New Delhi, April 3 : To ensure that the learning process is not affected during the 21-day lockdown due to coronavirus, the Delhi government has launched the first phase of its online learning activities with children -- with one assignment a day for students up to Class 8. The new academic session in Delhi starts from April 1, however, due to the lockdown, the schools are shut. On April 1, Delhi Education Minister Manish Sisodia sent the first text message to all the parents of Delhi government school students. "It is important that the studies of your child is not hampered due to the shutdown of schools. That's why we will be sending a new activity to you everyday. I would request you to do that activity everyday with your child," Sisodia said. The Education Minister had announced that the government will be coming up with innovative ways of learning through Live/online classes for Class 12 children and SMS and IVR (recorded phone calls) for students of classes KG to Class 8. On Friday, the activity was sent out to 28,663 parents of Kindergarten class students, requiring the kids to identify vegetables cooked at home today and draw and color pictures of the same. "Through this activity, the message to the parents was to see any items in the household as potential teaching learning material," the Education Department said in a statement. For the students of classes 1 and 2, the activity was to encourage them to estimate the number of items available in their home which they can hold in their hand.A "24,291 messages for this activity were sent out to parents of Class 1 students, while 25,111 parents of Class 2 students received this activity today," the Education Department added.A With an aim to connect with the elders of their family through stories, students of classes 3 to 5, were assigned the task to listen to a story from their grandparents/parents of their time today. "They also have to write it down in their own words. The activity was also aimed at helping students gain an understanding of different life experiences of their elders in the past as compared to their own in the present. " The total number of messages sent out for this activity was 78,998. "For classes 6 to 8, an exercise was designed to help students understand how the family budget works and to improve their calculation skills along with developing an understanding of their household income and expenditure." AIn this activity, the students were required to note down last month's income and expenditure in their notebooks and analyse it. "The total number of messages sent for this activity was 42,6761." The initiative was taken by the Delhi Government in an effort to continue with the learning process of the students which is stalled due to the lockdown, as schools and educational institutions are shut. /IANS