Things We Make and Do — Tools, Crafts and Work | CTET EVS P1

Tools We Use in Daily Life

Every household, farm and workshop is filled with tools — simple machines or implements that help humans do work that hands alone cannot. EVS does not introduce tools in isolation but as extensions of the body and mind, designed by people over generations.

Categories of everyday tools:

• Kitchen tools — knife, ladle (karchhi), rolling pin (belan), grater (kaddukas), mortar and pestle (ookhli-musal), chimta, mixer-grinder.
• Farming tools — sickle (hansiya), plough (hal), spade (kudal), winnowing fan (soop), seed drill, modern tractor.
• Carpentry tools — hammer, saw, chisel, plane, drill, screwdriver.
• Tailoring tools — scissors, needle, thread, measuring tape, sewing machine.
• Construction tools — trowel, plumb-line, level, brick-mould.
• Cleaning tools — broom (jhaadu), mop (pochha), bucket, brush.
• Writing and learning tools — pencil, eraser, scale, geometry box.

Simple-machine concepts hidden in everyday tools:

• Lever — see-saw, scissors, crowbar, bottle-opener.
• Wheel and axle — bicycle, bullock cart, well pulley.
• Inclined plane — ramp, staircase.
• Pulley — flag-pole, lift, well.
• Wedge — knife, axe, nail.
• Screw — bottle cap, jar lid.

An effective classroom activity tested in CTET-style pedagogy questions: a teacher asks each child to bring a tool from home, name its parts, and demonstrate its use. The class then groups tools by purpose, by material, by who uses it. This brings occupational diversity into the classroom — the carpenter's chisel, the potter's wheel, the weaver's loom.

The science question of density sometimes appears here too: mass ÷ volume gives density; mass = density × volume. A small tool of dense metal (15 g/mL × 3 mL = 45 g) demonstrates the link between physical properties and the choice of material in tool-making.

Traditional Crafts and Folk Arts of India

India has one of the world's richest craft traditions — every region has its distinct skills, materials and design vocabulary, passed down within families and communities for centuries. EVS treats this not as 'culture' separate from science but as the original applied science: clay, fibre, metal and wood worked with deep knowledge of materials.

Pottery — earthen pots (matka, surahi, kulhad), terracotta. Kumhar (potter) communities work the wheel; clay is dug, kneaded, shaped, dried in the sun, fired in a kiln. The Class 4 NCERT chapter on pots and the potter is a classic EVS text.

Weaving and textiles — handloom is India's second-largest employer after agriculture. Famous traditions:

• Banarasi silk (Varanasi), Chanderi (Madhya Pradesh), Pochampally and Venkatagiri (Andhra/Telangana), Kanjeevaram (Tamil Nadu).
• Kantha (Bengal), Phulkari (Punjab), Chikankari (Lucknow), Kasuti (Karnataka) — embroidery traditions.
• Pashmina (Kashmir), Toda embroidery (Nilgiris).

Terracotta — fired-clay sculpture: Bankura horses (West Bengal), the temple of Bishnupur, Molela tiles (Rajasthan), Goravan-kunda (Andhra).

Dhokra — the 4,000-year-old lost-wax metal-casting technique still practised by tribal communities of Bastar, Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal. Brass figures of horses, peacocks, elephants — utterly recognisable, often featured in NCERT pictures.

Madhubani / Mithila painting — Bihar; rangoli/kolam — daily floor art across India; warli — Maharashtra tribal painting; pattachitra — Odisha.

Wood, bamboo, cane — Channapatna toys (Karnataka), Saharanpur woodwork (UP), Nagaland bamboo crafts, Manipur bamboo handlooms.

NCF 2005 and the EVS position paper insist that these crafts be presented with dignity and accuracy — naming the artisan, the region, the technique, and the social-economic context (many crafts struggle against machine-made goods). The teacher's task is to bring an artisan into the class, show a real object, and let the children touch, smell and ask questions.

Work and Occupations Around Us

Children see many forms of work every day — the postman, the milk-vendor, the gardener, the mother who cooks, the elder sister who works in a call centre. The EVS theme of work asks the teacher to make this visible diversity visible, named and respected, breaking the stereotype that only office-work is 'real' work.

Categories of work in primary EVS:

• Primary sector — farming, fishing, animal husbandry, forestry, mining.
• Secondary sector — making things: tailor, carpenter, potter, weaver, mason, blacksmith, factory worker.
• Tertiary / service sector — teacher, doctor, nurse, driver, shopkeeper, postman, sweeper, security guard, banker, IT professional.

Unpaid and undervalued work — a critical NCF 2005 emphasis:

• Housework done largely by women — cooking, cleaning, child care, water-fetching.
• Caring for the elderly and the sick.
• Subsistence farming on family land.
• Free help to neighbours in religious or social occasions.

