September 23: The US Embassy’s mobile library, the Book Bus, will launch three different educational activities at the Natural History Museum of Nepal in Swoyambhu on Tuesday, September 24.

According to a statement issued by the embassy, the three educational activities including the Adventures of Curious Kiri, the Magical Forest board game and Zoopur, an interactive mural, were piloted and tested during a four-week long programming conducted by the Book Bus at the museum.

The US Embassy said that its Book Bus collaborated with the Natural History Museum of Nepal to create an immersive learning experience for students and visitors of the museum. The Book Bus hopes to build a long term partnership to create a variety of educational experiences at the museum over the next few years, the statement added. This partnership will also help to increase the museum’s outreach to schools and communities beyond its network of partner schools.

The collaboration is supported by Daya Foundation and Wildlife Conservation Nepal.

The Book Bus team has been working at the museum since mid August piloting various activities with the students from 10 different schools inside the Kathmandu Valley. More than 1500 students visited the museum and helped in testing and finalizing the three different educational activities. All the activities focus on making learning fun and interactive with the use of puzzles and games at its core.

The Book Bus team will handover the resources to the museum to carry on the activities. There will also be a quiz competition between six different schools - IJ Pioneer, Kasthamandap Vidhyalaya, Ankur Vidhyashram, Aksharaa School, Zenith School and Toddler Academy.

The Book Bus is a mobile library and one of the nine American Spaces in Nepal. It travels to schools and communities across Nepal, encouraging a culture of reading, critical thinking and creativity amongst the students and community members that it engages with.

Apart from book reading sessions, the Book Bus also offers STEAM workshops, language and arts workshops, film screenings and photo exhibitions to the schools and communities that it visits.