety pins; running and blowing and bursting the balloons; running and writing the names of animals, places and things, running and buttoning the shirt worn backside, running and filling water bottles with straw, running and painting while holding the brush in mouth, running and arranging similar coins in piles one above the other. Besides, there can be usual races, sack race, three-legged race etc. Children can be asked to draw rangoli on floor and those with best combination of shapes and colours can be awarded. Handwriting competition can be held in various languages taught in the school. Children should be trained to appear in fancy dress of different types. Quizzes related to the children's day subject can be held among students. Children can be given a topic for drawing. Printed outlines of various interesting images can be given to children to paint or colour. Story writing and essay writing competitions should be organised in several languages which the children know. Singing and dancing will make another interesting activity for the children. While holding the competitions, the children must be arranged in age groups like Nursery, Kindergarten, Sub-Juniors, juniors and seniors. While celebrating the function, we must give our thoughts to the under-privileged children
All children in the world are not so lucky as to participate and enjoy the activities and events of the children's day programme. There are millions of children all over the world who do not get an opportunity to participate in these celebrations. It will be a better idea that the schools also give their thought to these children and organise some programmes of this type for the underprivileged children in their vicinity. They should take care of the downtrodden street children whose parents cannot afford them to send them to schools. The parents and teachers who can afford, must adopt one poor child on this day so as to make that particular child to be among the other privileged children of the world. When we are fighting for the rights of children, we must look around ourselves and see if we can safeguard the rights of at least one child in our neighbourhood.
Attachments
Very good effort on the part of the author to bring out details on how to celebrate Children's day and lot of trouble has been taken to spell the ways and means to keep the school children cheerful on that day. Normally some schools celebrate this day with the out door excursion probably to the zoo park which is free to open on that day. While I was a child and studying in the Government school, we could not avail the chance of free visit to zoo or park on that day. Now the schools have buses of their own and they can organize such pleasure trips on that day for the benefit of the child.