SMART FILIPINO FOLK GAMES WE SHOULD PASS ON TO OUR KIDS - Before leaving Baguio City yesterday, it dawned on me that it was time to buy a SUNGKAHAN again for the little kids back home. A little haggling enabled me to get it for 125 pesos (sea shells including). When I first bought a sungkahan as a bagong-salta during the NSSPC held in Teachers Camp in Baguio in 1971, I bought it for only 3.50 pesos. Anyway, I strongly feel that the sungka game forms part of our cultural heritage which made Pinoy children through the ages, mentally astute, more sociable and provided informal training for common sense and maybe even mathematical maturity. I thought that making our kids at home fell in love with sungka will be a good antidote to computer games and video addictions which are becoming a bane to child health and early education. Until three years before she passed away at age 94, my unschooled but highly functionally literate grandmother Simeona Teajada (longtime fish vendor in Sariaya market) was a grandmaster who could put up with anybody and she was unbeatable. Too bad, I did not inherit her mathematical prowess and sungka expertise and tricks for winning. But thank God, ans big surprise, my little grandniece Lalie Kirsten Kate Natalie Imperial, seems to have naturally imbibed the prowess of her great, great grandmother. She was just taught sungka last night upon my arrival and tonight (see pics) she was already challenging her Uncle Danny complete with the assertive tricks and the sungka terms which I have all forgotten since my last game about 45 years ago. PINOYS HERE AND ABROAD, LETS PRESERVE AMONG OUR KIDS THE GAMES OF OUR CHILDHOOD AND THEY WILL COMPLETE THEIR NEEDED FUNCTIONAL LITERACY IN THE AGE OF IMPERSONAL AND SELF-ORIENTED ICT. Francia Imperial, Beethoven Imperial, Charito Imperial-Sebastian, Fem Roy Imperial, Fe Pascual Yamada, Vangie Jimenez, Lhy la Lhy, Zenaida Semana, Danilo Semana, Lester Nabata
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 12:36:06 +0000