Who we are
TOPS Learning Systems is a children’s international educational charity based in Romford, Essex. The organisation was set up in 2007 to develop and promote innovative, fun and hands-on activity lessons that encourage children and young people to take interest in learning, especially science and mathematics.
About TOPS
Educational research and our own observation as teachers and parents make it perfectly clear that: The best way to help children learn and understand a subject is for them to experience the subject through processes of creative play and self-discovery. Involving children and young people in hands-on experiments and activities using materials they are familiar with and seeing the results take away the mysteries surrounding the subjects while they learn basic concepts in totally enjoyable ways.
Using inexpensive local materials like paper clips, cellophane tape, office pins, thread, aluminum foil, pairs of scissors, etc. (all cheaply available in many homes) children learn to observe, question, experiment, predict, evaluate and communicate. They learn through play processes by doing!
More . . .
TOPS stands for Task Oriented Physical Sciences. It is an innovative approach to learning, emphasising the use of fun, interactive and hands-on activities and experimentation to get children excited, ignited and enthused about science and math. See an example of the innovative lessons we develop.
We invite everyone to get involved in our work by supporting the work we do. This will enable us to build capacity and reach out to more educational establishments with our practical, child centred and inquiry-based learning and activities. Our want to develop more scientists out of children who would otherwise not have the opportunity. Tops Learning Systems encourages the sharing of ideas, enthusiasm and practical knowledge among children, their teachers, parents and the community.
Our History
Tops Learning Systems is the brainchild of a young American Peace Corps posted to Anloga Teachers Training College, Ghana in 1967 to teach science and math to student teacher trainees. Faced with a dearth of equipment, he had to do with nothing to help student teachers understand and love to learn science and math which they can in turn teach to children in primary schools.
Faced with an empty classroom came up with the idea of using improvised local materials in teaching science and math to students. Necessity has become the mother of invention! And Ronald Marson showed his friend and language guide, Elisha how to disseminate this innovation through the formation of a charity to serve both the developed and the developing world.
The solution we provide
TOPS Learning Systems has developed an innovative 100 hands-on activity lesson program for children to learn science and math through play processes. All the activity-lessons depend on 15 simple local and recycled materials found in any home.
Using inexpensive materials like paper clips, cellophane tape, thread, aluminum foil, pairs of scissors, etc., children follow simple step-by-step instructions and illustrations to create their own equipment which they use to do hands-on activities in science and math.
They experience interesting results that excite and inspire them to science and math and the easy nature of these subjects. Children learn to observe, question, experiment, predict, evaluate and communicate. They learn science by doing science! Just as real scientists do.
