Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow | Quazen

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow | Quazen

Springtime: Nurturing Young Minds

Nurturing Young Minds

Springtime: Marvels of Mother Nature

Springtime: Marvels of Mother Nature

Learning Mathematics Can Be Fun

“One, two, three, four, five
Once I caught a fish alive”
The awareness of math is already created in the mind of a toddler when he/she is reciting nursery rhymes centered on numbers.

Children have an amazing ability to know the difference between big and small, few and many and same and different at a very early age. Their tender minds are ever receptive to knowledge and they can be easily conditioned to imbibe the fundamentals of mathematics such as addition and subtraction. This process must be carried out in a playful manner. It is of utmost importance that from the very beginning, children be initiated into learning math in a care-free fun-filled environment. Real-life situations must be used to make the learning experience more fascinating. This will lead to an enhancement of the child’s enthusiasm for working with numbers. A genuine interest in math can be instilled in a child by encouraging conversations that lead to logical thinking and reasoning — for it is these that form the very basis of mathematics.

The study of mathematics involves logical reasoning, estimation, classification and identification. All of these can be reinforced into a child’s mind using day-to-day activities as examples. Besides the traditional abacus with colourful beads, many other tools can be used to introduce numbers to toddlers. Virtually any place — be it the home, an airport, a railway station, a swimming pool, a children’s park and myriad others can serve as an ideal place for working with numbers. Once a child has discovered the magic of numbers, he/she will be fully prepared to enter the real world of mathematics, however challenging and arduous the task may seem.

The concept of ascending and descending order of numbers can be taught by citing the example of a staircase or an elevator. Simple experiments with parameters such as distance, length, volume and mass can be performed at home. Distance measurements can be easily made within the house using the measure tape or by counting the number of footsteps. The size of a room can be estimated by counting the number of floor tiles. A wooden or plastic scale can be used to measure the length of pencils, books or desks. Plastic bottles of varying sizes filled with water will help a child to correlate size with volume.

Children must be encouraged to experiment with small, colorful, plastic building blocks. Dimensions of household articles such as furniture and appliances like the refrigerator, television and others can be measured in order to introduce them to the concept of three dimensions. A weighing scale model can be easily made at home and children could experiment with a number of household toys and objects to discover the concept of mass. Once children can recognize numerals and are comfortable in writing them, they may be given the responsibility of maintaining their own growth chart. By entering their height and weight measurements after every birthday, they may also be able to appreciate the importance of a balanced diet in maintaining good health.

Preschoolers may enjoy playing with beads and marbles. Sorting them on the basis of size and color and forming repeating and non-repeating patterns by stringing beads onto a thread or wire are good activities for the nimble fingers. Besides teaching them to concentrate, this type of activity also improves their hand-to-eye coordination. This will further prepare them for another important activity — writing. Finger painting and scribbling with crayons, color pencils and markers are other avenues of creative expression. One word of caution deserves a special mention here. Tiny objects such as beads and marbles are hazardous to children, particularly toddlers. So these must be used only under strict adult supervision.

For the kindergarteners and slightly older children, playing carom, chess, guessing games with numbers, card games and board games — especially ones that use dice can be mentally stimulating as well as exciting. These children will equally enjoy solving jigsaw puzzles. Matchsticks serve as a good tool for the study of basic geometric shapes. Similarly, building blocks, modeling clay and jigsaw puzzles enable them to visualize shapes and patterns besides bringing out the creative genius within a child. Armed with ample imagination and creativity, a child could some day grow up to become a Nobel laureate with some novel invention to his credit!

The kitchen is also a very good place for instruction of mathematics. A child can be taught to count all the ingredients that go into the making of a favorite food such as chocolate cake. He/she may then be consulted for deciding on the serving size based upon the number of people in the family. This will help in explaining the concepts of division and fractions. Toddlers may be given fruits, vegetables and dried beans for counting and sorting.


