counting....

Well, I spent some time this morning in Kabwata nursery school.  There are few children and one grade one child, who does maths in her book while the other children were supposed to go out and collect 7 stones!  Now 2 of these children were around 3 years old and had no idea how many stones 7 was!  In fact, due to the large step getting out of the building, one of the small children couldn't get out!  

Anyway, they collected stones and then proceeded to count them over and over.....(and of course the small kids had no idea what they were supposed to do and the teacher kept shouting at them)!

Before this the teacher was talking about leaders in the community and focused on policemen and village chiefs!  Then she just told the teacher to go fetch stones to count - no connection whatsoever!  When  I asked her about it, she said, 'now, we are on another subject'!!!  The problem is that the Zambian curriculum is laid out in subject areas but teachers have no idea how to incorporate them into play....so its a long road ahead!!