During a nature walk!

A three years old child while in our garden spotted the cashew fruits in the tree and started to count. He counted upto six, pointing to the cashews in the different bunches of flowers. 

This applied information exceeded the mathematical concepts that he might have been already introduced to, during his reading or play habits.

What was fascinating was the numerical thinking skills of this child. He could think numerically as soon he saw the fruits hanging in a tree. What was intriguing to me was the way he recalled  different numbers by pointing to the number of fruits in each flower bunch. 

It was another reminder of the laborious and uninteresting exercise we do in the class room to teach numbers without associating it with events in in real life. 

According to the Gurukulum tradition of ancient primary school education, which started only at six years, the classes were held under trees. The open class room concept or virtual learning is the in thing today. 

But this three years old child was calling my attention to the several advantages of learning by seeing and doing rather than confining them to a crowded closed door class rooms. He followed his instinct to learn and proposed a curriculum to us to learn from that context. The exercise that followed was to move around in the garden and count the number of flowers in each plant, which took his counting beyond twenty. 

Following this, he turned to count all the flowers in the garden which had five petals. He talked about the difference in the shapes and colours of the petals. 

When would we see an education plan for early schoolers, where the learning is child initiated and directed! Will a teacher in a lower Kindergarten start the day by asking children , 'what would you like to learn today'? There might be three or more ideas that children might express. Would the teacher be ready to pursue those ideas by diving children into groups and allowing them to discover and learn!

Learning is for life and what early schoolers need is to learn the way of learning, rather than an over emphasis on what they ought to learn!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)