Lovebooks Exchange: Charlie and Lola - I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato

As mentioned here, we participated in Love Books exchange organized by The Educator's Spin on It. We enjoyed it to the core.

For the exchange, we sent a package to A spoonfull of ideas and received one from Rashmi. Rashmi sent us a wonderful book from Charlie and Lola series - 'I will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato'. It is about a fussy eating little sister Lola and her brother Charlie who tricks her into eating everything that she doesn't like. I loved Charlie's imagination in calling carrots orange twiglets from Jupiter or green peas as raindrops from Greenland. The illustrations are simple but so attractive. A wonderful book for fussy eaters. Take a look ...

Thankfully Kuhu is not a fussy-eater or not at least when her mumma is around :) She loved the book as the story gave her ample thoughts to deal with her friends who refuse to eat veggies! I'm hearing all the wild things she is telling her friends at the daycare and pushing them to eat veggies !!

Rashmi put together two lovely activities for the book. See how wonderful they are -

One is the vegetable calender where Kuhu should paste a picture of veggies she ate that day. She jumped up to paste it even before reading the book. She ran to show me her empty lunch box. :) Every night she reminds me to help her paste the day's veggie on the calendar. For me, the calendar is a reminder of what has been eaten already in the week. We are loving this ongoing activity Rashmi. Kuhu is showing off the activity that Rashmi maushi and Swara sent her.

This is our routine these days... read the book, recollect what veggies we eat through the day, paste it and get a 'Smiley Sticker' if she ate it without adding Jam or ghee or butter. I'm loving this.

The 2nd activity is just awesome. Kuhu is excited to plant some seeds in her very own tiny pot. We are now waiting to see what would grow. Every morning she looks at the pot to see what's growing and reciting a Marathi poem 'Zhaad" on how a tree grows which goes like this -

Zhaad
written by La. Ma. Kadu

Ek pakshi udat aala,
chochitla bi takun gela.
Jaminina bi zhelun ghetla,
eka kappyat theun dila.

Kala Dhhaag dhhaun aala,
khup pani deun gela.
Suryana mag oon dila,
oobena bi khoosh zhala.
.......
.......

Attempting to translate the first stanza for my non-Marathi friends (with my non-existent poetry skills...)

Tree
One little birdie flying high,
Dropped a seed as it went by.
Mother Earth caught it around,
Kept it safe deep in the ground.
.......
.......

Thanks a lot Kim for organizing this in India.... we would love to do it again. Thanks a lot Rashmi... we have a gala time every night... I'll be making another calendar for fruits shortly.