I love to bring my girls for outings and excursions because I truly believe that’s where true learning takes place.
I’ve grown up in a country like Singapore, where learning is very structured and rigorous in the form of spellings, assessments, tests and exams. There are talks about injecting elements of creativity into the curriculum and teaching the kids more thinking skills rather than memorising skills, but I don’t think such things happen overnight. While I cannot change this fact about the learning environment in Singapore, what I can do as a mum is to include as many different types of elements into my kids’ learning as possible. Apart from the books, I want them to gain general knowledge from interesting things happening around us as well. Those are the stuffs that would remain with us till we grow old (Frankly, I can’t even remember for nuts how to do differentiation or integration anymore!).
So, everywhere we go is a learning opportunity, and daddies & mummies have to keep a sharp lookout for such chances to teach our kids something.
Like this beautiful butterfly we saw at Sentosa when we were there recently:
The butterfly was obviously injured, and couldn’t move. It was just resting on the floor, shaking its wings every now and then. Joey examined it and asked me why it has got six eyes! Haha.. I explained to her that it was all part of the butterfly’s design and pattern on its wings.
Then she decided to blow on the butterfly gently to see if it would take flight. Instead of flying off, it got flipped over instead! And though the butterfly was such a poor fellow, it was amusing to see its legs kicking in the air! =X
The underneath of the butterfly had even more ‘eyes’! =D And the colours were brighter and prettier strangely! Joey tried to count its vigorously-kicking legs and I prompted showed off what a smart mummy I am – “Baby, see?? Butterflies have six legs!” to which she replied, ‘Ya, so many right?!’
And I told Joey to quickly blow it back to the original position again, otherwise there was no way the butterfly could survive lying on its back.
Interestingly, Baby Jayne was not as interested in the butterfly as Joey. She took one look at it and walked back to the trishaw she was playing on. =P
Oh well, maybe outdoor learning will be more effective for her when she gets older! =D
