When it comes to the little ones and what they have learnt - out of sight is out of mind is an under-statement. The first month of summer vacations post LKG, I just left Anoushka to her own devices. I mean, come on, how boring a mother can I be. But the second month onwards, I decided to weave in a game of "teacher-teacher" just to see where we stood. Didn't really like what I saw. Concentration apart - all that I worked to correct - the sequencing of alphabets, mirror images etc were all back with a vengeance. And funny part is that every time I pointed out a mistake she knew instantly that she had to correct it. Alphabets were a piece of cake because that is so well ingrained. My trouble began with numbers.
One morning for her before-after sequences Anoushka decided to read the numbers I had given her Arabic style - from right to left and not left to write. So 45 was read as 54 and the number after was filled in as 55. I freaked out. But of course did that "look of sheer terror" thing all in the mind.
I explained to her that we needed to read numbers from left to right but somehow the reason why we had to seemed to elude her. "That's just the way it is" is not a reason that cuts it with this generation. So in came an impromptu game. Each time I asked her to read the numbers, she had to raise her according to the number she was reading. So left hand up - 4, right hand up 5. 4 and 5 make 45 and so the number after is 46.
She did that on day one and then I decided to tone it down. She loves this concept of secrets and so I told her this way of reading numbers was a secret of ours. So if she wanted to do it in class, she could just use the two fingers on her hand, the left finger and right finger and read the numbers.
I tested her in different ways over the days to come - wrote the numbers and asked her to read out loud, gave her the numbers and got her to sit somewhere else and come up with a completed board. Gave her a choice of book or board to write on. Slowly but surely the message came across.
