WHIZZKIDS AT WORK

Thane kids make it to science event

Anahita Mukherji I TNN

Thane: A team of five children from Sonale, a sleepy village in Thane, studied the weather in their village during the monsoon this year for a science project that made it to the National Children’s Science Congress (NCSC), much to their surprise.

The event will be held in Nagaland this month. The children were guided by an NGO, Quality Education Support Trust (QUEST). The kids—Tejal Raut, Nirgun and Niranjan Tikhande, Shailesh Vishe and Sopan Mhaskar—come from families of farmers or masons.

The kids worked with rudimentary instruments, like a raingauge made out of a water bottle cut at the top, with the upper half inverted inward like a funnel. Often, cattlegrazers would knock down the bottle raingauges, mistaking them for trash. “We lost 20 bottles this way,’’ said Shailesh. Sometimes, villagers would mistake them for birdfeeders and fill them with water.

The children also made their own weather gauges and used glass tumblers filled with water to measure evaporation.

Initially, their parents weren’t too keen on them wandering about the village, collecting data instead of studying. “The parents didn’t feel that the project was an essential part of their learning,’’ said Nilesh Nimkar, a founder of QUEST. It’s only after the kids began winning the district, zonal and state level contests that their parents sat up and took notice. Now, even the sarpanch has put up a hoarding outside the village, congratulating the children.

The only girl from the group, Tejal, will represent the team in Nagaland. Her parents want her to go to Nagaland as they feel “the exposure will benefit her”.
anahita.mukherji@timesgroup.com