What is your favourite food? What do you like to eat? (Part II)

Date: 23^rd May 2014

Day: Friday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

What is your favourite food? What do you like to eat? (Part II)

Today, the children took their turns to share about the food that they had pasted on their paper plate yesterday.

Then I had also cut out some food from the different level shown on the food pyramid from the leaflet as well. Then I get the children to tell me what I have in hand and where they could find it on the food pyramid. This is to introduce a balance diet to the children. 

What is your favourite food? What do you like to eat?

Date: 22^nd May 2014

Day: Thursday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

What is your favourite food? What do you like to eat?

The children had collected quite a lot of leaflet from the supermarket and they wanted to know when they could do something with it. Therefore, today, I distributed each a paper plate. Then I told the children to look for the food that they like to eat from the leaflet to be cut out and pasted it on the paper plate.

Tomorrow we shall look into the food that the children had cut out and discuss about it. 

Book Sharing – Strega Nona

Date: 21^st May 2014

Day: Wednesday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Book Sharing – Strega Nona

We revised the ingredients that we used for our crepe recipe yesterday. Most of the children could remember all the ingredients except for flour.

I shared an old tale with the children – Strega Nona. I didn’t realize that story took us about half an hour to complete it.

This interesting story is about Strega Nona who was a witch. Though the people in the town always whisper behind her, yet they always look for her when they had trouble such as headache, looking for a husband or a wart.

Strega Nona is getting old and she needed a helper at home. After putting up the notice at the town square, Big Anthony came to see her. Big Anthony needed to keep the house clean, fed and milk the goat, weed the vegetables etc while Strega Nona will provide food and place to stay for him. However, there’s a magic pasta pot that Big Anthony was advised not to touch. One day, Big Anthony saw what Strega Nona did with the pasta pot, he was amazed and wanted to try it out on his own. Unfortunately, he didn’t watch the whole process of what Strega Nona was doing.

Once when Strega Nona was out of town, Big Anthony took out the pasta pot and sang as what Strega Nona did. The magic pot started to cook pasta and it was enough for the whole town to eat. Unfortunately, Big Anthony couldn’t stop it from cooking and it flooded the town with pasta. When Strega Nona came, she knew what’s going on and stopped it. Big Anthony was being punished to finish up all the pasta that he had cooked so that Strega Nona has a bed to sleep for the night. 

Cooking Crepe

Date: 20^th May 2014

Day: Tuesday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Cooking Crepe

After searching about the facts about crepe, only I knew that my mom had quite often cooked this during my childhood as breakfast or tea break. Now, since the children are learning about flour, I believe that this would be an easy and nice food for tea time.

I just estimated the amount of ingredients to be used. However, the ingredients are as followed:

- flour, sugar, egg, butter and water

First, we put the flour into a bowl. Then we add in the eggs, butter and sugar. Each of them took turns to put in some water and stir the batter together with a wooden ladle. Once the batter is well-mixed, I make sure that the batter is diluted enough for us to start with it.

After the frying pan had been heated up, I brush it with some butter before placing a small scoop of batter onto the frying pan. I turned the batter over once it turned a little brown and cooked for another minute before putting it on the plate.

Each child took turns to scoop the batter to be placed onto the frying pan. Some of them were quite excited while some of them were quite anxious about getting too close to the hot frying pan.

Then everyone enjoyed the delicious crepe that they mix and cook.  

Learning more about Flour

Date: 19^th May 2014

Day: Monday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Learning more about Flour

The children somehow knew that flour can make into many kinds of food such as cake, bread, cookies etc. However, they didn’t know the process of wheat to flour. Then I asked if they know anything about the rice that we eat. They have no idea as well.

When I was drawing a picture of a paddy on the board, Yee Hin started to share about his trip to Sekinchan (there are paddy field there).

Then I showed the children of a short video about how the farmer plant the paddy and harvest it.

Video Sharing - How rice is made

We might cook a pancake with using flour and some other simple ingredients if the time is allowed tomorrow.

Pasta Cooking

Date: 16^th May 2014

Day: Friday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Pasta Cooking

From the food pyramid, the children know that pasta has carbohydrates. Therefore, today I prepared a few varieties of pasta for the children to cook. Before we went to the kitchen to start our activity today, I taught them to learn to read the clock as the pasta needed about 10-13 minutes to cook.

Off we went to the kitchen and the children sat down on the long table. I had one portable stove with a pot on it. While waiting for the water to boil, I showed the children the pasta that we were going to cook today. After the water had boiled, I placed all the pasta into the pot and the children will need to help to observe the clock. It was 4:25pm at that point of time. I told the children when the clock reached 4:35pm then we can take the pasta up. The children got excited and watched the clock closely.

