The Experience Document captures how our knowledge of the realities of mothers and children in rural areas informed the process of developing digital content appropriate for them. ECE expert recommendations on creating digital content for preschool age children have also been included. The document could be beneficial for organizations and individuals working in the field of early childhood education and creating content contextually appropriate for parents and children in rural India. This Experience Document has been prepared by Gyan Prakash Foundation as part of the "Parents as Early Teachers" program funded by EkStep Foundation.

1. Creating Digital Content for Rural Mothers and Children:
Experience Document
October, 2019

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Contents
1. What are the realities of mothers and children in rural areas?................................................... 3
2. How to create good quality digital content working with experts in the field of ECE................... 5
2.1 What do we mean by digital content for mothers and children? .............................................. 5
2.2 Initial Stages of Module Development for the Pilot Program.................................................... 5
2.3 About the Expert...................................................................................................................... 6
3. Content Modules for Mothers ................................................................................................... 6
4. Parent-Child Learning Modules.................................................................................................. 8
Appendix..................................................................................................................................... 11
Copyright © (2019) Gyan Prakash Foundation
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives 4.0 International
License (CC BY-ND 4.0). To view a copy of the license, visit
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/

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1. What are the realities of mothers and children in rural areas?
As a part of the Parents as Early Teachers program, we work with mothers from rural areas
to create awareness on how they can support their child’s development and learning from a
young age, and work towards making their child ready for formal school. Before we started
creating digital content for mothers and children from rural areas, we thought it was
important to understand the realities of their day-to-day lives. Our understanding of their
realities is based on our experience working with mothers in Khed Shivapur as a part of the
pilot project, as well as our understanding of families in Manwath (where Gyan Prakash
Foundation works extensively with the village community).
Background
 Most women/mothers (with children in the age group of 3 to 6 years) are between
the ages of 18 to 30.
 The average education is Class 7 pass, however many mothers are unable to read
fluently.
 Most mothers do agricultural work in the fields along with all the household chores
and caring for the children. In Manwath, mothers work in cotton fields and wheat
fields. This will impact the frequency with which they will be able to attend the
parent group sessions at the anganwadi.
 Most families live in the joint-family structure.
Realities of Mothers
 Mothers are occupied with work at home. The more the number of family members
and children at home, the lesser time she has to engage with her children.
 Household chores, financial condition, psychological environment at home, support
from spouse and other family members, etc. contribute to the stress in mothers,
which further poses difficulties in taking time out to spend with her children.
 In families with more than 2 or 3 children, older siblings (especially girls) play a big
role in caring for the younger children.
 Convincing a mother to attend group sessions requires approval from the spouse
and most of the elders in the family.
 Mothers don’t have much exposure to technology devices such as smartphones.
Most of them have a cellphone which are mostly button phones/feature phones.

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 Around 40 % families have smartphones at home. However, it is mostly with fathers
or other male members who own one. Most mothers don’t know how to use a smart
phone.
Children
 Children between the ages of 2.5 to 6 years mostly attend the local anganwadi. Rural
clusters which are closer to urban areas may have private preschool and English
medium private preschools. In Manwath all pre-school age children attend
anganwadis.
 Children start their day by attending the anganwadi, however, they stay there only
till lunch is served (till around noon)
 Many children accompany their mothers to the fields.
 Children have access to smartphones only after the father comes back home in the
evening/night.

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2. How to create good quality digital content working with experts in
ECE
2.1 What do we mean by digital content for mothers and children?
In the context of this project, digital content refers to information on supporting the
development and learning of children between the ages of 3 to 6 years, made available to
mothers on a tech device.
There are two types of digital content used in the program
1. Content for mothers – these are ‘messages’ for mothers on ideal practices to
support child development- developed in the form of 9 modules.
2. Content for mothers and children- for improving school readiness skills (pre-math,
math, cognitive, language) in children entering Class 1, by giving inputs to mothers.
Mothers and children view the content together on a tech device and work on this
content together.
This information on ideal practices with children, if made available to mothers, could be
viewed at their own convenience. However, it is important to consider that shifts in parents’
mindset, and changes in patterns of engagement with children at home cannot be brought
about by only providing information about ideal practices. Changes in beliefs and practices
take place when mothers have an opportunity to share their experiences with other
mothers, when their existing beliefs are challenged, and they are able to incorporate new
practices into their daily lives. However, for mothers who do not have the opportunity to
engage in such sharing groups, the digital content can play an important role in helping
mothers.
Similarly, the digital content for mothers and children on building school readiness skills
plays a supportive role to the actual hands-on and experiential learning that children in this
age need to engage in. However, in low income households that lack resources to support
school readiness skills (such as books, print materials, etc.), the digital content can
compensate for the absence of some resources.
2.2 Initial stages of module development for the pilot program
Content modules were initially developed as PowerPoint slides. While implementing
group sessions with mothers, prints of the slides were used in the form of a flipchart.
- Images: When the modules needed to be put on the tech platform, changes were
made such that each slide would be appropriate to be viewed on a tab or a personal
smartphone. For example, the number of images was cut down to 2 to 3 images per
slide so that they would be visible clearly on a smaller screen.

