15 Children's Day story ideas, each one a book your child stars in: 14 November: Chacha Nehru's red rose, a no-homework day and the children in charge of school. Pick one, add a few details, and the illustrated book starts right away.
Every story is painted in a soft, hand-drawn watercolour look, with your child as the hero of the big day.
Children's DayOn 14 November, the school gives every child a red rose, like the one Chacha Nehru wore. Your child gives it to the peon uncle who opens the gate every morning and never gets a rose. Uncle tucks it into his pocket, stands very straight and salutes. At assembly, the principal tells the story, and Your child's ears go as red as the rose.
Lesson: A gift is happiest in the hands that need it most
Children's DayFor Children's Day, the teachers sit on the benches and the children take the classes. Your child is Maths Ma'am for the day, complete with spectacles and a duster. The teachers pass notes, forget their homework and ask to go to the bathroom every five minutes. By the end, Your child understands exactly why Ma'am sometimes sighs.
Lesson: Standing in someone's place teaches you to be kind to them
Children's DayChildren's Day means no homework, and Your child has a whole afternoon with nothing to do. First there is a paper-boat race in the drain, then a puppet show for the little cousins, then a picnic on the terrace with the whole colony's children. When Mummy asks what Your child did all day, the answer is: everything.
Lesson: Free time is a gift; fill it with joy
Children's DayFor the Children's Day fancy dress, Your child wants to go as Chacha Nehru, but there is no white cap or rose. Dadi cuts a cap from an old white kurta and sews it in an hour, and Your child finds a rose in the neighbour's garden, asking politely first. On stage, Your child tells the class why Nehru loved children, in a slightly wobbly voice. The wobbly voice wins.
Lesson: Make what you need, ask politely for the rest
Children's DayOn Children's Day, the teachers put on a play for the children, and the strict maths teacher has to play a dancing monkey. He is mortified. Your child, in the front row, cheers loudest, and when the teacher forgets his steps, Your child jumps up and dances beside him until he remembers. The whole hall claps. The next day, the maths teacher says that was the bravest thing he has seen a student do.
Lesson: Help someone through their embarrassment and they never forget
Children's DayOn Children's Day, every child at Your child's school gets a box of sweets and a balloon. Across the road is a small municipal school with no celebration at all. Your child asks the principal if the class can share, and leads twenty children across with half their sweets and all their balloons. The municipal school children teach them a game in return, and the two schools play until sunset.
Lesson: A celebration is bigger when it crosses the road
Children's DayYour child is chosen to give the Children's Day speech, and the teacher hands over a page full of long words about the future of the nation. It does not sound like Your child. The night before, Your child rewrites it: three things children want, said simply. More playground time, a library that is open, and grown-ups who listen. The hall goes quiet, then the principal stands up to clap first.
Lesson: Say what you really mean, in your own words
Children's DayChildren's Day means no uniform, and everyone plans their best clothes. Your child notices that the boy whose father sells vegetables looks worried, because he has only his uniform. Your child quietly decides to wear the uniform too, and tells the best friend, who tells another. On the day, six children turn up in uniform, and the boy is one of a group, not the odd one out.
Lesson: Stand with someone so they never stand alone
Children's DayYour child's cousin is in the children's ward of the hospital on Children's Day, and there is no celebration there. Your child persuades Mummy to bake a big cake, and brings paper hats and crayons. The ward's twelve children, some with drips and bandages, put on hats and draw on a long sheet of paper taped along the corridor. The nurses say it is the noisiest, happiest day the ward has had.
Lesson: Take the celebration to the ones who cannot come to it
Children's DayEvery child is given one red rose at the Children's Day assembly, and Your child's is the biggest. The little girl in the first standard has a rose with a broken stem and is close to tears. Your child swaps without a word. On the way home, Your child carefully splints the broken stem with a matchstick and thread, and it lasts three days in a glass, longer than the big one.
Lesson: Give the best one away and mend the broken one
Children's DayFor Children's Day, Your child's class makes a newspaper written entirely by children. Your child is the editor and wants only funny stories, until a quiet girl brings an article about the school's leaking toilet. Your child puts it on the front page. The principal reads it, and by the next week, the toilet is fixed. The newspaper's second issue has a headline: 'We were heard'.
Lesson: Children's voices can fix real things when someone prints them
Children's DayOn Children's Day, the big children get the playground for a football tournament, and the nursery children are left with nothing. Your child gives up the tournament, borrows chalk and a sack of balls, and runs games for the little ones in the corridor: hopscotch, lemon-and-spoon, and a race where everyone wins. By the end, half the football players have come to help.
Lesson: The smallest ones deserve a Children's Day too
Children's DayYour child sets up a Children's Day wish box at the school gate: every child writes one thing they wish grown-ups understood. The box fills with slips. Your child reads them all with the teacher: 'I need more sleep', 'I want Papa to play', 'I am scared of the dark'. The teacher sends the slips home in the diary. Three parents write back saying thank you, and one comes to play football.
Lesson: Say what you wish, and someone may hear it
Children's DayNani says Children's Day is Nehru's birthday, and he wanted every child in India to have a school and a full plate. Your child looks around the lane and sees the boy who sells balloons instead of going to school. Your child asks Mummy if the boy can come to the school's Children's Day. He comes, eats the sweets, and asks how to join. The principal gives him a form and a pencil.
Lesson: The best birthday gift for Nehru is one more child in school
Children's DaySchool is off for Children's Day, and Your child wants a celebration at home. Papa says he does not know what to do. Your child writes the rules on a card: children choose lunch, children choose the game, children choose the bedtime, grown-ups obey. Lunch is pav bhaji, the game is hide-and-seek, bedtime is nine-thirty, and Papa, for one day, has to be found under the bed.
Lesson: One day of children in charge teaches everyone something