On the other hand, we also needed to cook the pasta sauce. Before that, I placed the tin of pasta sauce and the tin opener in front of them. The children tried to open it. Unfortunately, they couldn’t but the children tried to give suggestions of how to open it. Finally Yi Xuan said we need to turn it. Therefore, I showed the children how to turn the handle to open it. Then I passed the tin with the tin opener around for the children to try it out.

Ayden was trying to open the tin with the tin opener.

When the pasta was well cooked, I gave each child some mixture of all the varieties of pasta we have on their paper plate. They have to decorate their paper plate with any kinds of design before asking for the sauce to eat it.

All the children enjoyed it very much! They even asked for second round.

Movie – Cloudy with a Chance of a Meatball 2 (Part II)

Date: 15^th May 2014

Day: Thursday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Movie – Cloudy with a Chance of a Meatball 2 (Part II)

Today, we continued with the movie that the children watched half way.

Some parts of the movie were very funny and excited. From the children’s expression, you could see that they were following the excitement of the movie.

Before calling it a day, I get the children to name me any of the food that they remember seeing in the movie. 

Movie – Cloudy with a Chance of a Meatball 2

Date: 14^th May 2014

Day: Wednesday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Movie – Cloudy with a Chance of a Meatball 2

I was on emergency leave on 12^th May (Monday), the teacher who relief my class played a movie for the children to watch. The movie is Cloudy with a Chance of a Meatball 2.

 The children didn’t finish the movie on that day.

13^th May (Tuesday) was Wesak Day holiday, as a result, there’s no blog update for Tuesday.

When I came back on Wednesday, the teacher who relief my class told me that the children couldn’t understand the movie. She advised me that I should give some briefing and explanation throughout the movie for them to understand more.

Therefore, I played the movie from the beginning again. Before that, I did give some brief introduction about the movie that the children were about to watch. Along the movie, I do give some explanation so that the children could follow the storyline.

However, we only managed to complete half of the movie and we needed to continue with it tomorrow.

Role Play – Cooking and Eating

Date: 9^th May 2014

Day: Friday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Role Play – Cooking and Eating

The children had been exposed to quite some names of the food that they could see around them. So today, I would like to see if they could make use of the names of food and apply it in the role play session.

I divided the group into 2 groups with about 5-6 children in each group. The children had to decide who would be the chef/cook and others would be customers. Each group was given a box of toys on cooking tools and food. Then they started to play with it.

Group 1: Thong Xuan, Yi Xuan, Ye Wern, Jayden, Huey Xin

Group 2: Edmund, Yi Fai, Kai Heng, Zen Hong, Yee Hin, Ayden

I observed the 2 groups of children while they were playing.

Those children in group 1 could immediately started their role play as cook and customers. Though there were some argument and laughter, yet, they enjoyed it.

While looking at group 2, most of them started to play with the toys individually. I didn’t want to interrupt too much; therefore, I just gave some suggestion of what they could do with the food toys and tools and suggested some role for them to be. Fortunately, after a while, they could start to interact with each other to play as a group. 

Zen Hong: Let me cook!

"Yummy, yummy!" Yee Hin & Edmund eating the "food" that Zen Hong cooked. 

Huey Xin: I cook.

Thong Xuan eating the food prepared by Huey Xin. Yi Xuan looked on. 

Carbohydrates

Date: 8^th May 2014

Day: Thursday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates are source of energy for our body. With some simple example and explanation, the children could some how understand that.

Carbohydrates are mainly divided into simple carbohydrates and complex carbohydrates. It took me a while to explain this to the children.

Then I got the children to stand up as a group to pretend that they were a lollipop. I wanted to explain the difference between simple carbohydrates and complex carbohydrates. 

Then I pretended to be a person who ate them. As simple carbohydrates are quickly dissolve in the stomach, therefore, it could not make a person feel full.

Then when the children stands together to pretend as a bread (complex carbohydrates), I make the children leave the group one by one. I believe from this view, they could understand that the bread was being dissolve slowly and it makes a person feel much fuller and not getting hungry so quickly.

I managed to let the children to watch the video of making of the sausages today: -

Video Sharing - The production of hot dogs

Sausages are process food

Date: 7^th May 2014

Day: Wednesday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Sausages are process food

Sausages are processed food. However, it might not be easy for children to understand what processed food is. Therefore, I share another book “Beans to Chocolate” today for the children to have a better idea.

Book Sharing – Beans to Chocolate by Inez Synder. This simple book is about the process of making chocolate from cacao beans.

I wanted to share a video about the making of sausages for the children to watch. However, another class was using the space today. Therefore, we postponed this activity till tomorrow.

