“Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” is a wonderful children’s song. So here is what happened in the Sumbrungu library last week when I was there for a late night (9:00pm) visit with Darius, the night librarian. He was there with 10 children, giving them practice dictation words. He would tell them words and they had to work together to figure out how to spell them, and the he tested them on their spelling. The bolder girls saw he was distracted and came up to me and started asking how to spell “Home” or “House”. When I started spelling the words, they screeched, “Darius, do you see??? Darius, he is telling us the words!!!” Later, we were still chatting with the children and a girl came up and asked me to sing a song. I tried a few, and eventually segued to “Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.” Some of the girls gasped. “But,” they cried, “That is Mia and Jenevieve’s song. How can you sing that song? Do you really know that song?” Mia and Jenevieve, of course, were FAVL interns at the library last summer, about eight months ago. Their drawings and those children’s drawings they brought with them are still on the walls (see entry below). A big impact!
A site devoted to thoughts about books, reading, and libraries relevant to Africa mostly by Michael Kevane, co-Director of Friends of African Village Libraries, a small 501(c)(3) non-profit devoted to helping village and small community libraries in Africa. I am also an economist at Santa Clara University. Other frequent contributors are Kate Parry, FAVL-East Africa director, and Anne-Reed Angino, FAVL networker extraordinaire! For more information see the FAVL website, http://www.favl.org
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
“Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” is a wonderful children’s song. So here is what happened in the Sumbrungu library last week when I was there for a late night (9:00pm) visit with Darius, the night librarian. He was there with 10 children, giving them practice dictation words. He would tell them words and they had to work together to figure out how to spell them, and the he tested them on their spelling. The bolder girls saw he was distracted and came up to me and started asking how to spell “Home” or “House”. When I started spelling the words, they screeched, “Darius, do you see??? Darius, he is telling us the words!!!” Later, we were still chatting with the children and a girl came up and asked me to sing a song. I tried a few, and eventually segued to “Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.” Some of the girls gasped. “But,” they cried, “That is Mia and Jenevieve’s song. How can you sing that song? Do you really know that song?” Mia and Jenevieve, of course, were FAVL interns at the library last summer, about eight months ago. Their drawings and those children’s drawings they brought with them are still on the walls (see entry below). A big impact!
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