I have recently been able to convince some children to do some maths with me through some games. While I’m not sure if this is a must in terms of content and I have heard of some schools of thought that advocate just doing experiments and learning whatever the learners want, I still feel that some understanding of numbers and language would enable the learners to do a lot more. I feel that we’ve sort of established a process (though it’s something much more loose and structure-less) to engage with learners. Initially we try to engage with the learners and try to get them comfortable with us. This could be through simple conversations like how their day was what they ate for lunch etc. I’ve also found that high fives, and covering their eyes and having them guess who it is is a game that lightens the mood and makes the learners comfortable. During this warming up phase, the learners are mostly interested in doing the colouring sheets independently. As they get more comfortable, the learners also start warming up to doing different activities that they want to do but don’t necessarily feel confident with. A great activity in this second phase has been the jigsaw puzzles. The learners seem to enjoy this a lot as well and it offers them a challenging yet achievable activity. Once they have established some more confidence and trust that they too can learn something at the center they might feel more open to doing things like maths. The maths need not be introduced as maths but can simply be more games to play. But the idea is to have a sort of slow engagement strategy that would vary from child to child but would probably follow these phases.