Art and Craft: Purple Grape

Date: 28^th August 2013

Day: Wednesday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Art and craft: Purple Grapes

I believe most of the children had seen a bunch of grapes before. Therefore, I picked this purple colour fruit to do an art of it.

I prepared the following items for this art:

1)      a piece of white paper

2)      paper egg cartoon

3)      red and blue paint (to mix it into purple colour in front of the children)

The children were excited before I could give out clear instruction of how to get a good shape of the grape by using the egg cartoon, they had already started it on their own. I only managed to guide some of them by showing them how to use the egg cartoon to make the round shape of the grape. However, some children find it easier by using finger print. Actually I had thought of that, only I was thinking maybe their fingers are pretty small, the egg cartoon might do a bigger round shape compare to their little finger.

It took up quite some time for the children to complete and clean up the mess they made. Therefore, we shall continue with the decoration of the purple grape the next day.

More things in purple

Date: 27^th August 2013

Day: Tuesday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

More purple things…

Today, we revised the purple song and carry on with our purple colour activities. Today, I got the children to pick a purple thing from the room and shared with their fellow classmates.

Most of the children needed help in the sentence making. Most of them would just adapt the sentence such as “This is a purple….” Or “I have a purple….”

Through this activity, the children learn to actually express their thoughts in simple sentences and also trained their confidence in using the language. Though it’s simple yet it’s quite challenging as well for those children who are not dare to speak up. 

Purple...purple...

Date: 26^th August 2013

Day: Monday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Purple…purple…

This week we shall focus on “purple” colour. I got the children to brainstorm of things in purple.

Teacher: Can you name me anything which is purple in colour?

Children: Grapes…T-shirt….car…. (Suddenly, there’s silence from the floor. So I had to carry on with the list)

Teacher: Plum….prunes….eggplant / brinjal/ aubergine….dragon fruit.

The children were thrilled to know there are so many things in purple.

Then we sang a purple song adapted from online.

Song: We Love Purple (Tune: Frere Jacques)

We love purple, we love purple.

Yes, we do. Yes, we do.

Purple grapes and eggplant.

Purple plums and grape juice,

Just for me, just for you.

By Heather McPhail

Orange Worksheet

Date: 23^rd August 2013

Day: Friday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Orange Worksheet

In order for the children to have a better impression about orange colour, I found a nice worksheet for them to do. In this worksheet, the children got to practice writing the spelling of “orange” through the dotted lines. Besides that, they have to identify which item to colour in orange.

This time round, we had a discussion about the things on the worksheet and got the children to tell me what colours where they supposed to be. Then only I distributed the worksheet out to the children.

The children enjoy reading the item and colour it orange at the same time.

We shall move on to purple next week. Hopefully the children could explore further about colours. 

Homemade play dough (part III)

Date: 22^nd August 2013

Day: Thursday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Homemade Play Dough (part III)

As I observed yesterday that the children seems not satisfied with the duration given to play with the play dough. So today, I found some blue play dough that the school has for the children to continue with the interest with it.

The day before I was too busy guiding and handling those children’s sticky play dough and I didn’t actually participate together with them. Therefore, today I choose to play with them. I sat down at one of the group to observe and play with them. I find that through this way, the children will be more motivated into making model of things out from the play dough especially for those children who are shy or has no idea at all.

With my participation, I find that those children who were just staring at first, started to come out with ideas of things to make. I guess that the reason why most of the expert said that parents have to be with their children when they play. Not just to accompany them but to guide them and motivate them in every way.

All the children had a good time kneading, rolling, making models out of the play dough. We shall move on to our next colour – purple by next week.

Homemade play dough (part II)

Date: 21^st August 2013

Day: Wednesday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Homemade Play Dough (part II)

Is the play dough ready? It looks quite wet to me. Hopefully after putting in a little of flour, the dough will get dryer and the children could play with it. Then I distribute a small portion of the dough for each child. They were very excited and wanted to start with it.

I noticed that children love to roll the dough in their hand into a round ball shape. As this is handmade dough. The more the children rolled it in their hand, the temperature will actually make the dough moist and it started to get sticky and wet. Before I could stop the children from doing this, they had already got all the dough stick to their hand.

Children: I can’t play.

Children: Sticky.

Children: Wet.

Children: Teacher, why like this?

Jiun Jie: Sticky!

Yee Jie: I got an egg!

Zhen Yu: Hehe, look at mine!

The children started to complain and only a few of the children who roll their dough on the table could continue playing with it. What a pity.

We have to end the session earlier for clean up as the children got all those wet and sticky dough on their hands and tables. 

Homemade play dough

Date: 20^th August 2013

Day: Tuesday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Homemade Play Dough

I always wanted to do this with the children. Children are always excited when comes to play dough where they could make a lot of model out of it. Therefore, I got all the ingredients ready for making homemade play dough.

Basically the ingredients are as followed:

1)      flour

2)      salt

3)      cooking oil

4)      warm water

5)      food colouring (we used orange as it matches with our them colour)

I showed the children all the ingredients and after I have put in all the ingredients, I got the children to come out one by one to stir the mixture evenly. The first half children find it easy as the mixture was not mixed with so much of water. However after a while of mixing it, the children find it difficult to move the spoon in it. This requires a little of strength to do it. Yet, the children still enjoyed it very much.

