9 years and below
Ten things you can do to practice kindness to others
I like to help my mother, father, grandma and grandpa with their chores and work. I also like to help water the plants and pick some fruits and vegetables to make breakfast, lunch and dinner. At night I like to pick some flowers to worship Lord Buddha. I like to help cook by peeling onions and stirring cake mixtures. I also put food in my bird house and leave it in the balcony and wait for birds and squirrels to come. I give my things that I don’t need, to poor people. I like to get the house ready for visitors by cleaning up my room and the table. I like to clean the house by putting dishes away and sweeping the floor. Sometimes when it’s raining, I shelter animals from the rain. I also help people in need.
Sathini Batuwana (6 years)
Musaeus College
10 – 12 years
If you were allowed to design a school uniform the kind of clothes you would suggest
All children from pre-schoolers to teenagers wear uniforms to school. While smaller kids are used to wearing casual, older kids wear the usual hot, stuffy and aggravating white shirt and blue shorts. My question is “Why can’t all kids wear casual?”
The clothes I would suggest are a tri-coloured T-shirt with the top red, middle yellow and bottom black. The trouser would be black and the socks would have red, yellow and black stripes on them. I would also suggest dark-coloured sneakers as school shoes usually get dirty and break. Older children should tuck in the T-shirts while younger students should not. The reason is, in my school all children wear shirts and tuck them in but my brother’s shirt no matter how hard my father tries to keep it in, it always gets untucked and so does his friends’ shirts.
Prefects will have to wear a yellow, red and black waistcoat. Non-prefects will have the school crest embroidered on the left of the T-shirt. The same will happen to the prefects’ waistcoat.
This uniform will be comfortable, cool and easy to wear for students. Also on hot days, students can wear yellow hats with red and black bands on them.
Shawn Jayasinghe (11 years)
St. John Paul II E. M. C., Wennappuwa
13 – 15 years
A short story using the three words: pizza, piano, detective
Forgive and Forget
Peter and Mary with their son Davis, returned home after a tiring but entertaining tour to the North, East and South which took them three days. They made it a point to visit all their old friends on the way wherever possible.
As Peter opened the main door of the house, David ran into the house to the refrigerator to have a go at the pizzas which he had carefully packed and kept before they left. But to his surprise, all the pizzas were missing. David was shocked to see this and he was almost in tears. How could the pizzas go missing when the house was all locked up? Then his mother shouted, “David, come and see this.” David ran to his mom who showed him a window that was not locked properly. Whoever who removed the pizzas must have come through this window. It appeared that nothing else was missing from the house. Everything else was in its place. “Whoever who removed them must have been a hungry beggar,” said David.
Peter said, “Don’t touch anything, I call the police.” Within hours, a detective came to the hose and went through all the rooms. “Here you are,” said the detective and showed a piece of pizza on the piano keyboard. “He is not only a hungry beggar but also a pianist,” he said. The detective ran into a pizza outlet close by and then into a couple of homes in the neighbourhood and brought one person back with him. He pleaded guilty for having removed the pizzas as he had not eaten for three days. Peter noticed tears in his eyes. Peter went into the house and brought out a couple of 1,000 rupee notes and gave it to the man. He told the detective, “Sir, I’ll withdraw my complaint. Please don’t charge him. Forgive him. I am sure he will not repeat this anymore.”
The man cried and fell at Peter’s feet and asked for forgiveness and went away.
David Steve Rajan (12 years)
Gateway College, Kandy
