Moral Stories- gifts for a lifetime!

I am an avid reader.  Now a published author. And I attribute all that I am today to the stories my parents read to me as a child and the great morals and values I imbibed from them. It was in my parent's laps that I learnt about how the world really is outside my secure home. And about how I can overcome the hurdles that it may place before me.

I still have in my collection the very first book gifted to me by my father- 'The Aesop's Fables'. I must have been a first grader when I began learning to read aloud. The best part of the story, for me, came at the very end- The moral of the story. It was like a sweet confectionery that came as a reward after having done a good deed. It gave a sense of purpose to all the story telling.

As I grew up I found paradise in the local library between piles of books full of wonderful stories. I brought a couple home everyday and devoured them. At school we were given rapid readers and English soon became my favorite subject at school because it was all about reading great stories with lessons and morals at the end. What fun!

There were scores of stories that gave me knowledge and happiness through wise words but there were some special stories that stayed with me all through life. partly because they were my earliest memories of a good story reading experience and partly because they taught me to use the greatest faculty in my body, my thinking mind. They were simple stories that conveyed such powerful thoughts that I salute the one who wrote it in the very beginning.

I am now 32 years old and confess that I still love to listen to some of the stories that have been my long time favorite, ever since childhood. I have two sons now aged 5 years and 2.5 years. They are children who belong to the 'E-age'. Though I have consciously initiated them to reading traditional books, I cannot deny them the biggest boon of the century they were born in- the internet. They love stories too, just like their mother and they listen to them very attentively. My elder son has won many prizes at school in the story-telling competitions. And like me, he loves to reach the very end of the story when he can boldly declare the moral derived from the story he narrated. I have seen great pleasure on his face as he got to give out the moral.

While scouring through many stories online, selecting a suitable one to teach him and prepare him for those competitions I first searched for the ones that were my childhood favourites. And it is absolute joy now to have found the very same stories in a highly creative new avatar, presented by GULSHAN KUMAR's KIDS HUT. The stories have been illustrated so very beautifully and narrated in a smooth voice by TULSI KUMAR. The diction of the narrator is also so very clear that each word is easily comprehensible.

I learnt some very good lessons very early on in life thanks to the wonderful stories that came my way through books. I am happy that my children have also found a way to such great lessons by way of these colourful videos online. Now internet time at YouTube can be a learning experience too.

Here are the videos to two of my all time favorite stories that made a big difference to my life.


'The Thirsty Crow'

The harsh reality of life is that even at an early age, one does come across hurdles which parents may find trivial but for children its very difficult to overcome. The Thirsty Crow was one such story that instilled confidence within me that nothing is impossible to achieve if I used my brains and thought up a way out of a tricky situation. If a small bird like the crow whose brain was definitely way smaller than mine, could be so clever, then I mighty well could be equally clever too. This thought laid the foundation to my strife at school for excelling in my studies. I actually learnt to see each extra point scored in my papers as contributing to the higher scores in my exams, eventually helping me to reach the coveted top rank that I thirsted for!

Pushing the limits became a habit. Making the best out of available resources, a way of life!

 'The Three Little Pigs And The Big Bad Wolf'



Like in the story, I also remember being bullied when I was as small as a Lower KG student. Once a big bad girl locked me up in the bathroom and ran away, leaving me screaming my guts out for help. I was terrified of her. One day my mother read out the story of the Three Little Pigs to me. "The weaker you are, the more you will be preyed upon." She said. The moral of the story said that the third pig could save himself only because he had used his wisdom, to protect himself from the enemy. I wanted to be the third pig too. 

I built a fortress around me by forewarning my class teacher about the bully threatening to empty her water-bottle on my head. Next when she ran after me with the bottle in the recess, I took refuge behind the teacher's table, instead of my own. I had preempted her actions and planned how I would react if things should go the way they were going. My big bad bully had already overturned the bottle intending to empty it on my head but I quickly slid under the teacher's table before the waterfall could hit me. All the water thus went all over the teacher's desk instead, trickling into her drawer and all over the wooden stage atop which the table stood. Out of fright my big bad bully dropped the emptied bottle right there and ran back to her seat before our class teacher returned. However as luck would have it, the bottle was boldly labelled with her name on it. And you can very well imagine what must have followed when my teacher found out about the whole episode. It was a super fun end to  the story of the big bad bully in my life, needless to say that she was expelled from the convent quite promptly.

These two stories are only two of the many wonderful stories, I found at http://www.youtube.com/kidshut. Its an absolute treasure trove, I say!

 I strongly believe that the stories that you tell your young ones can go a long way in their lives. The stories with extremely wise morals imbibe the first few basic values that give your child's character a strong foundation. If the internet is an attractive medium, make it a useful one too by guiding your child to the correct links. YouTube can in fact turn out to be a boon, if you subscribe to the right collection of stories and rhymes. In fact, I have always strongly recommended that every parent dedicate at least one hour of each day to give your child company while watching such educational animated and beautifully illustrated stories. And see your child flourish into an intelligent and informed kid who can decipher between the right and the wrong.

No matter how old I get I will never forget some pivotal experiences from my childhood days. I may even tell them to my grand children, like my grandmother told me. Such is the impact of stories that teach us some profound lessons in life. Let these be stories of hope and joy, that will instill good thoughts and values. 

Thankyou BlogAdda for leading me and my children to KidsHut by T-Series.-for bringing back those wonderful memories to me and for introducing my children to the world of classic stories that will surely give them a Super Fun life ahead! 

This post is a part of Kids Hutactivity at BlogAdda.com