Whale Origami

Date: 28^th January 2014

Day: Tuesday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Whale Origami

I prepared some blue colour paper for the children to do the whale origami. I cut the A4 paper into half.

Teacher: What shape is this? (showing them the half A4 paper)

Children: Rectangle.

Teacher: Good. But I need a square. How could I get a square?

Some of the children tried to fold the paper into half again. Some folded further half of the half. However, none of them got a square. It’s amazing that the children wanted to try again and again even though they failed to do so. It’s a good attitude. I gave them a hint by folding a triangle instead.

Children: Teacher, triangle. Not square.

Teacher: I shall cut this extra part away and shall see if we could get a square.

Teacher: (after I had cut it and only holding a triangle) What shape is this?

Children: Triangle.

Teacher: Not square. (They shook their head. Then I unfold the triangle)

Children: Oh, a square. (They were happy to see the square finally)

Then we started by folding the whale origami. To my surprise, most of them understand and tried to fold according to instruction. Therefore, I just took us a while to complete it. Then I pasted the whale origami on a piece of white paper and get the children to tell me what to add in the picture. After that the children had their own pictures coloured. 

Yi Xuan's whale picture.

Jayden's whale picture.

Whale Origami

Date: 28^th January 2014

Day: Tuesday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Whale Origami

I prepared some blue colour paper for the children to do the whale origami. I cut the A4 paper into half.

Teacher: What shape is this? (showing them the half A4 paper)

Children: Rectangle.

Teacher: Good. But I need a square. How could I get a square?

Some of the children tried to fold the paper into half again. Some folded further half of the half. However, none of them got a square. It’s amazing that the children wanted to try again and again even though they failed to do so. It’s a good attitude. I gave them a hint by folding a triangle instead.

Children: Teacher, triangle. Not square.

Teacher: I shall cut this extra part away and shall see if we could get a square.

Teacher: (after I had cut it and only holding a triangle) What shape is this?

Children: Triangle.

Teacher: Not square. (They shook their head. Then I unfold the triangle)

Children: Oh, a square. (They were happy to see the square finally)

Then we started by folding the whale origami. To my surprise, most of them understand and tried to fold according to instruction. Therefore, I just took us a while to complete it. Then I pasted the whale origami on a piece of white paper and get the children to tell me what to add in the picture. After that the children had their own pictures coloured. 

Vocabulary Revision

Date: 27^th January 2014

Day: Monday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Vocabulary Revision

This morning, the children had their experience of laying their hand in cookies making. They rolled the dough the teacher gave them and they used the cookie cutter to cut out the shape they like.

It was a tiring and joyful day as well for the children. As a result, today, we were not doing much. I only went through the vocabulary with the children individually while the rest were doing reading on their own. 

Video Sharing : The Humpback Whale

Date: 24^th January 2014

Day: Friday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Video Sharing : The Humpback Whale

We went through the vocabulary of the six sea creatures that we did for last week. At the same time, I also went through the other six sea creatures name with the children.

The new six sea creatures name that I introduced today is as followed:

turtle	jellyfish	whale
octopus	prawn	crab

I let the children do matching of the names to the pictures for about 20 minutes before we went down to watch a video about “The Humpback Whale”. The children might not be able to understand how big a whale is, therefore, I played the video to show them how a whale looks like in the underwater.

Art and Craft : Hand Printing

Date: 23^rd January 2014

Day: Thursday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Art and Craft: Hand printing

Today, we do an art about the scales of the fish. I drew a big picture of a fish for each of the children. They have to use either any colour pencil or crayons to draw the outline of the fish. Then later on, they will use their hand to do the fish’s scale printing.

These are some of the pictures done by the children:

Pin Jee: Painting his back of his hand with red. 

Thong Xuan painting yellow for her fish scales. 

Yee Hin trying his best!

The Snail and the Whale

Date: 22^nd January 2014

Day: Wednesday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Story Telling : The Snail and the Whale

I couldn’t find the English version of the book. Therefore I read the story in Mandarin. But in between, I do describe the story in some simple English for the children to learn some phrases or description.