These categories matter because the EVS class is one of the few places where a child can see that her mother's work has economic value, that the sweeper's work keeps the city alive, that no work is 'low' just because it pays little or is done with hands.

Pedagogical activities tested in CTET:

• Children interview a person in any one occupation — write what they do, what tools they use, what training they had, what they earn, what they dream for their children.
• Class compiles a 'who-makes-it' chart — trace a chapati, a notebook, or a T-shirt from raw material to the consumer, naming each worker.
• Discussion of gender: which jobs are seen as 'men's' or 'women's' and why? Are these natural or social?

The aim is to build respect, curiosity, and a non-stereotypical view of work — preparing children for a world where many of today's occupations will not exist by the time they are 30, and many new ones will.

Science and Technology in the Kitchen

The kitchen is the most accessible laboratory for primary-school children. Heat, dissolution, evaporation, boiling, freezing, mixing, separating — every basic science process is happening before a child's eyes when food is prepared. EVS turns this into a teaching opportunity.

Scientific concepts visible in the kitchen:

• Changes of state — water boils, ice melts, dough rises, sugar dissolves.
• Dissolution and solubility — salt dissolves in water, sugar in tea; the rate of dissolution depends on temperature (hot tea dissolves sugar faster) and on stirring and surface area.
• Separation methods — sieving (flour from grain), winnowing (chaff from grain), filtration (chai-patti from tea), decantation (water from cooked rice).
• Heat transfer — conduction (metal spoon gets hot), convection (water boiling), radiation (microwave, sunlight).
• Opaque, transparent, translucent — a steel plate is opaque (no light passes), a glass tumbler is transparent, a milky-glass cup is translucent.
• Density — oil floats on water, kheer settles in layers.
• Mass vs weight — mass is constant, weight changes with gravity; a 10 kg vessel on the moon weighs the equivalent of about 60 kg (in terms of force balance) only if compared with another planet's gravity — most CTET items use the rule that on Earth, mass × g gives weight, and that a moon-mass of 10 kg becomes the same 10 kg on Earth but with six times the weight in newtons.
• Scalar vs vector — mass and temperature are scalars (only magnitude); weight, momentum, gravity-force are vectors (magnitude + direction).

An EVS classroom that uses the kitchen as a textbook gives children both content knowledge and the process skills NCF 2005 emphasises — predicting, observing, varying conditions, recording. The pedagogy moves from 'food I eat' to 'how it is cooked' to 'what is happening to the food'.

Recycling and Reusing Materials

Indian households have traditionally been masters of reuse — old saris become quilts, glass jars become spice containers, newspapers wrap school books. Modern consumption is rapidly eroding this culture. EVS asks the teacher to make recycling and reuse a daily practice in the classroom.

The 5 R principle:

• Refuse — say no to single-use plastics (straws, polythene bags, disposable cutlery).
• Reduce — buy less, use less, choose long-life products.
• Reuse — find a second life for items (jars, cloth bags, books, clothes).
• Recycle — segregate paper, plastic, metal, glass for processing into new products.
• Rot / compost — convert kitchen and garden waste into manure.

Categories of waste and their pathway:

• Biodegradable / wet (kitchen scraps, leaves, paper) — compost in pits or bins.
• Recyclable / dry (paper, plastic, metal, glass) — segregated and sold to kabaadi or municipal collectors.
• Hazardous (batteries, e-waste, medical waste, fluorescent tubes) — must go to specialised facilities; never mixed with general waste.
• Inert (broken pottery, ceramics) — landfill.

Classroom activities (frequently tested in pedagogy questions):

• Two-bin system in every classroom: wet and dry; children take turns to manage it.
• Class composting bin where lunch waste goes; results used in the school garden.
• 'No waste lunch' day — children bring lunches with no packaging.
• Craft from waste — newspaper baskets, plastic-bottle planters, cloth-scrap bookmarks.
• Visit to a recycling centre or a kabaadi-walla — children see what happens to waste and the work of the invisible workers who handle it.

The EVS aim is twofold: build environmental responsibility, and build respect for the workers — often from marginalised communities — who do society's dirtiest and most necessary work.

Cultural Festivals and Performing Arts

EVS sees festivals and performing arts not as colourful extras but as living archives of community knowledge — they encode farming cycles, religious meaning, seasonal change and aesthetic skill. The NCERT EVS book devotes entire chapters to festivals, fairs and folk performances.

