Young Kimaro, 30th October 2009 @ 22:00, Total Comments: 2, Hits: 1379
LAST week, this column discussed how a farmer with minimal education can still do a lot to stimulate his child’s mind and help her expand her capacity to learn.
This week, rummaging through research findings and commonsense I pull out a few more tips which even poorly educated parents could put to practice to help their children learn better.
Let’s start with the numbers. We Tanzanians have allowed ourselves to be near paralysed with Maths phobia, perhaps for historical reason.
Teachers poorly versed in Maths once taught Maths, confounding young minds with their own confusion. Most teachers have upgraded their academic training since, but Maths phobia lives on, continuing to cause mental blocks, putting our children at a disadvantage.
And yet, even a poorly educated parent could free his child from Maths phobia, enough for the child to have a fair chance to hack it. It’s as simple as starting to count with the child as early as when she is six months old. Count her fingers and toes and add few tickles here and there.
The baby will be thrilled. By the time she is two she could be counting to ten. Make the numbers come alive. Have her count the onions Mama’s peeling, the steps she climbs up to reach grandma’s front door, seeds in your hand, petals on a flower, and biscuits on a plate.
When you walk with her, take time to for her to count each step she takes. When she’s counted up to ten and has run out of numbers, have her start counting from one again.
When ten gets to be easy, add an eleven. When eleven gets too easy, add a twelve and so on. By the time she is three, she could be counting to twenty. No sweat. After such a fun-filled introduction, numbers won’t confound her when she starts school.
While others may find Maths impossible, a burden to be endured and muddled through, yours might find it pure fun.
Don’t ever let your child go to school hungry. Children get distracted easily enough. Empty stomach makes it worse. Researchers found that children who’ve had good breakfast, compared to those who hadn’t, consistently performed better in tests.
Often it’s not a matter of not having food. Many parents just are not aware how important breakfast is for their children.
If your circumstances make cooking meals in the morning difficult, set aside roasted potato or sweet potato or cassava or chapati or a slice of bread from the night before for your child to take with a glass of milk or cup of tea the following morning.
If your circumstances allow, add a boiled egg (boiled the night before) and a fruit – a banana, orange, mango or whatever is readily at hand. Just never let her go to school hungry.
Evenings, remember to ask your child what she’s learnt in school that day. Researchers find that reviewing or recounting what one has learnt within the first 24 hours help the person to retain more of what she has learnt and for longer.
While explaining to you, your child will realize what’s not clear to her. That’s the first step to good learning. She’ll also learn to organize her thoughts and articulate them.
That ability will come in handy later in her career. Read to your child every day from the time she can barely sit on your lap. The closeness she feels while you read to her will give her a life-long love of reading. When millions of children share such experience over the years, a reading culture is born.
But alas, story books for the very young in Swahili are hard to come by in Tanzania. There are hardly any public libraries from which these story books can be borrowed and books are costly.
Even if parents want to buy them, bookstores barely exist outside few cities which may be one, two, even three hours’ bus ride away for the majority of rural population. How are Tanzanian parents to read to their children?
What if six neighbours, friends or extended family members living in proximity of one another who have small children, formed a book club. Each member could contribute money for one book. One of the members could go to town to purchase six books at a go.
Each month members pass the book they have at hand to the next person and receive another’s. By the end of six months books would have gone through all six families.
Children in each family would have benefited from six books while parents spent money for only one. Not bad. Group members could take turns to go into town to make purchases each six months.
Every parent in the group will then know what books are available, at what price, and have a say in the choice of books. If there are other such book clubs close by, they could exchange books with them also.
That would stretch their money even further. Perhaps churches and schools can encourage parents to form such clubs and even help organize them.
Times of dire needs are times for creativity. Don’t we, parents and society, owe it to our children to get creative to find ways to remove handicaps in their way? ykimaro@yahoo.com
Total Comments on the above stories (2)
Comment
KImaro young!
Your article is better than having one hundread universities with fake degrees lectures!!!! Politicians need to spread rural libraries
I like the way you have painted ya article and It is indeed owesome to pay a heed on it!Charity begin at home so does a good education that should be a full time obligation to any parents with kids in school. But If we go back to rural life, your advise can't work any better than to annoy the majority of parents who are booze adore! They get up so early to run famming errands and staying late at mbege,Ugimbi, or Chimpumu clubs.That is truely the way of life from anywhere in Rural life from Mbalizi in Mbeya, Falk Land in Mbinga to Buzeba Zeba in Kigoma! Majority of the village bounded families can hadly spend time with their kids and even sometime strikes a jokes with them. Remmember this slang, Mkulima hachenji shillingi kwa kilio cha mtoto. Konzi and teke are the only best gifts!!As sad as it seem, Most politicians( Makada)they would rather Imarisha Chama and handing out political membeship cards to people who can barely read and count numbers than supplying this handsome technology of having our kids more expertised in Maths. Maths phobia can't be diminished in kids' minds if more emphasis on domestic class wont be pushed on parents.The Lawmakers should fight teeth and nails to build libraries in their own constituencies instead of being an idle bragarts!! Dont ever vote for a guy who do not have a book shelve at his own house, he wont promote education at ya constituency!!!!!!!It is about time politicians should work on speading this handsome math technology that goes hand in hand with constructing more libraries instead of Kubonga hovyo(misspeakings)!Remember, In order to develop, we only need one command, Love one another!
Nimesema!
Comment
nice piece. We need to work it
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