Recently I have been putting my prodigious memory on an over drive to try to recall what I did with my children in 1997.
It was not easy. The life of a homemaker is dull, boring, everyday repeats the one before... In 1997, from January to March I almost pulled my hair out because of the frustration I had with a child I tutored in exchange for transportation rendered to fetch my youngest to and from school.
When it seemed almost impossible to teach a 7 year old girl to add any two numbers which amount to more than 10, I started praying nightly for wisdom and God given inspiration. The first break through came when I had fuzzy recall of my own childhood: at age 4 or 5, I was labelled lazy or stupid or forgetful for failing to do 2 or 3 things my mum or grandmother asked. Vaguely I recalled that few months the neighbourhood children were playing star hop-scotch. A few months later I no longer have problem holding on to 2 or 3 pieces of information and carry them out in a timely manner. You see, in those days even childhood games come in seasons. Once a game took hold and become popular, it had its run for two to three months, then another game took over.
God is very good in giving me prompts. This thought caused me to look for chalks and drew the star hop-scotch and taught my brood to play it during the evenings when the sun is not hot. Star hop-scotch gave way to airplane hop-scotch. The girl improved slightly. She was then able to score 50% or so in her mathematics tests. One day as I spent my usual hour in selecting my 34 books in the town council library, a book of children's games from around the world was opened and lie on a littered reading desk. Ah, I read: snail hop-scotch. I snapped a picture of the drawing in a hurry and mentally scanned and memorised all the 7 layers of rules to vary the game. The next day, walla! I introduced the snail hop-scotch and test drove it with my testing inspectors: my children. That Saturday we introduced it to our poor victim (the 7 year-old girl) as the world's coolest game.
Believe you me, it was a hit! This crazy clan played the game for a solid three months. I had to reduce the game to its four component simple forms before she was able to attempt the entry level. For a long while she competed against me, a fat and clumsy old lady of 38, while my children cheered and clapped whenever she did anything correctly. We can all see her struggling. She forgot to close her month. In moments of great concentration, she could not swallow her saliva. My youngest could be quite mean, she teased her classmate for drooling and was chased round and round the courtyard until both wrestled on the cemented dusty courtyard.
Lo and behold, when the victim of all these games learnt to hold her own and began to win against one or the other of my children, she did alright in all her math topics. The day she could consistently win over her classmate, she began to get above 95% in maths.
Friday, January 18, 2019
Tuesday, January 15, 2019
(1075) Traditional red seed shooting game
During the same trip as in blog no. 1074, I had a long chat with our cook. She is a few years younger than I. She grew up in Pahang in the village and I grew up in the city in Selangor, probably a distance of at least 200 km apart. The funny part is that we share a number of childhood games. Of course the Chinese called the game a certain name; she is a member of the Jakun tribe and she knew the same game with another name. Some rules vary, but we both agreed that we shared mostly the same games.
The sad part is that in the village near Tasik Cini, the children no longer play such games. They watched a lot of TV. Those who have access to old hand phones actually play hand phone games. While we may argue that games are meant to entertain children: what does it matter if one child play traditional games and another play electronic games?
I just came back from packing my lunch. On the way back I collected fifty red seeds from the ground around a certain tropical tree. Those seeds are red and kind of round. When I was a child. I spent hours playing a finger shooting game trying to win red seeds. Three girls of ages 6-8 would sit on the ground or floor outside of a house. The owner of the red seeds would release them gently to spread them out in the space in the middle of the three players. Since we could pick the seeds in school, we do not fight about losing the seeds to others.
Then one by one we would use our little finger to draw a line between two chosen seeds. One must be careful not to touch any red seeds at this point. Then one aims, and then using the index finger brushing against the thumb to shoot one particular seed towards a direction of many seeds. One successful shoot may net the shooter twenty over seeds. Or a failure may cause one to lose what one already won. A failure could be one inadvertent touch against an unintended seed. Or the seed shot away touched no other seed. Such a game required many skills and judgement, it builds fine motor co-ordination. It may also create memory spaces, hooks or what I used to call registers.
