Flag Work
Kimi started with his deep interest with country flags when he was just a little over 2 years old. It started when he stumbled upon a 14-minute video of the country flags in Youtube.
Whenever this particular video would come up he would then get up and dance in front of the television. Mind you, it was not even a danceable background music. Nonetheless, he would still dance as if it was a party music.
After a little while, it was not just him dancing to it anymore, I was already also dancing with him. I came to love and loathe the video at the same time. But love defeats loathe big time as I enjoy doing it with him.
I did not know yet what it was doing for him but I am glad now that I willingly did it and followed his interest.
I think it is what sparked it. Whenever we are dancing with the video, he would intently listen to each word being uttered by the voice over. This would prompt him to say what he heard. With this, I would also mutter the country name after so that he can hear it again.
After a few days or so he could already mutter the country names as close as he could.
I followed his interest by buying a book about flags. I bought this book from Lonely Planet Kids titled The Flag Book as there is a good mix of realistic images and colourful drawings inside which would get the attention of a younger child.
When the book arrived, Kimi devoured it day and night. He would say the name of the country associated with the flags that were already familiar to him and ask us to read those that he did not know. We would go through all of the country flags from cover to cover only to find ourselves back to page one afterwards.
One day, I decided to download a flag quiz app in my phone (Flags of the World Best Trivia). I just wanted to add more flag activities for Kimi. It has 10 levels and for each level the player has a string of country names that he has to identify correctly by choosing from one of the 4 flags laid out. The player is given a timeframe to answer each and is given three allowances for error.
Since Kimi could not read yet, I read out the country name for him. To our amusement, he went through Level 1 with ease. Even countries that we are not that familiar with he can amazing already identify.
Again, in a just a matter of days, he was able to go through 9 of the 10 levels! He is still working with Level 10 and I have not tried it again with him lately but I am sure the leap in knowledge would be tremendous. I am so amused with how absorbent the mind of a child is! With this, I was set to give him more exposure to flags.
From country flags, he expanded his knowledge to provincial, territories and state flags. He went through flags of the Canadian provinces and territories; and US territories and states. I made him printables of countries, the Canadian provinces and US state flags so that he can hold and touch them which could also aid the learning process.
We also used the printables for mini games that I made for Kimi. In one of the games, we would lay down all the flags on the floor, ask Kimi to find the flag for a particular state/country and then put the printable in a basket.
Another game involved lining up all the flags face down around the house, Kimi following the flags, flipping them face up, identifying the flags and putting them in a tray.
We also did a game out of categorising the countries by continents.
Lately, we organised the country flags by continent so these past few weeks Kimi would just pick a set of flags from his stash, identify from which continent these flags are, pick up the flags one by one and lay down the flags on his table. I bet we would still come up with more games relating to flags in the future.
He is also working now on learning about French overseas areas; Dutch territories; and UK overseas territories and subnational flags. He is already familiar with most of them and is alongside learning about international flags such as The United Nations, Red Cross, Olympics Rings, European Union and Arab League.
We haven’t even covered flags of Brazil’s states, Japanese perfectures, German regions and Russian republics. And as we go deeper, the more I realise that we still have a lot to learn and discover.
Out of all the topics he was and currently exposed with, Kimi always gravitates towards flags. He has an unmistakeable affiliation with them. When he wakes up in the morning, flags would be the first activity that he will think of doing. It does not matter if the learning is through his printables, his flag book, a flag video from Youtube or a quick search with me on the internet. He would surely pick flags among anything else. He treats it as his work as of the moment.
We have already touched base with geography and though he already knows where the continents are in the map, he still does not show interest in knowing where the countries are situated. I am still constantly researching and thinking of ways we can still expand on the flags topic. If you have any ideas, I would be very happy to know more about it.
For now, I see that he is still interested in his flag-related activities. Truthfully, I feel that the activities are not necessary and are just supplementary for him. I do not need to pique his interest, his interest is already there, mightily present and fervent. Sometimes I do think that it is me who is pushing to give him more activities, more exposure, more variation, more of this and that when all he wants to do is to sit with his flags book and flip through the pages. I know that he would already be contented and happy with us curled up together with his book, in admiration of the pages and in anticipation of what amazing thing about this wonderful world of flags we would come to discover next.
