Anandi's Rainbow: NCERT Class 1 English Story (Marigold Unit 9)

etmantra8 Jul 20209 min read

This bright, dreamy story is a perfect way to learn the colours of the rainbow. Children love the idea of painting flowers with colours borrowed from the sky.

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From the NCERT English book Marigold for Class 1, unit 9. NCERT’s newer Class 1 book is Mridang, but many schools still teach Marigold.

Watch: Anandi's Rainbow

Play the video three or four times. The first time, just listen. Then point at the pictures, and from the third time, say the lines along with the video. Short, repeated listening is how CALP builds a child’s English.

What your child learns

The seven colours of the rainbow
Describing words: huge, bright, clear, blue
Garden words: flowers, leaves, sun
Retelling a short story in the right order

What the story is about

After the rain, Anandi wakes up from a dream about rainbows and sees a huge, bright rainbow in a clear blue sky. She runs into the garden with Meli, her favourite cat. Anandi loves to draw and paint, and today she wants to paint the flowers with the rainbow's colours.

She colours flowers with violet, indigo, blue, orange and red, and the leaves with green. She leaves the yellow for the sun, so that it can shine bright and cheerful. Soon there are beautiful flowers all over the garden and the sun is glowing yellow. After giving away all its colours, the rainbow is gone.

New words, with Hindi meanings

rainbow: a curve of colours in the sky after rain (हिंदी: इंद्रधनुष)
dreaming: seeing pictures in your mind while you sleep (हिंदी: सपना देखना)
huge: very big (हिंदी: बहुत बड़ा)
garden: a place where flowers and plants grow (हिंदी: बगीचा)
violet: a purple colour (हिंदी: बैंगनी)
indigo: a dark blue colour (हिंदी: जामुनी, नील)
glory: great beauty and brightness (हिंदी: शोभा, चमक)

Explained in Hindi

If your child finds the English hard, watch this explanation of the story and its word meanings in Hindi, then go back to the English video.

Talk about it

Ask these aloud after reading or watching. Let your child answer in English if they can, or mix in their home language. Both help.

What did Anandi see when she looked out of her window?
What was the name of Anandi's cat?
Which colour did Anandi leave for the sun?
What is your favourite colour of the rainbow? What would you paint with it?

Answers for parents

She saw a huge, bright rainbow across a clear blue sky.
Anandi's cat was called Meli.
She left the yellow for the sun, so that it could look bright.
For example: My favourite colour is red. I would paint a big red flower with it.

Grammar corner: Describing words (adjectives)

Describing words tell us more about a naming word. They can tell us the colour, the size or how something looks. In ‘a huge rainbow’, the word huge tells us how big the rainbow is.

Meli is a soft, white cat.
Anandi painted a tiny red flower.
The green leaves looked fresh after the rain.

Practice at home

Fill in the blank: The sun shone in its ___ glory.
Choose the describing word: The rainbow was huge.
Say the rainbow colours from the story in English, and then in Hindi.

Answers: 1. yellow · 2. huge · 3. Violet (बैंगनी), indigo (जामुनी), blue (नीला), green (हरा), yellow (पीला), orange (नारंगी), red (लाल).

Try this

Draw a rainbow together and say each colour as you draw it. Then hunt around the home for one thing of each rainbow colour and line them up in order. You can also draw a garden and colour each flower with a different rainbow colour, just like Anandi.

Tip for parents

Ask your child to name the colours in Hindi first: लाल, पीला, हरा, नीला. Then say the English word together for each one, pointing at something of that colour at home. It is fine if your child says “laal flower” at first; praise the try and say “Yes, a red flower.”

Questions parents ask

Who are the characters in Anandi's Rainbow?

The story has Anandi, a girl who loves to draw and paint, and Meli, her favourite cat. The rainbow and the sun are also part of the story.

Why did Anandi leave the yellow colour?

She left the yellow for the sun, so that the sun could look bright and cheerful in the sky.

Which NCERT book has Anandi's Rainbow?

It is Unit 9 of NCERT's older Marigold book for Class 1. The newer NCERT English books are Mridang for Class 1–2 and Santoor for Class 3–5.

Learn every Class 1 lesson with CALP

Every lesson of Mridang, NCERT’s new book, with read-along videos, new words with Hindi meanings, and listen-and-say practice with a score, made for young children with a parent nearby. ₹999 for the whole year.

See the free lessons and enrol →