From a mother’s diary – our neighbor’s son and my son (Advay) are both 6-year-olds and are very good friends. They play together a lot. 2 days back, Advay came back home inspired to do the same home work that his friend was given at his school: to create “Indian flag”.He first created the flag post by rolling newspaper.
Next, he wanted a plain sheet of paper on which he could draw the flag colors on both sides. He couldn’t find a plain sheet of paper that was empty on both sides. He had a whole stack of them which had something already on one side and the other being empty. He decided to draw the flag on two sheets of paper and glue them together to make it look like a flag draw on a single plain sheet of paper.At first, when he started drawing the flag and coloring saffron on a sheet of paper, he got carried away and filled more than 50% of the sheet with saffron color.That was disappointing.
Then he realized, it has to be divided into 3 equal parts. He took a new sheet. We measured it. It was 21cm. Then, we took 21 beads and started dividing it into 3 parts. We got 7 beads each. We measured 7cm and drew a line. He colored the top one in saffron and the bottom one in green.
To draw the blue wheel in the middle, we discussed how we can draw a perfect circle. Then, he used a tumbler from the kitchen and traced its circumference. Then we saw the image of flag on internet and counted the number of spokes in the wheel. It was 24.Once it was all was done, he glued the two sheets of paper together and then glued the flag to its post and the flag project was done!
While gluing, we spoke about flags of different countries. He knew how a Pakistan flag looks. He had observed it on TV during Ind-Pak cricket match.
So much of learning is happening in a single task. I can see maths (measurement, counting, division, geometry, proportions etc), geography (countries, India, Pakistan), colors, creativity (gluing two 1-sided plain sheet together) and many many more. Thanks to Aarohi, I can now see many learning opportunities even in small activities.