Salt Art (part II)

Date: 30^th July 2013

Day: Tuesday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Salt Art (Part II)

Today, we continued with the salt art activity. I placed the five coloured salt on the table for the children to look at it. The children were very eager to start with it. I didn’t add on any other colours as I think it’s sufficient for us to complete one small glass bottle with all the salt we have.

So the children took turn to put the coloured salt into the glass bottle that I had prepared. The children have to look at the previous colour and choose the next colour appropriately. Though some of them insisted that they want that particular colour, however, after I had explained why he or she should choose another colour, they agreed.

One by one they came out to do it and finally, the salt art was complete. The children cheered happily for that it is really a very beautiful and colourful art work.

Salt Art (Part I)

Date: 29^th July 2013

Day: Monday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Salt Art (Part I)

Before we start, I showed them a salt art that I had in hand. This is a very beautiful art that young kids can do. The materials are pretty simple as well. I only need a few things such as some packets of fine salt, food colouring (assorted colours), glass bottles, funnel, some bowls for mixing the colour and spoons.

We shall do this activity as in a big group. Therefore, I started off with the colour mixing process. I have 3 colours, red, egg yellow and green. I chose 5 children to start off with it. I gave each child a bowl, a spoon, some salt and I pour in the food colouring into the salt. The children need to mix it evenly so that the colour can be used to put inside the glass bottle later.

This activity will actually practice the children’s motor skill of their hand as they need to actually coloured the salt evenly especially when the salt got in touch with liquid, it condense and the children needs to use the spoon to smash it and mixed it evenly. This took them a while.

I was too focusing in guiding the children doing the mixing part and forgotten to take some photos of them. I shall do it for the next group of children tomorrow. 

Red Colour Vocabulary

Date: 25^th July 2013

Day: Thursday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Red Colour Vocabulary

I had prepared some pictures with words of red colour things. Those words are - rose, hibiscus, apple, cherry, strawberry and tomato.

We went through the pictures first. The children could actually name it by the pictures. Great!

Then we went through the words. This took them a while to get the words correct. Then I let the children freely match the pictures with the words. 

Today is Monday by Eric Carle

Date: 23^rd July 2013

Day: Tuesday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Book Sharing – Today is Monday

Today, I wanted to share a book with them. It’s “Today is Monday” by Eric Carle. This is an interesting book with colourful pictures of animals having different food for different days of the weeks. While reading the book, we had some discussion about it.

Then we sang some songs and did a brainstorming session for things in red that the children had learned so far. 

Red Colour Song

Date: 22^nd July 2013

Day: Monday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Red Colour Song

Book Sharing – The Golden Goose

Golden is not the colour that we ought to share for this week, yet, I think “The Golden Goose” is a good story to share with the children. This short and simple story tells us not to be greedy. With its humorous pictures and easy reading lines, the children could get the story clearly from the beginning. Though some children were still confused with concept like poor, rich, greedy but most of them somehow understand the story.

Then we went back to “Red” colour. Suddenly, I thought of a song that I sang before with the 4 years old children, “Annie has an apple tree”. This song goes well with the red apple art we did last week.

The lyrics are as followed:

Song: Annie Has An Apple Tree (Tune: London Bridge is Falling Down)

Annie has an apple tree,

apple tree, apple tree,

Annie has an apple tree,

With lots of apples.

I also found another lovely red colour song to sing with the children.

Song: Red (Tune: Are you sleeping?)

R-E-D

R-E-D

That’s spells red,

That’s spells red,

Apple are that colour

Strawberries are that colour

R-E-D

R-E-D

Then I got the children to substitute the apple with another fruit. The children were quite creative, they choose “cherry” and “chili”. Then I asked them to substitute “strawberries”, they could actually say out “tomato” (which words that have 3 syllable), I suggested “raspberries”.

Red Apple Art

Date: 19^th July 2013

Day: Friday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Red Apple Art

We started our red colour today. I prepared some cut out apple shape and some red colour art paper for the children to do tear and paste. Since the children had some experience from the yellow colour art they did earlier, most of them somehow knows what to do with those papers. Some of the children could actually patiently do it bits by bits while some just paste a big chunk of papers on to their apple.