The concept of time can be demonstrated by indulging in conversations about the time spent in school, in traveling to school and back home, in playing with friends, in watching the television and so on. Traveling long distances — especially in a car or train need not be monotonous. A little bit of planning and creativity can go a long way in making one reach the destination faster! Children can be initiated to play with the number plates of passing cars, compare speeds of various vehicles, count cars of a certain color, correlate distance with the amount of fuel in a car and also correlate the distance traveled with the amount of money spent on car fuel. In this manner, they can easily discover the relationships among distance, time and speed.

The habit of saving for a rainy day must be inculcated in children as early as possible. They must be taught to spend money judiciously. This will make them less prone to throwing tantrum in a toy shop. By making them sort coins from their piggy banks, they can be made to understand what money is all about.

Once in a while, it is good for parents to take the liberty of rewarding a child for a well-deserving act, with a small pack of candy, say, Cadbury’s Gems. If he/she has a flair for mathematics, the child will enjoy sorting them and playing with them as much as devouring them! He/she may then be given an exercise of sharing the candy with siblings or friends — which the child will do, albeit not too happily!

A lot many activities are also possible in a park where a child may be made to count the number of flowers in a bush or the number of petals of different types of flowers. Shapes and lengths of various leaves may be observed and recorded. They could even look for the tallest and shortest trees. A park can thus teach a child not only mathematics but also nature study, science, and so on. Children could also indulge in counting butterflies — without however wandering away from the group!

Thus, the possibilities of introducing the concepts of mathematics at an early age are virtually endless — limited only by the extent of imagination of parents and teachers. If parents and teachers can study the minds of children carefully and fine-tune their mental wavelength with those of their little geniuses, then mathematics could well be a child’s play.

Nurturing Young Minds

In my opinion elementary education (Montessori/kindergarten through Class 4) must focus predominantly on character building, social interaction and etiquette, and communication skills. Character building must encompass instilling in the minds of children the importance of values such as honesty, fairness, patience, sincerity, diligence, dedication, perseverance, empathy, and a myriad others. I believe this can be achieved by story-telling and also by making them take part in short plays that portray the significance of these values.

Academics must be centered on the three Rs — viz. reading, writing and arithmetic. Analytical reasoning, puzzle solving and logical thinking must form an important part of their instruction at this stage. Instead of being passive listeners, they must be encouraged to talk and discuss without any inhibition. This will help eliminate shyness and fear and make them good speakers. Training them to work in little groups of four or five will help towards making them good team players. Positive reinforcement from time to time will enhance their self-esteem. Punishment in a mild form must be used only as the last resort and with a view to maintain a fair level of decorum in the classroom. After all, you cannot expect little children to behave like adults. An atmosphere of noise, fun and some mischief is always refreshing and welcome as depicted in the Hindi movie “Taare Zameen Par”. The teacher besides being a role model should also serve as a source of inspiration to the children.

More time should be allotted for sports and other outdoor activities. In fact they should be made to spend an equal amount of time within the classroom and outside it everyday. A large part of their learning must come from observation, reasoning, analysis and inference. They should be urged to keep asking questions all the time. This will not only keep the 'spark' alive but also help tremendously in inculcating a scientific attitude. The importance of generating curiosity within their minds is conveyed effectively in the following quote by Clay Bedford:

“You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.”

Depending on their talent and interest, they must be encouraged to take part in role playing, dramatics, public speaking, visual and performing arts, music, etc. Athletics must be made compulsory — only then can we churn out more gold medalists at the international events. I strongly believe that exposure to one form of martial art such as judo, karate, taekwondo and the like will boost their self-confidence.

There should be field trips, treks and educational tours where topics such as energy conservation, animal welfare, tree planting, environment protection and the like can be taught. This route of learning will have a greater impact and will definitely be more fun than rote learning from books. This, I feel, will certainly go a long way in making them responsible citizens of tomorrow.

Finally, in Richard David Bach’s words:

"Learning is finding out what you already know, doing is demonstrating that you know it, teaching is reminding others that they know it as well as you do. We are all learners, doers, and teachers."

