We visited our children in a rural community in Kratie, crossing the swollen Mekong River. With the aim to cultivate children’s descriptive ability and creativity, we introduced 3 kinds of language programs during this visit.
The 1st program is to guess names of things against teams among each grade. Or rather, the purpose of the game is to practice explaining things. Each member of the team takes turns giving one explanation about a pre-determined thing, and the other team guesses the answer based on those hints.
It took some time for the lower grade children to understand how to play, as they probably had never played riddles before. From 6th grade upwards, they got used to the game relatively quickly. They actively discussed hints within the team and laughter often broke out during the game. In general, it seemed difficult for children to describe the object (in what form, used in what situation, etc.) even if they knew the name of it. Children may not use such wordings in their daily lives, I guess, but that's why it was good we introduced this game.
I was personally happy to see some children who are usually quiet in our programs speaking out a lot. We’ve tried out various activities so far such as writing, drawing, hand-crafting, playing with words, and so on. Through those we can get a glimpse of the personality of each child. Some write well but are not good at drawing, not good at drawing but like to think with friends, speak little but always work hard… It's really fun to discover each child's individuality.
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