I went through a little about carbohydrates today. Hopefully the children could have a better idea about it when we started doing some activities about carbohydrates. 

Book Sharing – Sausages

Date: 6^th May 2014

Day: Tuesday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Book Sharing – Sausages

I wanted to share some books about food with the children before we go in deeper into any facts about food around them. Therefore, I chose this big size book to share with them today.

Sausages by Jessica Souhami

This is a story about a poor woodcutter, named John, who found an elf on a tree one day. The elf was stuck on a tree. After helping the elf, it gave John three wishes. John was delighted with such events and got home to tell his wife, Martha. Both of them sat down and think hard of what to wish until John got hungry and wish for some sausages.

When all of the sudden sausages came down from the sky, Martha got angry and made another wish. She wished that all the sausages would stick on John’s nose. The sausage did. No matter how Martha tried to pull the sausages away from John’s nose, it’s not successful. As a result, Martha has to use the last wish to get the sausages away from John’s nose.

Even though they had used up their three wishes with all the sausages and not other valuables things, yet, they had a wonderful dinner.

The children shared about things they had seen together with sausages.

Besides that, we shall be doing some activities related to shopping malls leaflets which there will be pictures of food on it. Children were advised to collect it so that we could start doing this next week. 

Book Sharing – How do you feed a Hungry Giant?

Date: 5^th May 2014

Day: Monday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Book Sharing – How do you feed a Hungry Giant?

We went through all the vocabularies of kitchen and dining room with the children. I also found some kitchen & dining toys in the classrooms. We went through the toys as well.

Since I mentioned about giant cake on last Friday, today I would like to read them an interesting story about “How do you feed a Hungry Giant?” by Caitlin Friedman. 

This story is a munch-and-sip pop-up book. This story is about a boy called Oscar who found a giant in his backyard one day. He noticed that the giant is hungry and wanted food. Therefore, he went in to the kitchen to look for all kinds of food he could find in the refrigerator and the pantry to feed the giant. However, the giant is so big that those foods are too little for him. When his mother found out that there’s a giant in the backyard, she invited him for dinner. Oscar helped his mother to prepare those foods for the giant. Everything has to be in extra large size. Finally, the giant had a wonderful feast. 

Tour to the Kitchen & Be Familiar with the Food Pyramid

Date: 2^nd May 2014

Day: Friday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Tour to the Kitchen & Be Familiar with the Food Pyramid

As I promised the children on Wednesday that we shall take a short tour to the school kitchen. While in the kitchen, I guided the children through and they tried their best to name as many things as they could see such as the refrigerator, stove, sink, cupboard, spoon, plate, fork, knife etc.

Then we got back to the class, I arranged some coloured blocks on the floor to form a skeleton frame similar to the food pyramid. As I wish the children could remember which food should go at which level of the food pyramid, we had an activity on this.

At the first round, the children could choose any food they would like to be and jumped until the level that it should be according to the food pyramid. To my surprise, the children choose a variety of food to play with.

Before they jump, they would say, “Orange.” “Fish.” “Sugar.”

Jayden: Banana

Thong Xuan: Sugar

Yi Xuan: Chicken

At the second round, I named the food for each child and they need to jump accordingly.

Some of the children could started to remember the level of the food should be while some still needed to refer to the food pyramid every time. 

Kitchen & Dining Room

Date: 30^th April 2014

Day: Wednesday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Kitchen & Dining Room

I had introduced “kitchen” on our first day of the thematic class. The children went through all the words about “kitchen”.

Then I introduced “dining room”. In the dining room, the children will get to learn words such as spoon, fork, plate, saucer, cups etc. If it’s possible, we shall take a tour to the kitchen in the school on Friday and get the children to tell me the things they can see there.

Book Sharing – The Giant Cake

When I mentioned about “giant”, immediately the children related it to a huge man or beast. However, when I explained that “giant” means big, they seems a little puzzle with it. Hopefully through the story, the children could understand the concept of “giant”.

This short story is about a baker who loves to bake but he never invited the children to taste his cake. One day a fairy came by and flew off his cake with her magic wand. The cake turned bigger and bigger as it flew into the air. Suddenly, it burst and down came delicious small cake for everyone to taste it including the baker himself.

From that day onwards, the baker always invites the children to taste his cake. 

Art and Craft – Draw My Favourite Food

I distributed each child a paper with the title “My Favourite Food”. Some of them didn’t know how to draw. Coincidently I have some vegetables and fruits flashcards with me, the children borrowed it to see which item to draw. Surprisingly, most of them had “lotus root” in their drawing. I guess the children had tasted this at home quite often.