Teng Hong: Very easy!

Zhen Yu: Ha ha ha...

Wen Xuan: I want to do!

Bo En: So sticky!

I knead the dough and then put it away into the fridge to keep it fresh for the children to play with it the next day. Due to insufficient of time, the children could only play with it the next day. 

Orange Colour

Date: 19^th August 2013

Day: Monday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Orange Colour

Today, we move on with another colour – Orange. Orange is a very distinctive colour that children could actually differentiate it from yellow or any other similar colour. Before we start, we observe everyone’s clothes whether there’s any orange colour. Most of the children could actually tell the actual colour while some still confuse with it.

Then we had a brainstorming session about things which is orange in colour.

Teacher: What are the things in orange that you know?

Li Heng: Orange.

Yee Jie: Cheese. (children started to argue that cheese is yellow in colour, not orange.)

Qi Jie: Pumpkin.

Xin Yi: Shirt.

Emerson: Carrot.

Song: Orange is the colour (Tune: Yankee Doodle)

Orange is the colour of

So many things we see.

Would you like to sing a little

Orange song with me?

Orange juice and orange cheese,

Orange carrots, if you please.

Orange pumpkins, orange leaves,

Let’s sing a song of Orange.

After that, I asked the children to look for a thing that is orange in colour to show it to their friends. They searched around the classrooms for things in orange. Most of them got a toy in their hand except for Teng Hong who found an orange colour pencil.

Tomorrow we shall try and see if we could do some orange homemade play dough for the children to play. 

Healthy Food, healthy us

Date: 16^th August 2013

Day: Friday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Healthy Food for Healthy Us

All the food or fruits that we had everyday are very colourful. I wanted to take this opportunity to share with the children about the healthy food that we had everyday.

The book divided our food into grains, fruits, vegetables, meat, seafood and dairy food. From all these colourful fresh food we see from the book telling us to eat healthily. The children were very excited to see such colourful fruits and vegetables and started to chat about it.

Some of them started to shout out the names of food they saw, some started to tell story of they had eaten such food or telling me that they saw it in supermarket. 

What's the weather be like today?

Date: 15^th August 2013

Day: Thursday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

What’s the weather like today?

There were some absentees today, so I decided not to start with the new colour today. Therefore, I choose a book to read with them. It’s about the weather.

In this book, it introduced the sunny, cloudy, windy, snowy, frosty and stormy weather. Besides that, it also mentioned about the fish in the sea, the mole underground, the white cockatoo, the bee in the rain and the duck in the water. It also says about when the rain and the sun meet, it forms rainbow.

All the sentences were very short and simple. So I got the children to read along. 

Fish Origami Art (part V)

Date: 14^th August 2013

Day: Wednesday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Fish Origami Art (part V)

It’s the final part of the origami fish art today. The blue sea that the children painted yesterday had dried. So I returned the origami fish that they did earlier. The children started to paste their fish on to the blue paper. Then they started to talk about their fish among themselves. Some portrait their fish as a shark and started to swim and eat up another person’s fish.

While some only did one fish, they wish to add on the fish onto their paper. So I sat down with those who wanted to add on by guiding them on the folding of the fish origami.

This shall be the end of blue colour. We shall move on to orange colour by tomorrow. 

Fish Origami Art (part IV)

Date: 13^th August 2013

Day: Tuesday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Fish Origami Art (part IV)

Today we shall paint the blue sea for our fish origami. I gave each child a piece of white paper and some blue paint (which I had mixed with some white paint to make the blue looks lighter colour).

The children were divided into 3 groups with about 4 person in a group. They would shared out the colours and try their best to cover the whole white paper with blue colour.

Some children started to paint pictures of sun, waves of water etc. But after telling them that the whole paper should be in blue, then only they started to cover the whole paper in blue. I guess the children needs some time to adjust themselves with me in English. 

Fish Origami Art (part III)

Date: 12^th August 2013

Day: Monday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Fish Origami Art (part III)

Since we were doing blue colour now and the children also see the sea as blue. So I found a song that we can sing with actions. The song is “A Sailor Went to Sea Sea Sea”.

The lyrics of the song are as followed:

A sailor went to sea sea sea,

To see what he could see see see,

But all that he could see see see,

Was the bottom of the deep blue sea sea sea

After that, we continued with the folding of the origami fish. I encouraged the children to recall back the steps and try their own to see if they could actually fold the fish on their own. Only a few children could somehow remember the steps while others need guidance. 

Fish Origami Art (part II)

Date: 7^th August 2013

Day: Wednesday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Origami Fish Art (part II)

Today we continued with the origami fish art. Yesterday, we all did in a big group. It’s pretty difficult to guide all of them.

So today, I choose to do it two by two. I called out 2 children at a time to sit with them and guide them to fold the fish origami. The outcome was much better and faster. After each of the children had done with their fish origami, they would decorate it either by drawing the eyes or scales or colour it.

