Developing Literacy and Numeracy in Early Childhood Education in Ghana: The Role of Traditional Ewe Play Games

Abstract

There is the need for the training of Early Childhood Education Teachers to appreciate and exhibit the integration of indigenous knowledge in the teaching and learning process. This paper aims to create the awareness in policy makers that the time to encourage and support Early Childhood Educators to use indigenous knowledge in facilitating themes and concepts is ripe. This knowledge is common in our Traditional Ewe Play Games hereafter called TEPG. The integration of traditional play games in teaching and learning at the Early Grade Level is one sure means of arousing learning interest in children. Traditional play games, sustain their interest towards learning and opens up multi- sensory learning behavior in them. Educational benefits of traditional play games cannot be overemphasized. Indigenous plays allow a multisensory spectrum of scaffolding, assessment and responsive feedback for coaching. The paper suggests that when Pre-service Teachers are properly trained to acquire the knowledge and skills in the use of indigenous play games at their training levels, they would be well equipped to facilitate the Pre-tertiary Education Curriculum hence producing functional citizens for the nation. This qualitative research adopted exploratory design to collect data through observation, interview and available literary materials. Descriptive approach was used to analyze the data.