Let us hope that the system of elementary education all over the world undergoes a positive radical transformation soon so that we can leave behind a crime-free society as a legacy for our children. The world will then be a much better and safer place to live in. Let us all work as one to realize this dream.

Past-times of the Seventies in Bombay

Oh! How I wish I could turn back time to the 1970s to once again experience the euphoria of watching a Hindi movie in a theatre in Bombay (now Mumbai)...perhaps a Rajesh Khanna blockbuster!

In those days when the television had barely invaded our lives, there were not too many forms of entertainment apart from watching movies, going to the beaches in the evenings and watching the sun set while devouring delicious chaats (pani puri, sev puri, ragda pattice, bhel puri et al mmm how mouth-wateringly yummy!) and kulfis on the sands of the Chowpatty or Juhu beach.

While some preferred to ramble in the National Park in Borivli in order to connect with Mother Nature, others found solace in the neighborhood park. While the young boys were engrossed in playing cricket or lagori, the girls usually listened to music on the radio, indulged in other hobbies such as painting or embroidery or helped with the household chores. The young ones entertained themselves playing Hide and Seek and its several variants.

Indoor games such as carom, snake and ladder and playing cards found popularity among all age groups. On dark, rainy afternoons the young and old alike would huddle up together to play a variety of card games such as Ghulam chor, Satthi dav, 304, Jaboo, Judgement and so on. This would happen typically in July and August when schools would close down for a few days due to incessant rain and when local trains, the life line of Mumbai, would simply stop plying. I’m so glad the television, computer and mobile phones were not part of our lives then.

The concept of a mall was totally unheard of then. College goers, especially those studying in colleges in and around Churchgate, preferred to take long strolls along the Marine Drive or Nariman Point. The weekends saw them window shopping or actually shopping at the Fashion Street, Gandhi Market, Elco Market and Linking Road of Bandra or watching western movies in town or Hindi movies elsewhere. A boat ride in the Gateway of India was another popular past-time for families over the weekends during those days. While some preferred to watch the aquatic wonders at the Taraporevala Aquarium, others, especially the art-loving kind had a whale of a time admiring the artistic marvels at the Jehangir Art Gallery.

Marvels of Mother Nature

Have you ever had the leisure to watch some of the innumerable marvels of Mother Nature? Here are some of them:

A baby squirrel nibbling on the seeds of a potted basil plant in the balcony.

The sky transforming into a giant screen splashed with myriad hues at sunset.
First golden, and then pinkish with a mauve periphery. The pink gradually diminishing and giving way to the mauve. The mauve turning quickly to a grey and moments later, the entire sky being engulfed with darkness as if saying adieu to yet another beautiful day.

A pair of hawks (not sure if they are hawks or kites) fighting with each other in mid air. Sometimes, they seem to fly sideways and sometimes backwards! Wonder if this is an illusion or is it due to the wind speed.

Clouds of varied shapes and sizes floating carelessly in the sky, sometimes resembling an elephant, sometimes a sleeping cat and sometimes a huge butterfly.

White rain coming down in torrents and washing the whole atmosphere clean and leaving the smell of fresh damp mud to linger for a long time.

Dewdrops on the leaves glistening like diamonds at night.

A congregation of crows having a whale of a time with the overhead water tank overflowing on the terrace.

A pair of tiny black birds that can easily be held in the palm of your hands, perched on the ledge of the balcony.

A squirrel hanging upside down precariously from a slender branch of a gulmohur tree – a sure contender for a gold medal in gymnastics for animals!

The leaves of the gulmohur tree dancing to the tune of a gentle breeze.

A crow gathering little twigs and pieces of a rope to make a cozy nest atop a gulmohur tree.

A chameleon on the trunk of a coconut tree in perfect camouflage. It has the same shade as the trunk, that is, kind of a dull brown and can be noticed only because of its movement on the trunk to catch an insect!