Please welcome my guest blogger Shailee Butalia of Ghotu Motu Ki Toli. Ghotu Motu is a live-action series focused on Indian nursery rhymes. What a fun way to teach kids about Indian culture!
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I was fortunate to have a new child within the last year. Of course, my concerns as soon I found out that I was pregnant revolved around how I would raise my baby and what I needed to do to keep her healthy and thriving. As she’s grown bigger, a new set of concerns has crossed my mind. How will I make sure that my child knows her South Asian Indian culture and her heritage when we live outside of our country of origin?
I was born and raised in the US. My parents still spoke Gujarati at home which is how I learned it. They took us to the local Indian festivals and listened to Indian music. We traveled to India at least a few times so we could see where they had grown up.
But how would I teach my child? My first language is English. My first home is America. I know the history and traditions of America more than I know the Indian ones. I want her to understand our Indian languages, and our Indian culture.
Luckily, this is a problem that a lot of my generation has started recognizing. There are so many of us raising children outside of our homeland now. Indians, in general, have settled all over the world. Now, many of those people have started creating resources that assist us in keeping in touch with our culture.
With the advancement of technology being what it is, a click of a button gets us the information we need. Whether it’s educational resources or calendar events, the information has become so readily available to the public.
One of the things I have always been interested in is ensuring my child learns the Hindi language. A great resource that I recently found was a video series called Ghotu Motu Ki Toli which teaches children’s nursery rhymes in Hindi. These nursery rhymes not only help her learn this language but also teach her about numbers, language, and life. This is an opportunity to expose my child to something new yet such an integral part of our heritage.
If we want our children to learn about our culture, we have to seek out the resources to teach them. We have to provide them with the community and the opportunities to enrich their knowledge. There are not only books, websites, and videos easily available but in a few different areas, there is a multitude of cultural events that we can take our child to. If we show our children how wonderful our culture is, they will most definitely take an interest in it.
Ghotu Motu Ki Toli is a way to teach our children our culture and language using 2 minute Indian nursery rhyme videos available on YouTube and through free mobile apps.
Shailee Butalia is a second-generation Indian mother of a gorgeous daughter living in the USA … writing on behalf of the wonderful team of Ghotu Motu Ki Toli.
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My books:
Amazon / Signed or Inscribed by Me
Amazon / Signed or Inscribed by Me
Food for the Future: Sustainable Farms Around the World
- Junior Library Guild Gold selection
- Massachusetts Book Award Long List
- Selected as one of 100 Outstanding Picture Books of 2023 by dPICTUS and featured at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair
- Starred review from School Library Journal
- Chicago Library’s Best of the Best
- 2023 INDIES Book of the Year Awards Finalist
- Green Earth Book Award Long List
- Imagination Soup’s 35 Best Nonfiction Books of 2023 for Kids
Amazon / Barefoot Books / Signed or Inscribed by Me
Thank you for making me aware of this resource! We have a Little Passports subscription and India will be the featured country for us in a couple months. This will be a fun supplement to tie into their India package. I know my kids will enjoy it.
Hi Michelle,
I’m glad you like it and that you and your kids are learning about India!! I love videos to teach kids a foreign language!
What an inspiring program for Indian parents to share with their children. We adopted an older boy from India, so he knew Tamil and his culture. He doesn’t have kids. But it’s good to know there are programs for children to learn about their culture.
Hi Patricia,
I’m so glad you like it! I hope other parents looking for Hindi culture will find these great videos!
Thanks for sharing valuable post with us. I hope we will get more and more info in the future as well.
Thanks so much! Glad you like the Hindi videos!