Another thing that participants learned is negotiation skills. Three players may disagree on how many seeds moved, so it is up to the shooter to convince the other two that she actually managed to dislodge that many seeds. One friend I remember could recreate the former position of red seeds before the shooting, she would draw the diagram using a stick on the sandy ground in school. She was much sought after as a judge in this game. Looking back, I realized now that she had the perfect recall. After a while, we all asked her to sit in to adjudicate on the number of seeds moved. But as a player, she was pretty hopeless, she could not shoot to win seeds, turn after turn she would fail and touched seeds she should not touch. It was fun that should we play enough games, every child excel in at least one game so no one feels left out.
The sad part is that in the village near Tasik Cini, the children no longer play such games. They watched a lot of TV. Those who have access to old hand phones actually play hand phone games. While we may argue that games are meant to entertain children: what does it matter if one child play traditional games and another play electronic games?
I just came back from packing my lunch. On the way back I collected fifty red seeds from the ground around a certain tropical tree. Those seeds are red and kind of round. When I was a child. I spent hours playing a finger shooting game trying to win red seeds. Three girls of ages 6-8 would sit on the ground or floor outside of a house. The owner of the red seeds would release them gently to spread them out in the space in the middle of the three players. Since we could pick the seeds in school, we do not fight about losing the seeds to others.
Then one by one we would use our little finger to draw a line between two chosen seeds. One must be careful not to touch any red seeds at this point. Then one aims, and then using the index finger brushing against the thumb to shoot one particular seed towards a direction of many seeds. One successful shoot may net the shooter twenty over seeds. Or a failure may cause one to lose what one already won. A failure could be one inadvertent touch against an unintended seed. Or the seed shot away touched no other seed. Such a game required many skills and judgement, it builds fine motor co-ordination. It may also create memory spaces, hooks or what I used to call registers.
Another thing that participants learned is negotiation skills. Three players may disagree on how many seeds moved, so it is up to the shooter to convince the other two that she actually managed to dislodge that many seeds. One friend I remember could recreate the former position of red seeds before the shooting, she would draw the diagram using a stick on the sandy ground in school. She was much sought after as a judge in this game. Looking back, I realized now that she had the perfect recall. After a while, we all asked her to sit in to adjudicate on the number of seeds moved. But as a player, she was pretty hopeless, she could not shoot to win seeds, turn after turn she would fail and touched seeds she should not touch. It was fun that should we play enough games, every child excel in at least one game so no one feels left out.
(1074) Financial Training for Aboriginal people
In December I tagged along to a village in Pahang for an overnight trip.
The trainer Ms Jacqui was a pro in getting the village farmers to discuss in groups on the topic of "Living in the city working for people versus living in the home town growing vegetables".
The training was done in the village Head's(Pak Kuyu) house. Pak Kuyu, his wife and son were in the living room. The women were punctual. The others drifted in according to our elastic rubber time. We can see that this group of folks were knowledgeable and gave pertinent information for the scribes to write down ideas on the mahjong paper with marker pens.
They were able to give the reasons for their poverty : 1. attitude 2. low education level 3. lack of opportunities in the village. Someone mentioned the word "malas" which could mean lazy, shy, low confidence to meet and talk to outsiders, lack of confidence to tackle challenges... The fear of interacting with outsiders meant they remained uninformed, ignorant and unable to progress with new ideas. The vegetable farming project gave them a better understanding of the cash economy. Now they are better equipped to find solutions for their problems.
Every single group concluded they are better off working on the land in their village than working for fixed wages in the city or towns.
The trainer Ms Jacqui was a pro in getting the village farmers to discuss in groups on the topic of "Living in the city working for people versus living in the home town growing vegetables".
The training was done in the village Head's(Pak Kuyu) house. Pak Kuyu, his wife and son were in the living room. The women were punctual. The others drifted in according to our elastic rubber time. We can see that this group of folks were knowledgeable and gave pertinent information for the scribes to write down ideas on the mahjong paper with marker pens.
They were able to give the reasons for their poverty : 1. attitude 2. low education level 3. lack of opportunities in the village. Someone mentioned the word "malas" which could mean lazy, shy, low confidence to meet and talk to outsiders, lack of confidence to tackle challenges... The fear of interacting with outsiders meant they remained uninformed, ignorant and unable to progress with new ideas. The vegetable farming project gave them a better understanding of the cash economy. Now they are better equipped to find solutions for their problems.
Every single group concluded they are better off working on the land in their village than working for fixed wages in the city or towns.
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