I only managed to cover only 80% of the children while there were still about 2-3 of them needed to continue on Monday.

Note: In conjunction with the Hari Raya celebration, there will be 2 days of Public Holiday. Therefore, there will be no blog update for 8^th & 9^th August (Thursday & Friday).

Fish, fish, fish.....in the blue sea

Date: 6^th August 2013

Day: Tuesday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Fish, fish, fish….in the blue sea

Book Sharing : A Black Book of Colours by Menena Cottin

This book was brought by Jun Qian from Pomegranate class. I borrowed his book to share it with our Starfruit’s children. This book is in Mandarin. So I read it in Mandarin and mentioned about some words in English.

This interesting book is showing the children of how the blind people can read, feel and touch the book which talks about colours. The Braille letters found in the book gives the children the ability to experience the world in a different way.  It’s pretty difficult for the children to imagine the difficulties of the blindness. I asked them to close their eyes, some of them refused or couldn’t follow the instruction. I guess, they suddenly realized, shutting their eyes out of a sudden might be quite scary and uncomfortable.

By sharing this book, we also shared about the important of caring for our eyes.

Paper Origami: Fish

I gave each child a small piece of rectangle paper to start off with. Today, I wanted to teach them about paper origami of a fish. I wanted the children to practice folding the paper and later on paste them on the piece of blue paper that they are to colour the next day.

However, the children still need to practice on their fine motor skill on folding papers. The fish art was not done completely. We shall continue with it tomorrow with the colouring part. 

Blue, what is blue?

Date: 5^th August 2013

Day: Monday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Blue, what is blue?

Today, we started our theme colour on “blue”. Before we moved in to any activities, we had a brainstorming session about what the children know about blue.

I got the children to think for a while and then take turns to say anything that is blue in colour. These are their answers:

Yee Jie: shirt, paper, clock, fish, hat

Xin Yi: (she actually mentioned those other children had said)

Wei Yee: car, shoes

Teng Hong: dolphin

Wen Xuan: table, book, toy, snake, peacock

Qi Jie: chair, shark

Emerson: scissors, fan, jellyfish

LI Heng: water, tissue

Bo En: house

Jiun Jie: blueberries

The children said that the sea is blue. Therefore, I got them each a piece of paper and asked them to draw the underwater world. The children excitedly said they were drawing fish, dolphin, whale, shark, octopus, jellyfish and etc.

Colour Recognition Worksheet

Date: 2^nd August 2013

Day: Friday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Colour Recognition Worksheet

Verbally we revised the Little Red Riding Hood story and all the characters that appeared in the story- Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf, grandmother and woodcutter.

Then we did a worksheet on colour recognition. The children need to colour the mouse accordingly to the words written below the mouse.

Most of the children could actually independently do it on their own while only one child needed guidance. 

Little Red Riding Hood Story (part II)

Date: 1^st August 2013

Day: Thursday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Little Red Riding Hood Story (Part II)

Today, we continued a little further about the story on Little Red Riding Hood. I got this worksheet with pictures on it and 5 sentences for the children to fill in the blank. I did this worksheet with the whole class together.

On one of the worksheet there were 6 pictures for the children to choose for each sentence. I used a dice for the children to roll and pick the picture accordingly. Then they will fill in the blank accordingly as well.

The sentences for the children to fill in were as followed:

A One day, Little Red Riding Hood goes to ___________________’s.

B She’s got ____________ in her basket. YUMMY!

C ________________ stops her. ARRGGGHHHH!

D What a big ______________ it’s got!

E Little Red Riding Hood shouts “HELP” and _________ saves her!

The story went hilarious and funny. One of the groups rolled the dice and the story line became like this:

A One day, Little Red Riding Hood goes to _the wolf__’s.

B She’s got _some butter__ in her basket. YUMMY!

C _A monster__ stops her. ARRGGGHHHH!

D What a big __nose__ it’s got!

E Little Red Riding Hood shouts “HELP” and _a teddy bear_ saves her!

Those children who understand the story line had a good laugh while others just looked at me puzzled. I believe it’s not easy for children to imagine such hilarious scene. Anyhow, I think this is an interesting activity for the children to learn out of the box.

We are moving into blue colour next week. Therefore, if there’s any blue colour item, story book or even songs that the children would like to bring and share, they are most welcomed. 

Little Red Riding Hood Story (part I)

Date: 31^st July 2013

Day: Wednesday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Little Red Riding Hood Story (Part I)

I told the children that the salt art that they did yesterday would be given as a gift to the school. So the children would have to address it to the principal, Teacher Ng. Then I gave each of them a piece of small red paper to draw anything on it to be given as a card together with the salt art.

I suggested that the children could draw something colourful. Most of them drew rainbow while some drew shapes or other pictures in it. I shall put all the pictures together and gave it to Teacher Ng on Friday.

Video Clip – Little Red Riding Hood

Before I showed the children the video, we went through the character that might appear in the story. Most of the children could actually mention about Red Riding Hood, the wolf and grandmother. They didn’t know who rescued Red Riding Hood.

Therefore, I played the short and simple video for the children to watch and we had a simple discussion about the character and reminded them about talking to stranger.