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- Audio: What facilitators/mothers would see on the screen needed to be supported
by audios which would explain the message that needed to be conveyed through the
slide. We started out thinking if we needed audios for each slide. We did not have
audios for slides with minimal text since mothers in the pilot project were semi-
literate, and we assumed they could read. However, when we started implementing
the project and showing the modules to the mothers, we realized that even if
mothers could read, they were not actually reading the text. They did not feel
confident reading even short sentences. We therefore decided to add audios to
every slide. This would also take care of the issue of working with mothers who were
not literate.
- Module Sequence: The slides were prepared visualizing exactly how the group
sessions would be conducted with the mothers, and in the same sequence in which
topics would be introduced to mothers. This also made it easier for the facilitators to
prepare for group sessions with mothers.
- Module length/time: The length of the parent-child learning modules had to be kept
short keeping in mind the attention span of the child who was watching it with the
mother. The average length of the modules is between 7 to 10 minutes.
2.3 About the Expert
Our expert mentor for this project, Mrs. Zakiya Kurrien is the Founder and Director
Emerita, Center for Learning Resources (CLR, Pune). Mrs. Kurrien has led various projects at
CLR focused on Child Development and Early Childhood Education (ECE), Anganwadi and
preschool teacher training programs and Parents education. She has also authored various
books on ECE.
Mrs. Kurrien reviewed the content modules for mothers and gave us feedback on
the content and the way of presenting the content to mothers. She also looked at the
learning modules and suggested that Math related competencies needed to be
addresses/presented in the order of what children need to learn first, and how they need to
progress to simple to complex topics. Therefore, content in learning pre-math and math
skills were newly developed.
3. Content Modules for Mothers
a. While creating digital content for mothers of children between the ages of 3 to 6 years,
our expert would get us to stop and ask ourselves if the information would be relevant
to rural mothers and whether they would identify with the information we were
providing.

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For example, while discussing the topic of play under socio-emotional development, our
expert felt that the information on the stages of play (solitary play, parallel play,
cooperative play, etc.) which changes with the age of the child, would be more relevant
for the facilitator who was talking to the mothers, but not actually relevant to a mother.
So it was decided that the topic on stages of play should be retained for facilitator
training, but need not be shared with mothers. What mothers mainly need to know was
the ‘importance of play’ for children.
b. Our expert recommended that for the content developed for mothers, it was important
to first give mothers an opportunity to discuss their views and ideas about the issue
before giving them information on what was ideal for the child. For each topic, the
facilitator will first need to ask the mothers their ideas, discuss the issues they face, and
then move on to giving them the information in the module.
For example, while discussing the ‘role of parents’, we needed to first open the topic for
discussion with the mothers about their views about their role. This would give us richer
information on their views, and it would be more relevant for the facilitator to further
build on that information.
c. The advantage of content being made available digitally is that there is a potential to
use images and illustration which can convey information in an effective way. Good
images tend to stick with us and we often remember the image, even if we don’t always
remember the information. Using images that are culturally and contextually relevant
has proven to be beneficial especially while working with groups with low education
and literacy levels. Using contextually relevant images was one of the main feedback
from the expert for the 9 content modules.
d. The expert recommended we use a variety of methods to get mothers involved during
group sessions. Methods like role plays and vignettes can help in bringing out parents’
beliefs and practices in a much more effective way.
For example, under social and emotional development, vignettes would help mothers
think of themselves in a situation and talk about how they would react when their child
threw a tantrum, or when their child didn’t share. For the same example, we could use
a picture with two mothers engaging in two different strategies (image of one mother A
scolding the child, and image of Mother B trying to calm the child) and have a discussion
about which strategy would be more effective.
Please refer to the Appendix to view the list of content modules created for mothers.