Yee Jie brought 2 small apples to school to share it with his fellow classmates today. So I peel and cut the apple and let Yee Jie gave it out to his classmates.

Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?

Date: 18^th July 2013

Day: Thursday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Book Sharing – Brown bear,  brown bear, what do you see?

Today’s session is quite simple and short. We started with the book sharing session. I borrowed the book – Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see? It’s a book by Eric Carle from Yu Xi (from Pomegranate’s class). This interesting book about colour amazed the children of its’ simple and repeating lines. After one or two pages, somehow the children realized the repetition of the line and even they could actually say the repeating line for the next page. It’s fun to see how children catch up so fast. Awesome!

Qi Jie and Emerson were absent the day before when I did the sun art with the class. Therefore, we used about 5 minutes time for these 2 children to complete their sun art.

Then children requested to read “The train is about to move!” again. So I read to them again! I think they enjoyed the beautiful colours in the book a lot!

We are moving in to “Red” colour after this. The children were asked to bring anything that is red in colour such as apple or any red toys. 

Sun Art - Part II

Date: 17^th July 2013

Day: Wednesday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Sun Art (Part II)

The children were so excited to look at their sun picture and wanted to add in the face for it. Therefore, I distributed out the sun pictures to each child. They quickly put a smiling face on their sun. Besides that, I got each of them to write the word “sun” near to their sun picture. 

Lately, we have been reading some pieces from “The English Reciting Program”. The first piece that I introduced to the children was “Spring” by Thomas Nash. The lines are as followed:

1.      Spring, the sweet spring,

Is the year’s pleasant king,

Then blooms each thing,

Then maids dance in a ring,

Cold doth not sting,

The pretty birds do sing,

Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

2.      The palm and may make country houses gay,

Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,

And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay,

Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

3.      The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,

Young lovers meet,

Old wives a-sunning sit,

In every street these tunes our ears do greet,

Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

Spring! The sweet Spring!

Dear parents, if you happen to hear your child says ,”to-witta-woo” it’s from this beautiful poem. The children find this particular phrase amusing.

This is for the children to listen and read along. This is to create the listening skills and appreciate the beauty of such poem or phrase.

Sun Art - Part I

Date: 16^th July 2013

Day: Tuesday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Sun Art (Part I)

According to the children’s imagination and observation, the children said that sun is yellow in colour. Therefore, today, I prepared some yellow water paint and paper for the children to do a sun art.

We used palm printing. I let the children tell me how to do the palm printing which will look like a sun. Some of them actually could tell me by turning the paper around, wow, they are amazing.

Therefore, the children take turns to do one by one as most of them need some guidance. We shall do some decoration or additional to the sun art tomorrow after it got dry. 

Story from Dr Seuss

Date: 15^th July 2013

Day: Monday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Book Sharing – From First to Last by Dr Seuss

Today, I wanted to share a story from a book by Dr Seuss. The title of the story is “Oh, the Think you can Think!”

This is a very interesting story about colours that you can relate to anything you see around you. Even though there are a lot of funny names created by Dr Seuss along the storyline but the children enjoyed it very much. The colourful pictures attracted them a lot.

We ended the class with some songs and revision of the words for Green. 

Recognition of Colours (Part III)

Date: 12^th July 2013

Day: Friday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Recognising the colours (Part III)

Yesterday, I followed Starfruit class for their field trip to Zoo Negara. Therefore, there’s no blog update for 11^th July. However, the children were still very excited about their trip yesterday. As a result, we started with the sharing session. Every child got a chance to tell what animals that they saw in the zoo. Most of them could tell. Only a few of them needs some help in the names in English.

Today, we changed a little of our game. Previously, when the children walked around the colour circle rubber ring, they have to stand on the colour that we set earlier. But today, we did it the other way round.

