Protein and Calcium

Date: 30^th June 2014

Day: Monday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Protein and Calcium

In the same category on the food pyramid, calcium also existed in some of the food that contains protein especially those dairy products such as milk, cheese, yogurt etc.

I explained the important of absorbing calcium from food for our bone growing.

Teacher: Look at your bones now. Are you shorter or taller if compared to when you are a baby?

Children: Taller.

Teacher: That’s mean that your bone is growing. The calcium makes your bone grow stronger and longer. So you can grow taller.

Children: I’m taller……I’m taller….

Teacher: Look at your teeth. Calcium makes your teeth grow stronger too. Why do you need strong teeth?

Pin Jee: I brush my teeth. Look. (He opened his mouth to show his teeth.)

Yi Xuan: Brush teeth.

Teacher: If you don’t have strong teeth, can you bite food that is hard?

Children: No.

Teacher: Chewing with our teeth sends signal down to our stomach telling the stomach that food is on the way. This helps with our digestion.

Coincidently, a parent from the other class treated everyone with pizza for tea break today. There’s a box of cheese pizza. It suits our theme today.

I cut the pizza into smaller pieces so that it’s sufficient for everyone to have a piece of it. The children said the cheese pizza is delicious!

Cooking the Eggs

Date: 27^th June 2014

Day: Friday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Cooking the Eggs

As I stepped into the class today, the children shouted in joy, “We are going to cook the egg, right?” “Yes,” I replied.

Off we all went down to the kitchen to set up all the things we needs. Basically, I had prepared about 10 eggs for this activity. Hopefully, we don’t need more than that.

The headmistress got me a steam pot where we could actually boil and steam the egg at the same time. Furthermore, the steam pot is transparent; the children could see the egg cooking in it.

I demonstrated how to crack open an egg before getting some of them to be my assistance throughout the activity. Some of the children were quite hash with the eggs while some were quite careful until they couldn’t break it open. Anyhow, the children enjoyed being a helper today.

Thong Xuan trying her best to crack open the egg without squashing it.

Edmund laughed at the eggs that he had cracked open.

Huey Xin was helping to beat the eggs.

We managed to cook a boiled egg, a bowl of steam egg, 2 fry eggs, and some scramble eggs. Finally, we got time to cook omelette with red, green and yellow capsicum. The children enjoyed eating up all the eggs that we cooked today. 

This is a fried egg.

Omelette with red, yellow and red capsicum.

Eggs

Date: 26^th June 2014

Day: Thursday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Eggs

Out of all those food that contains protein, egg is considered a food that could be cooked in different way.

Therefore, I take this opportunity to introduce egg to the children.

Teacher: Where do we get egg from?

Children: Chicken......bird……duck…….goose

Then, we looked at the parts of the egg. I introduced the egg shell, egg yolk and egg white. I got to know that the children could somehow tell me the different type of cooking of an egg in Mandarin but not in English.

As a result, we went through some names of cooking from egg such as boiled egg, scramble egg, fry egg, omelette, steam egg etc.

The children got so excited to know that there are so many kinds of way of cooking an egg. They got even more excited when I told them that we shall try to cook the eggs by using the methods mentioned above.  

Chart for food that contains Protein

Date: 25^th June 2014

Day: Wednesday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Chart for food that contains Protein

In order for the children to have a better understanding and also memory about food that contains protein, I prepared some picture of food that contains of protein for the children to colour it.

Before we start our activity today, we had a warm-up session as I asked the children to tell me if they still remember what kind of food that contains protein which we mentioned yesterday.

These were some of their answers:

Edmund: Fish

Jayden: Yogurt

Huey Xin: Egg

Zen Hong: Fish

Thong Xuan: Milk

Pin Jee: Chicken

Yi Fai: Meat

I have about 11 pictures of food in hand. Therefore, I distributed it out to each of them to colour the picture accordingly. At the same time, I prepare the chart for the children to put the picture in place. Once the children were done, they will tell me which category the picture belongs to. 

This is the chart that we did：

Introduction to Protein

Date: 24^th June 2014

Day: Tuesday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Introduction to Protein

According to the food pyramid, the third portion after fruits and vegetables is protein and calcium.

Therefore, today, I briefly gave some introduction about protein.

Protein can be found in our body as well as food. There are many kinds of food that contains protein. Protein helps to build muscles, cells and organs. I only listed down those foods that the children are familiar with. Here are the categories that I have listed for their understanding:

1)      Meat, fish and poultry. Example, beef, fish, chicken

2)      Legume. Example: dried beans, peas

3)      Nut. Example: peanut

4)      Dairy Product. Example: milk, yogurt, cheese

5)      Other miscellaneous food. Example: egg, tofu, other egg substitute food

Cooking the Pumpkin Soup

Date: 23^rd June 2014

Day: Monday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Cooking the Pumpkin Soup

The pumpkin that we had cut last week was still lying in the refrigerator. Therefore, today, after we had got all the ingredients ready, we try to cook the pumpkin soup. This is the first time I’m cooking pumpkin soup. Hopefully it will turn out to be tasty.