Major festival categories:

• Harvest festivals — Pongal (Tamil Nadu), Onam (Kerala), Baisakhi (Punjab), Bihu (Assam), Lohri (Punjab), Makar Sankranti (national), Nuakhai (Odisha).
• Religious festivals — Diwali, Holi, Eid, Christmas, Buddha Purnima, Guru Nanak Jayanti, Mahavir Jayanti.
• Regional / cultural — Durga Puja (Bengal), Ganesh Chaturthi (Maharashtra), Hornbill (Nagaland), Pushkar fair (Rajasthan), Sonepur fair (Bihar).
• Personal life-cycle — naming, mundan, marriage, child-birth ceremonies.

Performing arts traditions:

• Classical dance — Bharatanatyam (TN), Kathakali (Kerala), Odissi (Odisha), Manipuri, Kuchipudi (AP), Kathak (north), Mohiniattam (Kerala), Sattriya (Assam).
• Folk dance — Bhangra, Garba, Lavani, Bihu, Ghoomar, Chhau, Yakshagana.
• Theatre — Nautanki, Tamasha, Jatra, Bhavai, Ramleela, Yakshagana.
• Puppetry — Kathputli (Rajasthan), Tholu Bommalata (AP), Pavakathakali (Kerala).
• Music — Hindustani, Carnatic, qawwali, folk-singers, snake-charmer's been, dhol-tasha, conch.

The CTET-style pedagogy point: a teacher who treats festivals as 'colouring activity' misses the depth. The integrated approach asks: which crop is being harvested? what is the science of seed-saving? who plays the drum and why? what story does the dance tell? This connects the EVS curriculum to mathematics (the timing of festivals by lunar calendar), language (folk songs), social studies (community origins) and science (seasons).

Children at Work — Issues of Child Labour

The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 makes education a fundamental right for every child aged 6–14. The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2016 bans the employment of children below 14 in any occupation, and of adolescents (14–18) in hazardous occupations. EVS asks the teacher to handle this difficult topic with truthfulness and care.

Forms of child labour visible in India:

• Bonded labour in agriculture, brick-kilns, carpet-weaving, beedi-rolling.
• Domestic help — particularly girls aged 8–14 sent away from home.
• Street-children selling at signals, ragpicking, working in dhabas.
• Family-business work that prevents school attendance.
• Trafficked children in factories far from their home state.

Why child labour persists despite the law:

• Family poverty — survival forces the family to send a child to work.
• Cheap labour serves employers who exploit children.
• Lack of nearby quality schools — RTE entitles but quality differs vastly.
• Caste, gender and migration cycle — girls of poor migrant families are most affected.

EVS pedagogy on this theme:

• The teacher must never shame any child in class who works at home or in a family business.
• Discuss the topic through stories (NCERT's snake-charmer, the matchstick-children of Sivakasi) rather than statistics alone.
• Help children identify what a fair share of household work looks like, versus exploitation.
• Build the link between child labour, school dropout and the cycle of poverty.
• Introduce supportive institutions — Childline 1098, local Child Welfare Committee, Bal Panchayat, NGOs.

The CTET expects teachers to treat work as a right for adults and as harm for school-age children — and to use the classroom as a safe place where children can name what they see without fear.

EVS Pedagogy — Hands-on Activities

The 'Things We Make and Do' theme is ideally suited to hands-on, activity-based EVS. NCF 2005 calls for less reading from textbooks and more doing — and there is no theme more naturally suited to this than the world of work and making.

Tested classroom activities (CTET-aligned):

• Bring-a-tool day — each child brings one tool from home, demonstrates its use, learns its name in different languages.
• Visit an artisan — a potter, weaver, blacksmith, tailor; observe, ask, record, sketch.
• Set up a class craft corner — children make small items from clay, paper, cloth, sticks.
• Trace an object — choose a notebook, T-shirt, chapati; track back to raw material and forward to disposal, naming all workers.
• Occupation chart — survey of who-does-what in the school, the neighbourhood, the city.
• Recycling drive — segregate, weigh, compare across weeks; sell to kabaadi and use the money for a class purpose.
• Festival display — each child presents one festival, with its food, story, dress, music.
• Children's exhibition — display of class projects to parents and the community.

Assessment in this theme works best with portfolios, oral presentations and group projects under CCE — not paper-pencil tests. A child who has built a model, interviewed an artisan and presented her findings has learned far more than one who memorises a list.

Common CTET-tested pedagogical insights:

• The classroom belongs to many invisible hands — the cook, the cleaner, the carpenter who made the bench — and EVS makes this explicit.
• Hands-on work is not 'play' — it is the most demanding form of learning, requiring planning, observation, judgement.
• The teacher's role shifts from lecturer to facilitator — providing materials, asking questions, recording observations.
• The integration is natural: a single project on pottery teaches science (clay properties), mathematics (volume, weight), language (names, stories), social studies (the potter's community), and art (decoration).