Learning to Count

Each week I get to spend some time playing with a group of children with disabilities living in a foster home in Taraz.  Our arrival usually includes several children screaming my name and moving to hug me.  There is usually a constant clatter of "Sara apke" (aunt Sara) until I have had a chance to pay attention to each child.  Their attention then turns to the container of toys we bring.  It is hard for them to contain their curiosity.  Often I have to put the container in a corner of the room and sit in front of it in order to prevent each toy/activity being removed before we are ready to play.

Recently, my co-worker Almira has been going with me.  It has been a huge blessing having her join us.  She has such great ideas of creative activities to do with the children to reinforce the concepts we are trying to learn.  Currently, we are trying to teach them their numbers.  Although many of them can count to ten, they haven't yet grasped the concept of what the numbers represent.  We have been using snack time to reinforce counting by eating once piece of our snack at a time and then counting what remains.  On the last visit we started at ten.  We were able to get down to three or so before impatience took hold and we no longer counted before eating.  Not too bad!

We also try to incorporate fine motor skills into our activities.  It is fun to see each child figure out how to do things on his own.  They are very curious and good problem solvers when given permission to explore.  It is fun to be a part of this!