'Reading with a Buddy' - A Fun Event for Kids!!

In today’s day and age, children are more involved in TV and video games than reading. Reading not only increases their vocabulary, but the children also learn something every time they read a book. Reading gives self confidence and increases their general knowledge. The sooner the children learn to read as a hobby, the better it is. Its no wonder that these days many parents are looking for ways to inculcate the habit of reading in their children.



Blue Cross Society of Pune and Animal Angels (http://www.animalangels.org.in/aa/in_the_News.htm) together initiated a ‘Reading with a Buddy’ fund raising workshop for children between the ages of 5 and 10, to help them pick up the habit of reading. This workshop was held on the 26th of June at a store called L’Orange, in Aundh. The ‘Reading With a Buddy’ workshop was an interactive workshop held by Tejashree from Animal Angels, with the help of a Buddy (a specially trained dog).



The workshop started of with the narration of a short story. After the story telling session, each child was asked to read out a passage from a book of his/ her choice to the Buddy. The Buddy is specially trained to pay attention and ‘listen’ to the story. The children enjoyed the session with the buddy.




Animal Angels is a foundation which was formulated to create awareness about the benefits of the animal human relationship and the healing effect of animals on humans. Animal Angels aim at involving more and more professionals and like minded people for the cause beneficial to both humans and animals. They work with animals as therapist aides and have seen outstanding results with increased emotional tolerance, better motor skills and a longer attention span among children.

The session had a few benefits. Here, we not only inculcated the reading habit in children but also explained the importance of the animal world in our current society.