PaperChime opens today

Today, on Vijayadashami, we are opening PaperChime at thepaperchime.in. Vijayadashami is held to be a good day to begin learning. In Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, small children write their first letters on this day, in a ceremony called Vidyarambham, Aksharabhyasam or Mutal Eluttu. A shop for children's learning could hardly choose a better day to begin.

PaperChime sells printable learning material for Classes 1 to 12. You buy a PDF, print it at home or at a shop, and your child works on paper with a pencil. Our activity books carry one line that describes how we hope all of it gets used: print a little, talk about it, try again.

The 79 workbooks are the heart of it. Each one has lessons, worked examples, practice tasks and answers. This month we reworked the print layout of every workbook, so a child has room to write and the questions run on from page to page. Together they come to 3,376 pages and 4,188 tasks. Topics such as decimals, solid shapes, cells and reactions have larger figures set beside the questions they belong to. Before opening, we went through 4,330 pages to look for broken page breaks and broken links, since a bad page is easiest to find before a parent has printed it.

Alongside the workbooks sit 160 sets of topic practice, 1,176 original questions in all, written to the syllabus of CBSE, ICSE and ISC, state boards, Cambridge, IB and NIOS. Each set was checked against the official syllabus or the book it names. No subject specialist has reviewed them yet, and the site says so.

Children who are learning to read have 24 decodable readers. These are picture stories in which every word can be worked out from the sounds a child has already been taught, with a few common words listed for the adult at the back. Each page is one full picture with the words in the sky above it. We suggest reading each story twice, once slowly for accuracy and once for flow.

Hindi readers are next. Four children, Kamal, Meena, Ram and Sita, will teach one new vowel sign at a time, and every picture is drawn page by page from one reference picture for each child, so that Kamal looks like Kamal throughout. They are coming soon, and we have not set a date.

Prices start low. A workbook costs ₹199 and a reader costs ₹99. All 24 readers together cost ₹1,199, about half of what they would cost one by one. For Classes 1 to 9, the library of all 41 workbooks costs ₹1,999, which is under ₹49 a workbook, and class bundles cost ₹599. Your first order gets 10% off at checkout, every product page shows sample pages before you pay, and each purchase covers printing in one household.

If you are not sure where to begin, the page Help my child: where to start asks for the class and what you are seeing at home, then points to practice that fits. It gives guidance and makes no diagnosis, and a reading specialist has not reviewed it. The workbooks are selected practice and do not cover a full syllabus, and no board has endorsed them.

To buy, pay by UPI and enter the transaction reference. We confirm the payment, and the download appears on your private order page. Questions go to info@storywell.in. Happy Vijayadashami from all of us at StoryWell.