How A Coral Tree Inspired A Mango Tree

Last week, we did a reading of The Coral Tree across MOP sites. I personally read the book with the kids at Taleigao.

We particularly enjoyed this book because it brought in components of nonfiction to the book. And though we did not have a Coral Tree near us, we had a number of trees that were about the size of a Coral Tree, that had animals and creatures that sat on it, that had flowers in some seasons and fruit in others, that lost all it’s leaves for some time in the year…….and so on.

Before reading the book, we had an elaborate discussion about birds and trees and time of the day and seasons; all things that we would encounter as we read the book.

And then the book itself…each page had something for us to discuss, look at, analyze….and so we took our own time getting through it.

The extension itself, which we had planned would be to create our own book about a local tree at each site was ambitious and was saved for the subsequent session.

And so it was, that the following session, we picked a tree and created a book about it! In Taleigao, the tree the children chose was the mango tree by which we read stories every Friday.

And so each child picked up a crayon, and first we went to take a closer look at what the bark of this majestic tree looks like. Then we took an impression of it.

Each child then picked one aspect of the tree and started to write the text and illustrate.

The beauty of this activity lies primarily in the connect that the children had with this tree and the sheer joy with which each of them became authors and illustrators!

Personalized, characteristic and straight from the heart….that’s what their book all about.

Stories to read….stories to tell….stories all around!