LEARNING THROUGH ENTERTAINMENT

Today, a common holiday of children and their parents, along with entertainment and educational events, has ceased to be perceived as something exotic and unnecessary. Of the neologisms of recent decades, the concept "child-friendly" has become firmly entrenched in the world. This concept may apply to everything - from parents to large service facilities and even cities. This is determined by the conditions created for parents with children - special chairs in restaurants, children's rooms in shopping centres and other amenities.

Expensive and not educative

All this is created not only for the convenience of parents to help them live a normal life, go to restaurants and shops and travel with children, but also for the child to get used to a normal life in all its formats at an early age.

What opportunities are there in our city for the development of the kid in such circumstances?

First of all, it should be noted that Baku has no shortage of entertainment centres: in many large shopping centres a whole floor is often allocated "to children" - there are toy stores, books, clothes, children's cafes and rides that are dear to the heart of every little man. All this colourful industry is provided by private companies and their value is not so small. Given that all rides are in the same place and, of course, you will want to try them all when you visit, a visit to such a centre costs the parents a round sum.

Of course, any parent will proudly say without hesitation: "I will do anything for my child!"

But is there anything useful and educative we can offer our children?

There are two problems - the lack of most of the entertainments for all children and the lack of initiative to hold cultural development activities.

We are not talking about the abundance of development centres and clubs as they are not really consistent with the concept of summer entertainment and cognitive recreation. Although schools regularly organize trips to museums, this process freezes during the summer holidays. The repertoire of children's plays is not so big either, and given that theatres are also on holiday in summer, this "entertainment" can be struck off the books too.

Occasionally private centres, restaurants, hotels and banks organize children's events, but unfortunately, state educational institutions remain aloof from this holiday of a lifetime. On 1 June, for example, on Children's Day, one of the major banks of the city held a festival with soap bubbles and popular face-art. And this holiday became accessible to all segments of the population.

Another innovation, which is very popular in Western countries, is cooking classes for children. Some big city restaurants popularize this fashionable activity by involving children in it - again, for a certain amount - from 20 to 50 or even 80 manats! It is obvious that the purpose of this master class is not to turn the child into an inveterate chef and cook, but familiarize him with cultural events.

Perhaps almost the only opportunity of cultural and useful leisure we have is scouts. One of the organizers of the Scout Club, Yevgeniya Nacafova, said that the Azerbaijani Scout Club sticks to the general rules adopted in 27 countries around the world (for reference, we should say that the Scout Movement is one of the world's largest non-governmental organizations and ranks fourth being behind only the Red Cross in the category of vital organizations). The main purpose, according to the coordinator, is to develop a full-fledged individual and a member of society and motivate children to experience the world and continue their education. The main directions of the Scout Movement are the environment, the ability to survive in nature, charity and the development of different skills. This involves children from six to eighteen years of age (older people are already involved as leaders teaching those who are younger); skills development also depends on the "career guidance" of the leader himself - it could be sailing, pokerwork, modelling - in a word, everyone can find something to their taste. At the same time, given regular trips to the mountains and forests, as well as orienteering competitions, we can say that this is a useful holiday designed to instill a sense of community, support and reciprocity in children, and it also makes them healthier.

"We have only recently returned from environmental training. Younger scouts were in Lahic, while older kids climbed Babadag. Children collected garbage and hung banners with quotations from the Koran, which urge people to keep clean. Funds for participation in all activities, as well as for the purchase of necessary equipment and props are raised by the organizers and participants themselves," Yevgeniya said.

Experience of other countries

Russia and Ukraine have great experience in organizing activities for children often as part of a current holiday or event: needlework workshops, short first aid training courses and face-art lessons. In France, a country very friendly towards children, the question of leisure is very serious. It is so serious that kindergartens work there not for five or six days as here, but for four days. Wednesday is a day entirely left at the will of children's leisure. Most of the museums, theatres and concert halls offer special children's programmes on this day of the week. New films for children are released only on Wednesdays. At stadiums and swimming pools Wednesday is children's day. Museums and other palaces also open their doors to eager and grateful young visitors: the Palace of Discovery, which playfully describes physics, chemistry, astronomy, geography and biology, the Museum of Magic with a huge collection of circus and magic props, the National Museum of Natural History , the Museum of Paleontology... The list can be long... But we would love at least a small fraction of learning through playing, not just big "consumer" rides, to become publicly available for our children someday.