Recently, Sonya and I were at the home of relatives, and got to spend time with a 32 month old child. The last time, we had visited she was 24 months old and did not speak a lot. It was amazing to see the change in her in the intervening 8 months. More so because, in the interim, Sonya and I were in Guatemala and Mexico, and trying to improve our Spanish, and had just finished our CELTA (to learn how to primarily teach ESL, English as a Second Language, to adults).
In San Pedro La Laguna, my Spanish improved a lot, courtesy the excellent teacher I had at Casa Rosario, and also because I was practicing it with the people around me. I was absorbing new words in context, and they were sticking to my brain, and not trying to memorize vocabulary flash cards. While doing the CELTA, I also learnt that it may not always be the best to give a definition for a word that a student does not know. Instead try to explain the context, and perhaps give a synonym if that fails. And in a 2 hour class introduce no more than 7 (plus minus two, I may add :-) new words. When analyzing this, I realized that the same had been happening to me in Guatemala.
During the visit, I noticed that the same things were happening with the 32 month old. She was in a supportive environment where the adults around her were supportive and attentive to her needs. Her vocabulary encompassed objects like tow-trucks, colours, giraffes and bio-luminescence, and her word order for sentences was impeccable- not something I can say for my Spanish.
One morning, feeling that my lips were dry, I opened a bottle of oil in the kitchen and poured a little oil carefully on my index finger and applied it to my chapped lips. We were all there in the kitchen at point, and all the adults were having a busy conversation with each other about food- we kept interrupting each other randomly- creating a chaotic environment. The 32 month old was at our eye level as she being held on one hip by an adult. "What's he doing?" she asked. I was amazed- that the 32 month anthropologist was querying the unknown and the unfamiliar- and trying to make sense of this action. What followed was heartening, her question was answered and not ignored, "He's applying oil to his lips because they are dry." She continued her querying, "What's applying?". The adult followed it by mimicking what I had done- explanation in context without a definition- a CELTA trainee would be proud of such a response.
These "What's ...." questions were plentiful during our stay. When playing with a giraffe, one adult tossed in Africa and savannah, unfamiliar words whose meanings were teased out of the adults. Similarly, the meaning of the word, "spiky", was unearthed by this skillful anthropologist, in the context of the Chritmas tree in the living room. She was absorbing a few words daily in context as a participant observer- which is the ideal way of acculturating oneself to a foreign culture.
I had Lego blocks as a child, or to be more precise, a brand called PEGO, a knock-off version in India for I was extremely lucky to be born in a middle-class family. I had mostly constructed cars and planes out of them- which I have now realized were a stunted version of the possibilities.
The 32 month old was adept at plying the adults to build the structures in the guidebook that came with the Lego set. However, what really amazed me was that she started putting blocks together one morning and started with a block that curved up. She queried what it was and was told that it was a part of a shoe. She attached a cuboid to it of colour, and attached cuboid, all the while repeating to herself the colour she was attaching, pink, green, blue or red. I was wondering, if she was going to put blocks of the same colour together, as I had been doing and build a tall tower- but it turned out that I did not have a fertile imagination. When the structure was 7 (plus minus two) blocks long, she was queried what it was and she replied simply, "Caterpillar".
Of course, I as an adult, was stuck in the rut of building towers and cars out of Legos, anything else was outside the purview of my religious faith, other adults might complete the prescribed projects in the guidebook that came with the Lego set, but in her mind the blocks were teeming with endless possibilites.
She proceeded to place a white, cream and gray block, and finally a car, next to the caterpillar- not unpurposefully. They were for snow, milk, sugar, honey and a car- which were deemed by her to be natural objects in the world of a caterpillar.
She was a wizard at transforming objects, she made a slide of the paper-guide, a ladder out of a fence, eggs out of plastic balls, and a real slide out of sofa-cushions during our stay. She had made a blanket out a yoga-mat which she was using to put to bed two of her bears. These dolls were special in that they sang out when you pressed their belly or chest, while a hidden lever moved their lips to make them form an "O". Sonya and I were first fascinated with these dolls, and initially pressed them randomly to make them emit sounds. Soon, Sonya was pressing them simultaneously to see if they could sing in harmony. 10 minutes later, the dolls were placed by the 32 month old a convenient level of the sofa cushion, and their chests pressed by the palms of her two hands - a scientific undertaking to repeat the stumbled upon discovery of the possibility of a simultaneous sound output from these two units.
And her imagination extended to situations where there were no real objects. Sonya was tired one morning from playing with her, and was lying on the floor. She wondered out aloud, "Why she sleeping? It's good morning time". Sonya had seen her play with tiny cups and saucers and run a tiny coffee shop. She wondered out aloud if she could be given tea to wake her up. The cups and saucers were packed away at an unknown location, but this did not hinder her from pouring out an imaginary teapot into Sonya's cup.
