Other Articles from Isis Nyongo
Parenting Lessons and Your Child’s Potential
Every parent just wants to do what’s best for their child. Life lessons are a great way to insure this. Some lessons the world will teach them but as parents we must do our part.
When I was pregnant with our first child, I devoured everything I could find online about pregnancy. I downloaded several pregnancy apps, researched various birth options
I knew all the merits of hypnobirthing, water births, home births – you name it, I’d read about it. During that period, I spent more time than I care to admit on buying all the best baby products. I felt there was so much to learn and just not enough time.
My husband Chris also spent a lot of time online, but he was focused on what happened after birth. He was particularly keen on reading the latest research on how babies’ brains develop and effective learning methods. I’m sure somewhere along the fog of pregnancy and birth he’d share what he was learning with me. It hit me how serious he was, when I saw hundreds of words printed out and plastered all over our apartment.
As early as her first few weeks of life, our daughter was being read to. My husband also showed her different words over and over.
He created an amazing series of lessons in the form of Powerpoint slides. They included well-curated 10-20 minute lessons on math, language, music, human biology, art, philosophy, geography and history. Some of these were then followed up by practical field trips.
For example following a lesson about the anatomy of an ant, they would head out to the garden and find some ants to observe up close. It blew me away and certainly became a major talking point of anyone who visited our house.
The physical and emotional demands of first-time motherhood for me while also launching a new business (MumsVillage, you may have heard of it) left me quite exhausted. Just as the fog began to lift, I had a second child and my son joined in on all the lessons. Both kids absolutely love this special time with dad and I love to witness their enthusiasm to learn.
This love of learning is truly something that all children possess. As parents today, we have the incredible gift of access to the Internet. It allows us to expose them to virtually anything we deem of value.
Unlike our parents, we don’t have to rely solely on the formal education system. We can compliment what they learn at school with different learning methods. There are several notable locally created education apps such as Eneza and Kytabu. They enable primary and high school students to better prepare for their exams through quizzes and collaborate closely with teachers.
That’s great for older kids but I hadn’t come across anything local for the 0-3 year stage.
Imagine my delight to then learn about Peak Performance and the newly launched online lessons called Toddler Maths for babies and toddlers! I was struck by the passion driving the Peak Performance team.
They work on the premise that every child is a genius and it’s what you choose to do as a parent that can harness it. They see clear “windows of opportunity” of optimal learning as shared below. I’ll soon try the online tool and encourage other curious parents to as well.
They’ve built the lessons from as brief as 5 minutes. Being in that room and listening to all the possibilities my children could have, it was as if the fog had finally cleared.