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4. Parent-Child Learning Modules
While the 9 content modules for mothers mainly focused on the ‘messages’ for mothers to
support their child’s development, we used a more structured approach to develop the
content for the learning modules. The learning modules mainly have competencies in Math
and Language that children need to achieve before they enter class 1. Within that too, it was
easier to develop the modules for Math compared to Language (just like it is easier to test a
child’s competencies in Math versus a child’s competencies in language).
CLR’s resources on teaching Mathematics and Language to preschool children were used to
create the digital learning content.
It is important to note that there are other competencies under the socio-emotional
domain, such as executive functioning, self-regulation, sustained attention, etc., which are
also very important school readiness skills. However, it is not possible for a child to learn
these skills or for a mother to teach these skills through lessons on a digital medium. These
have to be developed through daily interactions between the parents, teachers, caregivers
and the child.
Some of the common guidelines we used to develop the learning modules were as follows:
1. Thinking about how to ‘teach the mother to teach the child’
Our expert recommended that each learning module should include instructions for
mothers on how to teach the child the concept. In other words “how would the mother
bring home the concept”?
For example, on the number recitation module, we ask mothers to remember the song
on 1 to 10 and sing it to/along with their child.
In the module on ‘Counting’ we have instructions for the mothers to hold their child’s
finger and count the number of objects on the screen.
Additionally, it was also important to teach mothers to use the right vocabulary while
teaching their child
For example, under pre-math concepts of big and small, long and short, tall short, etc. it
was important to tell mothers to use the right words like ‘bigger than,’ ‘smaller than’,
‘longer than’, ‘shorter than’. “In this picture which pencil is longer?” and when the child
pointed to the right pencil she had to say “Yes, the blue pencil is longer than the red
one”.
2. Using examples and images that mothers and children can relate to.

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The images used in the learning modules for children are big, bright and attractive ones,
which will appeal to children. While choosing the images, we had to look for the ones that
children can see in their natural environment. We tried as much as possible to use images of
animals, vegetables, fruits, etc. that children would find in their village or at least are
common enough that they would have seen or heard of.
3. Deciding on which competencies mothers should be teaching children, and which
ones would be taken care of in the preschool by the teacher
When we sat to make a note of all the school readiness skills in Language and Math, our
expert went through the list and discussed which concepts a mother could help develop in a
child at home, and which ones she probably would not be able to. It didn’t always have to
do with the mothers’ capability to teach the child a concept, it also had to do with resources
available at home.
For example, we broke down the concept of classification into simple ‘grouping’ that
mothers could do with children at home. Most mothers will be able to give instructions to
children to group objects that they see and use in their daily lives, such as ‘ things used for
eating and things used for cleaning; or putting children’s clothes and adults’ clothes into two
groups. Expecting mothers to ‘classify’ objects based on multiple attributes would be more
complex. Mothers would also need to understand what types of questions to ask the child to
get the desired response.
Under language, we decided to not to make a digital learning module on letter recognition.
We did not expect mothers to introduce letter recognition and reading to children. Ideas
such as pointing out text to the child, reading words that they see in the environment, went
as ‘messages’ to mothers under language development.
4. Using language/vocabulary that mothers find easy to understand
There are many such words which we use commonly while talking about ideas in education.
For example words like skills, competencies, classify. However, these words may be difficult
for mothers to understand. We had to therefore simplify terms and use words that mothers
would understand.
Please refer to the Appendix to view the list of parent-child learning modules.
Points to consider while developing digital content for rural mothers and children:
1. Use of more images compared to text
2. Bright and colourful images that attract children’s attention and keep them engaged

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3. Audio that explains the information/text on the slide on and focuses on the main
messages to be given to mothers
4. Include opportunities for thinking about examples from their lives and opportunities
for discussion if they are in a group session
5. Appropriate length of the module keeping in mind the mothers’ availability and the
age and attention span of the children

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Appendix
Content for Mothers Parent-Child Learning Modules
LANGUAGE/MARATHI
Growth and Development फु ले- Flowers
Preparing for Entry to School माहजी ओळख- Myself
Nutrition रंग- भाज्या - Colours and Vegetables
Physical Development फळांची ओळख- Fruits
Language Development पक्षी- Birds
Cognitive Development प्राणी- Animals
Socio-emotional development PRE-MATH and MATH
Health
गणणताची पूर्व तयारी- १
पेखा मोठा आणण पेक्षा लहान
(Pre-Math: Big and Small)
गणणताची पूर्व तयारी- २ पेक्षा कमी आणण पेक्षा जास्त
(Pre-Math: More and less)
गणणताची पूर्व तयारी- ३
पेक्षा उंच आणण पेक्षा बुटका
(Pre-Math: Tall and Short)
गणणताची पूर्व तयारी- ४
पेक्षा लांब आणण पेक्षा आखूड
(Pre-Math: Long and short)
र्गीकरण (Classification)
क्रमर्ारीता (Seriation)
अंकांची गंमत- २: र्स्तू मोजणी (Counting)
Counting
अंकांची गंमत- १: अंक तोंडी म्हणणे
(Number Recitation)
अंकांची गंमत – ३: अंक ओळख १ ते ५
Numeral Recognition 1 to 5
अंकांची गंमत – ३: अंक ओळख ६ ते १०
Numeral Recognition 6 to 10
आकार (Shapes)
STORIES
All the content in the modules is in
Marathi since the program is
implemented with mothers in rural
Maharashtra
माझे ममत्र (My friend)
हे माझे घर (My house)
आत्ता नाही आत्ता नाही (Not now, not now)
रंग (Colours)
हाताचे नाक लांब कसे झाल (How the elephant got
its trunk/The curious baby elephant)

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