Admittedly, I had a childhood where I didn’t worry (or at least my parents didn’t make me worry) about a lot of things. For that, I am grateful. Contrary to what people might be thinking, I wasn’t a spoiled brat. If I wanted something, I had to find a way to get it (especially since my mom was against a lot of things I wanted to do… hehe! Peace, mom!).
I really believe that it’s not the amount of money that makes a person innovative or inventive. I believe though that money may give the person more capacity for failure after trying out things, but I don’t not think that money automatically makes you creative and inventive.
In raising and educating your kids, there will always be that struggle of choosing consumerism versus creation. When do “I” as a parent buy stuff for my child and when do I ask them to look for a way to create the solution. When do I give them the answer and when do I let them find the answer on their own?
In raising Zeeka, we follow these two simple things or two steps. One, we give her the foundation of having a good education. Every child will eventually need to learn and absorb the basics in their own time, like read, spell, subtract, add, observe, control movement, etc. Then second, after learning the foundation, we help her utilise these learnings in life. No matter where the child learns the foundation (whether in school from a teacher, at home from the parent. etc.), I believe that the role of the parents is to encourage them to use these learning and skills.
This is a sample of how we do it. Once, she wanted to memorise the song Chillin’ like a Villain (from the Descendants). We wanted to teach her that songs comes from words, and when she knows how to spell and write words, she can create her own songs! What we did is that we wrote the lyrics of the song and she had to read it then sing it! With that, she understood the importance of spelling and writing.
Also, another thing that we do is we expose her to different people and different situations. Today, we will be bringing her to the Manila Mini Maker Faire. From June 22 (Saturday) to June 23 (Sunday), the Manila Mini Maker Faire (MMMF) will be at The Mind Museum.
The Manila Mini Maker Faire will have over 150 makers from all over the country and from neighbouring countries in Asia. For this year, most of the projects that will be highlighted are environmentally sustainable projects. Aside from the projects, their will be workshops on Bokashi mud ball making, robotics, paper engineering, 3D design, eco art organic painting, etc.
If you want to bring your family, please check out http://manila.makerfaire.com
How about you? How do you teach your kids to be inventors and innovators? Hope you can share with us how you do it, too!
