Childhood Games

Lets go back in time to when some of us were young. Do you remember some of the games you used to play? At the time, you probably never really thought some of the games could be applied to education. I didn’t either until this morning when I was talking with a friend. She used one of these childhood games to teach her son about division – math concept. I know right? So I started thinking about some of the games I played. 

Before I continue, let me tell you though, if you did not go to a “syto” school, some of this will sound like a foreign language to you. If you read that last sentence and wondered what “syto” school is, you missed out. Lol. Do you know what “kyemp3” is? My fellow Cape Coasters will know. “Kyemp3” loosely translates as “divide equally” in Fante. How is it played? You first need to decide which of your friends you are playing with. Every time you have something edible, if any of the players see you and say “kyemp3”, you have to divide the food equally. At times, it could be just one person and other times three people

could sneak up on you and say “kyemp3”. At which point you will have to share/divide the food equally among all four of you. Imagine you have groundnut and someone says “kyemp3”, you have to count out the groundnut. Believe it or not, there is an inherent application of division right there. So just think about how much life would have been easier for some of us if some of the math equations were phrased differently. Instead of asking me to solve for X in some complicated word problem, you could easily start the problem with “Imagine you were playing kyemp3…”. Right? Doesn’t that just put things in perspective for you? 

Another game that was fun to play and educative. You pick a letter of the alphabet and players take turns listing names of countries, or continents etc starting with that letter. Fun game right? You could play so many variations of that game.

I’ll admit, not every game was the useful. Take “shake me” for instance. You slap the bortos of someone really hard if they don’t have their hands on their back. I mean why did we play this game? Did every one play “kpiting3” or was it just me. I was and still a kuborlo so I wont be surprised if you havent heard of it. How about this one…”Stay” and the players respond “for you”. How about “pilolo” or “chaskele”?

You would agree those were some good times right? Feel free to share in the comments section some games you played. I  would love to hear about them.

Corona Feelings by SKA