Old Slipper Insets | Bhojpuri | Low Cost Puzzle
Channel: Arvind Gupta
Date: 2015-01-23

Using old rubber slippers one can make wonderful Inset Puzzles. You will need a shoemaker’s knife, punch, pen and a used rubber slipper. First wash and scrub the slipper clean. Then mark out various geometric shapes with a pen. Mark out a square, a triangle and a rectangle. There is also a circle which is difficult to cut with a knife. A circle is best punches out by hammering a sharpened pipe in the rubber. Place the punch on the circle and hit it hard with a hammer. You will see a circular piece being cut. Remove the circle from the punch and place it back in the slipper. The other shapes are made of straight lines and so they can be cut with a shoemaker’s knife. Place the knife on the lines and hammer to cut. 
Remove all the cut-out blocks from their slots. The nice thing about this teaching aid is that it costs almost no money, can be made locally with simple tools. The rubber is a soft and very easy to work material. There are no sharp edges which can hurt the child. The slipper is also smooth on one side, rough on the other. You can also upturn the blocks so that the Blue blocks stand clearly on a White background. On the other side you will see White blocks on a Blue background. Push out the blocks a little so that they stand out. This will enable blind children to feel the edges and identify the shapes. This work was supported by IUCAA and Tata Trust. This film was made by Ashok Rupner TATA Trust: Education is one of the key focus areas for Tata Trusts, aiming towards enabling access of quality education to the underprivileged population in India. To facilitate quality in teaching and learning of Science education through workshops, capacity building and resource creation, Tata Trusts have been supporting Muktangan Vigyan Shodhika (MVS), IUCAA's Children’s Science Centre, since inception. To know more about other initiatives of Tata Trusts, please visit www.tatatrusts.org