As a stay-at home mum of 3 kiddos under 7 years old, I try my best to incorporate learning lessons in our daily life. Sometimes when our oldest kiddo is on kindy holiday, I would still take an hour or so in the morning to teach him something, phonics or writing exercise or reading few chapters of children's bible stories to kiddos, drawing activities, some Maths exercises or just let kiddos play with puzzles or toys in our study room.
Last week, we went to this pet shop in a nearby mall after our dinner. While looking at one of the aquarium tanks, our 6 year old boy nudged and said to me 'Mummy, this fish looks like the Japan flag'. I looked at the fish he pointed at...
I thought to myself 'Uhmmm... these are just normal white and red gold fishes? What does he mean by Japan flag? What is he talking about?!' I paused, took a deep breath and tried to keep my mind clear and tried to understand just what does our 6 year old boy meant.
I looked at the those fishes swimming again and then the realization hit me.
Japan flag.
** Image from Google search
I looked at the fishes again and mentally switched back to the visual of the flag of Japan country on my mind. Wow! He is right! I'm excited and very impressed! Then I tried to think back where did he learned that from? And I remembered weeks and weeks ago during one of our playing plus learning time in our study room, I went through the world map on the wall in our study room and chose some easy to identify and remember country flags to teach him such as Japan, and our very own country Malaysia, and I even went to explain to him the flags of Australia, England and New Zealand and why they kinda look similar. Then I got him to play a fun and short game where I will say out the country name and he had to quickly point out the country's flag to me.
Just that one time incident of playing and subsconsciouly teaching and learning moment and he remembered it until now.
Wow! I'm still amazed!
I'm just happy to know that such a simple fun activity could leave such an impact to a child.
Nothing is impossible when it comes to learning through playing!
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