I got a child to pick a colour card. If it’s written “green”, meaning that the children cannot stepped on the green colour rubber ring. They have to look for other colours. For the first two rounds, there will still be children who looked for the forbidden colour to step on it. However, after a few rounds, they somehow understand and could follow the game better. 

Recognition of Colours (Part II)

Date: 10^th July 2013

Day: Wednesdday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Recognising the colours (Part II)

We continued with the activities of colours recognition from yesterday. Today, I prepared another kind of way to run the activities with the similar materials. I got a small bean bag and some colour flash cards today.

First, I placed the colourful circle rubber ring on the floor. Then I got them to draw a colour flash card from the box. If the child got a “green”, then the child has to aim for the green colour rubber ring with the bean bag. This is to get them to connect the name with the colours and also their aiming skill. You will be surprised that some were quite good at aiming while some stared at me and didn’t know what to do with the bean bag. However, after a few rounds, all the children were so eager to try out their luck at aiming the ring.

As a result, I break the children into 2 groups and we had a competition to see which group of children can aim better. Only 2 children could get the bean bag into the ring while others threw it too far away.

We shall try again on the aiming games or other way of stirring the children’s interest in colours recognition. 

Recognition of Colours

Date: 9^th July 2013

Day: Tuesday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Recognition the colours

We had done green and yellow so far. We shall be moving into another colour soon. Before we do that, I would like to play a game with the children to see if they could recognize the colour. I got some circle rubber ring that comes in various colours, among them are green, yellow, red, blue etc.

We had a simple activity by using these colourful circle rubber rings. I randomly place those colourful circle rubber rings on the floor. I picked a song to sing along while the children will walk around to observe the colour on the rubber ring. If I happened to say “stop” then the children needed to look for the designated colour we choose for that round.

We started off with yellow, then green and we went back to yellow again. Most of the children could get it correct while some got a little confused with the instruction. After a few reminders, the children managed to get what we want.

I shall prepare another similar recognition game for the children to play tomorrow. I do hope the children enjoy such activity. 

Children: There's a colour we all know, G-R-E-E-N.....

Phey Zheng: Yes, I'm standing on the right colour.

Xin Yi: Let's come here, this is yellow!

Wei Yi & Jiun Jie: Yeah, we got it!

Rainbow

Date: 8^th July 2013

Day: Monday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Rainbow

Book Sharing – Colour Dance by Ann Jonas

This is an interesting colour book that introduced the primary colours, red, yellow and blue. The mixture of the primary colours gives the children an idea how to create new colours. From here, I further explore the rainbow colours with the children.

Teacher: How many colours are there in a rainbow?

Children: Seven.

Teacher: What are the colours? Let’s name it.

Children: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. (Wow, the children could remember the sequence of the rainbow. Amazing!)

Teacher: We can use these three colours to colour a rainbow. (The children just stared at me and some started to say “No”. They argued that we need to have 7 colours to colour a rainbow.)

Therefore, I prepared the 3 colours, red, yellow and blue with some white colour papers.

Teacher: Now, I paint the first colour, red. How do I get orange? (There’s no orange paint. Everyone was puzzled. They just looked at me without any reply. Then I flipped to the page that mentioned about the orange mixture.)

Children: Red and yellow. (So I painted yellow, a little bit closer to red to get the orange mixture.)

Teacher: What’s next?

Children: Green.

Teacher: How do I get green? I don’t have green here.

Children: Yellow and blue. (This time they are smarter. Great!)

Teacher: Let’s see. Can you see the green colour now?

Children: Yes, yes, I can see the green. (They were so excited!)

Teacher: So now, how should we get indigo and violet? (Silence from the floor again. So I flipped to the page that mentioned about the mixture of purple. The children still can’t get it. They still looked puzzled. So I carried on with the demonstration.)

Children: Look, indigo….violet….

Now, the children could see the rainbow clearly. I demonstrate the whole painting again for the children to see how amazing can the mixture of the colours be. 

