(1076) Snail Hop-scocth

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.