And not for her the boring linear "goal-oriented" pursuit of adults. Where is the joy in that? A walk is simply not a walk to burn calories and get tired and sleep. It is filled with the infinite possibilities of exploring the cracks on the sidewalk, the stones along the way, hopping if you feel like it- an adventure that does not get stuck in the rut of repetition.
If only we could continue seeing the endless possibilities in all objects, like we did as children, we could continue to live in a timeless magical world.
In San Pedro La Laguna, my Spanish improved a lot, courtesy the excellent teacher I had at Casa Rosario, and also because I was practicing it with the people around me. I was absorbing new words in context, and they were sticking to my brain, and not trying to memorize vocabulary flash cards. While doing the CELTA, I also learnt that it may not always be the best to give a definition for a word that a student does not know. Instead try to explain the context, and perhaps give a synonym if that fails. And in a 2 hour class introduce no more than 7 (plus minus two, I may add :-) new words. When analyzing this, I realized that the same had been happening to me in Guatemala.
During the visit, I noticed that the same things were happening with the 32 month old. She was in a supportive environment where the adults around her were supportive and attentive to her needs. Her vocabulary encompassed objects like tow-trucks, colours, giraffes and bio-luminescence, and her word order for sentences was impeccable- not something I can say for my Spanish.
These "What's ...." questions were plentiful during our stay. When playing with a giraffe, one adult tossed in Africa and savannah, unfamiliar words whose meanings were teased out of the adults. Similarly, the meaning of the word, "spiky", was unearthed by this skillful anthropologist, in the context of the Chritmas tree in the living room. She was absorbing a few words daily in context as a participant observer- which is the ideal way of acculturating oneself to a foreign culture.
I had Lego blocks as a child, or to be more precise, a brand called PEGO, a knock-off version in India for I was extremely lucky to be born in a middle-class family. I had mostly constructed cars and planes out of them- which I have now realized were a stunted version of the possibilities.
The 32 month old was adept at plying the adults to build the structures in the guidebook that came with the Lego set. However, what really amazed me was that she started putting blocks together one morning and started with a block that curved up. She queried what it was and was told that it was a part of a shoe. She attached a cuboid to it of colour, and attached cuboid, all the while repeating to herself the colour she was attaching, pink, green, blue or red. I was wondering, if she was going to put blocks of the same colour together, as I had been doing and build a tall tower- but it turned out that I did not have a fertile imagination. When the structure was 7 (plus minus two) blocks long, she was queried what it was and she replied simply, "Caterpillar".
Of course, I as an adult, was stuck in the rut of building towers and cars out of Legos, anything else was outside the purview of my religious faith, other adults might complete the prescribed projects in the guidebook that came with the Lego set, but in her mind the blocks were teeming with endless possibilites.
She proceeded to place a white, cream and gray block, and finally a car, next to the caterpillar- not unpurposefully. They were for snow, milk, sugar, honey and a car- which were deemed by her to be natural objects in the world of a caterpillar.
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| Abstract art is child's play |
She was a wizard at transforming objects, she made a slide of the paper-guide, a ladder out of a fence, eggs out of plastic balls, and a real slide out of sofa-cushions during our stay. She had made a blanket out a yoga-mat which she was using to put to bed two of her bears. These dolls were special in that they sang out when you pressed their belly or chest, while a hidden lever moved their lips to make them form an "O". Sonya and I were first fascinated with these dolls, and initially pressed them randomly to make them emit sounds. Soon, Sonya was pressing them simultaneously to see if they could sing in harmony. 10 minutes later, the dolls were placed by the 32 month old a convenient level of the sofa cushion, and their chests pressed by the palms of her two hands - a scientific undertaking to repeat the stumbled upon discovery of the possibility of a simultaneous sound output from these two units.
And her imagination extended to situations where there were no real objects. Sonya was tired one morning from playing with her, and was lying on the floor. She wondered out aloud, "Why she sleeping? It's good morning time". Sonya had seen her play with tiny cups and saucers and run a tiny coffee shop. She wondered out aloud if she could be given tea to wake her up. The cups and saucers were packed away at an unknown location, but this did not hinder her from pouring out an imaginary teapot into Sonya's cup.
And not for her the boring linear "goal-oriented" pursuit of adults. Where is the joy in that? A walk is simply not a walk to burn calories and get tired and sleep. It is filled with the infinite possibilities of exploring the cracks on the sidewalk, the stones along the way, hopping if you feel like it- an adventure that does not get stuck in the rut of repetition.
If only we could continue seeing the endless possibilities in all objects, like we did as children, we could continue to live in a timeless magical world.
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