India is a land of colours. As a country, we are nothing if not vibrant. Even the most arid, barren desert regions have pops of colour. As a culture, we revel in all things bright and beautiful.
But, when my children were young, I would buy books that had images of white swans, yellow ducks and pink flamingos. None of which my children had ever seen outside of the pages in their books. I remember taking my then 2 year old son to the park to feed the ducks. And trying to address his confusion as he related the yellow duck in the book to the duck in the pond which looked nothing like the one in the book. I could see his brain struggle to make the connection between the two types of ducks. The discrepancy in the pictures that he saw in the book as compared to the objects in his everyday life confused him.
While designing our collection, I wanted to ensure that we depicted colours and objects that represented commonly seen sights in India. For a child living abroad, it familiarises her to life in India and for a child living in India, it allows her to make connections in her everyday life. These connections help her make sense of the world that we want to introduce to her.
Children use pictures as reference points for the world around them. It helps form those essential associations and reference points that their brain needs in order to grow and develop. They begins to classify their world into different shapes and colours. By introducing Indian context at a young age, they are better able to relate to their cultural identity.
In their early years, children observe and absorb everything that they see, hear, taste, touch and feel. As they grow, they learn to notice similarities and differences in the things they see in their daily lives. They sort and classify different elements based on their colours, sizes, shapes, textures and patterns. Learning about the different colours that exist around us forms an essential base of their development. Long before they learn to read, children respond to colourful images that help them understand the world around them.
So, join us and Koko the crow as we explore the colours of India. Koko the crow, incidentally was inspired by a crow that would fly to our windowsill every morning and my two year old son would feed him bread. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any pictures of Koko the crow in our book back then… but we do now. Enjoy the Colours of India Collection, made with love by indigrow.
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