The story is about a snail felt bored staying on the rock and wish to have an adventure out to the sea. It wrote a message on the rock asking for a free ride. A blue whale came to reply him. The whale took the snail at its’tail tip and set off for an adventure through the sea, to land where there’s beach and volcano, under the sea to look at sea creatures etc. Unfortunately, the sound of the motorboats scared the whale and it swam in to a cove. It was low tide then. As the whale was too big to swim out to sea by itself, the snail had an idea. He went to a school near to the cove and asked for help by writing a message : “Help the Whale”. The school children went off to look for the fire engine to help out the stranded whale. Finally, both the snail and the whale managed to be free from the situation and swim back into the sea.

The children finds the story very interesting especially when they see the snail still could grab hold firmly on the tip of the tail of the whale.

Then I asked the children if there’s any part of the story that attracted them.

Edmund: Why the snail can go into the water?

Pin Jee: All.

Thong Xuan: The whale.

My sharing to the children is that although we might be small sometimes but as long as we have the courage, we could solve a problem by ourselves.

Trying out the Fishing Game (Part II)

Date: 21^st January 2014

Day: Tuesday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Trying out the Fishing Game (Part II)

We revised once before I called one by one to try it out. Some of the children started to recognize some of the words. They could call out the name accordingly.

Therefore, I got them to do it one by one. Later one, I gave all the six fish shape cards for them to play among themselves. 

Jayden putting the name of sea creatures. 

Yi Xuan: Hmm, I know this!

Ye Wern got it correct!

Let's play together

Trying out the Fishing Game

Date: 20^th January 2014

Day: Monday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Trying out the Fishing Game

The fish pond and the fishing line are not ready. But I have laminated the words on the shape of a fish. Besides that I have pasted the pictures on a piece of manila card.

We went through the vocabulary together and one round of putting the words together with the pictures.

Then I got the children to recognize the words and put it accordingly. However, we can only work on 6 words first as the children need some time to recognize them. But I do believe the children could try the other half the next day.

Preparing for Fishing Game

Date: 15^th – 16^th January 2014

Day: Wednesday - Thursday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Book Sharing, Preparing for Fishing Game

Ayden brought a book about sea creatures, we went through the book and the children have some idea about the sea creatures.

In order to get ready for the fishing game, I distributed some pictures of the sea creatures for the children to colour. Then I have to cut it out and pasted it on a manila card for the children to do vocabulary recognition & fishing game at the same time.

The vocabulary words that I introduced are as followed:

•        Stingray
•       Octopus
•       Whale
•       Dolphin
•       Jellyfish
•       Sea anemone
•       Shark
•       Prawn
•       Crab
•       Seahorse
•       Starfish
•       Turtle

Facts about Whales

Date: 13^th January 2014

Day: Monday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Facts about whales

We had a revision on parts of the fish and also the facts about fish.

Whales are amazing creatures that the children are interested with. Therefore, we went through some facts about whales:

Facts about whales:

•      Whales are mammals.
•      Whales breathe underwater using lungs. Therefore, they need to come up to the surface to breathe all the time. 
•      Whales give birth to one calf at a time, within 1-3 years.
•      Whales are warm-blooded animals.
•      There are 2 main types of whales, Toothed and Baleen.

I threw a question to them “Why can’t a whale sleep for too long underwater?” The children could actually find out or having discussion with parents about this and share with the class on Wednesday. 

Underwater World

Date: 6^th – 10^th January 2014

Day: Monday - Friday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Underwater World

Welcome back for year 2014. We have a quite some new children this year for 5 years old.

For the first topic of our English thematic class, I chose “underwater world” for the children to begin with. Hopefully the children could enjoy the lesson.

We started off with a brainstorming session about things the children know about a fish.

Then we went through the sea creatures such as octopus, prawn, lobster, shark, whales, dolphin, crab etc.

We also went through the parts of the fish. I get the children to paste the vocabulary with the parts as one of the activities.

Book sharing – Bubble bubble

With this interesting and noisy book, the children followed the little fish to search for the sea creature which blow bubbles. Then we did a palm printing art work for this. 

We also went through the facts about a fish

The facts about a fish are as followed:

•       Fish can swim.
•       Fish lives in the water. 
•       Fish breathe underwater using gills and not lungs.
•       Fish have scales and fins. (no hair or fur) 
•       Fish lay MANY eggs.
•       Fish is cold-blooded.

After that, we had a drawing session on fish. By using simple shapes, I guided the children to draw a fish and they decorated their pictures later on.