When my children were young and before they were of school age, I believed that only the teacher was supposed to teach them because they were trained to do so. Therefore, I focused on teaching them everything else except academic-related things until they started attending daycare at age three and four. Today, I know that there was a lot more I could have done for them in those four years. I help with my grandkids’ homeschooling, and I wish I had the knowledge I had now when my kids were growing up. My parents knew how to read and write, but they were never involved in our academic life. Their focus was solely on providing us with food, clothing, and shelter. They knew the school we attended, a few teachers’ names, and some students in the village, but they did not understand how the classes were set up from standard one to eight. However, they knew about the significant examinations we did after eight years of school. They understood that passing the exam got you enrolled in secondary school and that failing to pay exam fees meant that you would not finish secondary school.
A Gĩkũyũ mother/father should be the first teacher to their children, and they should teach the kids everything they know without putting limitations on where to stop for the school to pick up and continue. Make sure you are ahead of the school syllabus if possible, and ensure that you focus on your kid’s comprehension of the school material. This reminds me of President Barack Obama speaking of his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, where he stated that she used to teach him early in the morning before leaving for school. If this mother taught her son before handing him over to the teacher, then a Gĩkũyũ mother/father can do the same.
Today, almost every Gĩkũyũ mother/father has completed primary education and can teach their children the basics. Do not wait until the teacher teaches your child to count one to three or recite A, B, C on the first day of daycare. Present to the teacher a grade eighth child since you have already installed all the knowledge you got from school into your child. Do not limit what you teach, as long as the child can understand the lessons. Teaching your child will be a blessing to you and the world.
Gĩkũyũ mother/father may maintain that mathematics is challenging, but math is a term for everything we do in each moment. We talk math all the time. Time, speed, and movement all require math, mainly because we replace the words with numbers. We disconnect the numbers on the blackboard from our daily lives, but this is not the reality. Even board games do include math.
Mathematics is in every area of life, but things get challenging when the number 1 changes to a letter x on board. The tangible and visible things lose connection to the things intangible and invisible when written on the board. Concepts like theorems, volumes, velocity, speed, geometry, calculus, trigonometry, and many other terms make it seem impossible. One day I was sitting in a hair salon chair waiting for my child’s hair to be done as was talking to the hairdresser, who confessed that she hated math in high school. I told her that she knew math since she was a certified hairdresser, and she was employing maths in her daily life. I explained that her business involved money math, chemicals math, time math, speed in circumference and radius, and using numbers in everything she did at work daily. She was surprised that she did more challenging math at her salon than in high school without realizing it, like the number of braids per head and cost per one braid. The amount of water needed to rinse hair after applying a relaxer and the time is taken between using a relaxer and washing it off. The measurement of relaxer per volume of hair, the time to open and close the salon, the number of clients, and income per day, deducting expenses from revenue earned to get the net profit. The point is, any math taught should be tangible and visible in the student’s life.