Video Sharing - Preschool Power Kids

Date: 5^th July 2013

Day: Friday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Video Sharing – Preschool Power 5: Little Kids Doing Big Things

Today, I got this VCD from Yu Xi, a 6 year-old child from Pomegranate class, who shared it with her classmate. So I borrowed it from her to share it with our Starfruit class. In this VCD, the children could see how other little children could help out at home such as simple baking, easy washing and even cleaning the hamster’s cage.

Besides that, it also introduced the shades of colours. It introduced red, blue and yellow which are the primary colours of all. It introduced lighter colour shades and darker colour shades by doing experiment.

On the other hand, the video also demonstrated some simple science experiment that amazed the children too. 

Lemon and Banana

Date: 4^th July 2013

Day: Thursday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Lemon and Banana

We continued with the art work that we did yesterday. After the children had pasted the yellow colour paper on the lemon and banana shape, we need to label the name of the fruits to it so that the children could learn some vocabulary as well.

I had printed out the word “lemon” and “banana”. The children’s work is to recognize the words and put the words correctly under the picture. Most of the children could get it correctly after discussion while some still did it wrongly.

This is the outcome of the picture after labeling. 

Ei Jay and Bo En were absent yesterday, so today we gave both of them some time to complete the above art work. They did it quite fast too.

We ended the class with the colour game. The colour we were looking for is yellow. 

Yellow Lemon, Yellow Watermelon, Yellow Banana

Date: 3^rd July 2013

Day: Wednesday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Yellow Lemon, Yellow Watermelon, Yellow Banana

Wen Xuan brought a yellow ball to show it to her classmate. 

On the other hand, Qi Jie brought a green star toy and he insisted that he wanted to show to his friend. He said he got it from a fun fair.

Teacher: What is this?

Qi Jie: This is a magic star. 

Today, I brought some lemon into the class for the children to have a look at it.

Teacher: Do you know what this is?

Children: Orange.

Teacher: Orange? Look carefully, what is the colour of this fruit?

Children: Yellow….Lemon.

Teacher: Yes, it’s a lemon. (I passed around for the children to look at it.)

I also showed the children a yellow watermelon.

Li Heng: Why the watermelon is yellow? I don’t want to eat. (As the watermelon is cold therefore I just merely let the children have a closer look and smell it. I didn’t let the children taste the watermelon to avoid causing coughing.)

The children did a tear and paste art work on yellow colour. First they trace the outline of the lemon and the banana which I had prepared. Then I gave them each a small paper for them to tear and paste it on the picture. The children enjoyed the activities!

Revision on Yellow

Date: 2^nd July 2013

Day: Tuesday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Revision on Yellow

There’s a new student who just joined us yesterday. Today, we went through all the songs and poem about colours so that the new student to have a better idea of what we were doing so far.

We all sang and danced to the poem and songs. The children were doing fantastically that they could actually remember the words and actions for it.

Then we introduced the colour game that the children used to play to the new student. This time round, I can see that the children started to increase the names of colours that they know and not just red, blue or yellow. They even started to add in colours like black, white, orange etc. Good try!

We shall do more activities this week on yellow to get the children to familiarize themselves with the colours and the spelling of it. 

Yellow, Yellow, Yellow

Date: 1^st July 2013

Day: Monday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Yellow, Yellow, Yellow

Today, we moved in to the colour of yellow. We had a brainstorming session before we start anything else. I get the children to take turns telling me if they know the name of things that is yellow in colour. The children were great that they could name me things like banana, lemon, yellow watermelon, mango, moon, star etc.

Poem – Yellow, Yellow Happy Fellow by Jean Warren

Yellow, yellow happy fellow,

Running through the town,.

Yellow, yellow happy fellow,

Jumping up and down.

While reciting this poem, I got everyone to stand up to combine it with action. After a few round, some of them can even recite without my help. What a great fun with action to help them to remember it much better.

Song – Bright Yellow Sun (sang in the tune: Row, Row, Row Your Boat)

Bright sun shinning down,

Shinning on the ground,

What a lovely face you have,

Yellow, big and round

While singing the song, I asked the children to imagine about looking at the sun!

Book Sharing – Colours

I had shared this book with the children at the beginning of the theme. But today we only focused on yellow colour.