The hills are alive with the sound of music
I step out of the gate of the De La Salle teacher training college in Byumba. We are doing a training course on learning through play in pre-school. Today and tomorrow, we focus on emergent numeracy for pre-schoolers and on how you can approach that in a playful way or, more importantly, how you can use children's play to help them develop mathematical concepts. It has been a busy day, but above all, we have had a lot of fun. Like when I sent the teacher trainers armed with their mobile phones out, on a geometric figure and pattern hunt. Byumba is situated on a hill in the mountainous district of Gicumbi. In the centre of that hill is the Catholic Church. A gigantic building that seems to have been built to illustrate what we were doing today during the training. The stained-glass windows consist of geometric shapes in different colours. But what attracts me most of all is the music that flows out through the opened side door. Choral singing. I slip inside and sit down on one o