The ingredients that we got were as followed:

-          some cut pumpkins

-          a carrot

-          a big potato

-          a big onion

-          salt

After I had peeled the carrot and potato, I divided them into big chunks for the children to cut it smaller pieces. Two children will take turns to cut using a butter knife. At the same time, I cut the pumpkins and onions. 

Then I put all the pumpkin, carrot and potato into a blender before cooking it with the onion. It took us about half an hour before the soup was ready. Some of the children said it’s tasty while some didn’t like it. Anyhow, each of them got a small bowl to try it. 

Match the wording to the numbers

Date: 20^th June 2014

Day: Friday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Match the wording to the numbers

In order for the children to recognize the words with their numbers, I did a one to one activity today.

I got the wording from one to five with the number cards of 1-5.

Firstly, the children needed to put the number cards according to the wording that I put on the floor. If they made a mistake, I will just select the number cards out and the children needed to redo that.

Then, I changed the way of playing this by asking the children to put the wordings according to the numbers given.

This activity is to get the children to learn up the numbers and their wordings. I shall increase it to 10 in the future. Hopefully the children could enjoy such way of playing it. 

I know how to count

Date: 19^th June 2014

Day: Thursday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

I know how to count

Since we did the oral counting of the pumpkin seeds on Tuesday, today, I get the children to learn the wording of the numbers. Some of them could get it all correct while some needed more practice.

I prepared a worksheet with the wording of the numbers from one to six. I randomly put all these 6 words in the six boxes for each child. Then they needed to paste the pumpkin seeds on the worksheets accordingly.

Some of the children could do it individually while some of them needed some guidance. Unfortunately, the pumpkin seeds are insufficient for some of the children to complete the worksheet. We shall see what we could do with it later. 

Book Sharing & Language Activity – Arrange the sentences

Date: 18^th June 2014

Day: Tuesday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Book Sharing & Language Activity – Arrange the sentences

Book Sharing – Pumpkins by Ken Robbins

This is an interesting book about pumpkin from its growth to harvest. The children could have a better understanding and exposed to how a pumpkin plants look like.

This interesting book also arouse their interest to plant the seeds at home as some of them said they would put the seeds I gave them yesterday into the soil.   

Language Activity - Worksheet

I prepared a worksheet for the children to do today. On the worksheet, there’s a picture of a pumpkin. At the same time, I had also prepared some jumbled words for the children to re-arrange it.

Before that, I asked the children to make a sentence about the picture of the pumpkin. After some guidance and hints, this is the sentence that the children manage to make – This is a pumpkin. Therefore, I added on another sentence for them – It is sweet.

After the children had coloured the pumpkin, they started to collect the jumble words that I had placed in 7 different bowls. By recognizing the words, they needed to re-arrange the sentences accordingly. Most of them could do it individually. 

Count the Pumpkin Seeds

Date: 17^th June 2014

Day: Tuesday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Count the Pumpkin Seeds

After the children had dug out all the seeds from the pumpkin, I washed the seeds clean and dried them under the sun.

Today, we shall count and see how many pumpkin seeds are there. I get the children to predict the number. Some of them gave me a very big number such as a thousand, a million. However, I asked them to give a more reasonable one.

So, they started giving numbers such as 24, 25, 21, 26, 29 etc. So I also gave my prediction as 50. The children were curious of my guess but they still insisted with their own guesses.

In order to know the numbers of seeds in a pumpkin, I had randomly divided the pumpkin seeds into 4 bowls. At the same time, I also divided the children into 4 small groups about 3-4 person in each group with a bowl of pumpkin seeds. I told the children to put 5 seeds in a group. Most of them could follow and do accordingly while some needed some guidance.

After the children had arranged the pumpkin seeds neatly on the table, we started to count how many groups are there in 5. Surprisingly, there were about 49 groups with some loose pumpkin seeds. I did the sum for the children and we got about 245.

The children were amazed with the numbers of seeds in the pumpkin. We shall do some activity with the pumpkin seeds.

Today, I gave 3 pumpkin seeds to each of the children for them to bring home as some of them wanted to plant it. 

Dig the Pumpkin

Date: 16^th June 2014

Day: Monday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Dig the Pumpkin

Today, I brought in the pumpkin into the class again. The children asked what are we going to do with the pumpkin.

I refer back to the book that I had shared with the children – “How many seeds in a pumpkin?” before we start digging.

I laid down some newspaper on the floor. I wanted to cut the pumpkin top off. However, after a while, I find it pretty difficult.

Teacher: What shall I do now, children?

Pin Jee: Cut like this. (He showed me the action by poking the knife. So I did. It didn’t work. He grinned.)

Teacher: So, what should I do?

Pin Jee: Like cut durian. Your knife no good.

Teacher: The knife I used cannot cut?

Edmund. Yes, cannot cut.

Therefore, I went and changed another knife which is much shorter and smaller. This time, I changed the way of cutting the pumpkin. Instead of cutting the top part off, I cut the pumpkin into half. Finally, the pumpkin had been cut open. The children cheered. Since we have 2 halves pumpkin each, I got the children to sit in two groups with spoon and a bowl each.

Without hesitate, they started to dig the pumpkin seeds out onto their bowl.