Whales can't sleep?

Date: 29th January 2015
Day: Thursday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Beautiful Ocean
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Whales can't sleep?

Ean Jin brought a shark toy to share with her fellow classmates. The children could see the features and parts of the shark clearly.

By referring to the whale reference book, there mentioned about baleen whales and toothed whales. Besides, that it introduces that Humpback whale sings.

An interesting part pop up, it's about why can't whale fall into deep sleep although whales also needed about 8 hours of sleep per day. Fortunately, we did the float and sink experiment. The children somehow have some idea about what float and sink is. At this point, when I explained that whales needed to breathe from time to time, the children somehow understand the point that if the whale had fallen into a deep sleep, they might sink to the deep part of the sea and drown.

I promised the children that I shall show them a video about Humpback whale that sings and a story about it.

Then by looking at their whale origami yesterday, I asked the children if they could make some simple sentences with it.

Teacher: This is a whale.
Jie Min: The whale open the mouth to eat fish.
Alice. The whale open the mouth....
Teacher: To breathe? (Alice nodded)
Germaine: The whale has fins.
Ean Jin: The whale is a mammal.
Yu Han: The whale has no teeth.

I pasted the whale origami on the A4 paper for each of them and get them to decorate or added any other details onto the picture.

Book Sharing & whale origami

Date: 28th January 2015
Day: Wednesday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Beautiful Ocean
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Book Sharing & whale origami

Yu Han brought a finger puppet - shark to show her classmates. The children could see the sharp teeth on the finger puppet as well as the vertical tail of a shark.

After that, I picked a book to share with the children.

Book Sharing - The Shark in the Dark by Peter Bentley
This is a story about a shark who lives in the deep, dark sea. The shark is mean and greedy. It wanted to eat those fishes for tea snack. All the fish doesn't want to be food for the shark, therefore, they all went and hide. There, they met a squid who suggested a plan to teach the shark a lesson. All the fishes work together and form a shape of a whale and wanted to eat the shark. The greedy shark flee away quickly into the deep dark sea. 

Lastly, we did an origami - whale. It's a very simple origami that most of the children could follow. Some of them who could understand the step, helped me to teach others.

We shall continue with the whale origami art tomorrow as I wish to add in some language activity there.

Learn about Whales

Date: 27th January 2015
Day: Tuesday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Beautiful Ocean
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Learn about Whales

Before going into the subtopic - whales, today, I shared a big book with the children. It's about dolphin. From the big pictures, the children could see the dolphin clearly.

Then, we went through the difference between a shark and a dolphin so that the children could have a better concept of it.

After that, I shared some information about whales. Basically, these are what I shared:

- Whales are mammals, they give birth to babies
- Whales feed their babies with milk
- Whales can't stay long in the water, they need to come up to the surface to breathe
- There are 2 types of whales - 1) toothed whales such as killer whales, sperm whales etc
                                                    -usually eat fish and squid or hunt for seal and sea lions
                                                2) baleen whales such as blue whales, humpback whales
                                                    - eat tiny sea creatures

I prepared a free hand drawing of a dolphin for each child. They could colour it and paste it at home.

Art and Craft: Shark (Part II)

Date: 26th January 2015
Day: Monday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Beautiful Ocean
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Art and Craft: Shark (Part II)

We continued with the shark art that the children had done half way from last Friday. Basically, today, the children needed to fit the 3 fins onto the face of the shark. From the conversation among the kids, they started to use the word "fin". I'm glad that the art work somehow make them used the words that we learned.

I drew the size of the mouth and the shark's eyes for the children to cut once they have done fixing the fins to their shark's face. Once they have pasted the mouth (using black paper), then, they could start to paste the sharp teeth (smaller triangle that they have cut last Friday) onto the mouth. Most of them could arrange the teeth after I have explained to them. They could visualize the result of it while some needed guidance.

The eyeballs would be a little difficult for the children to cut as it was a smaller circle, therefore, I pre-cut them before the class. The children pasted the eyes with the eyeballs and that's done!

Once their art work had dried, they started to play with their shark by letting it swim around and biting other things. How fun that is!

Art and Craft : Shark

Date: 23rd January 2015
Day: Friday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Beautiful Ocean
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Art and Craft : Shark

Today, we shall do an art on shark. The children said the shark got sharp teeth. Therefore, I wanted to get the children to do an art on the shark's face from the front. I drew some shapes such as big circle shape, some big triangles and small triangles on the drawing paper for the children to cut it out.

Then, once the children had cut out the big round shape, I get them to come and colour it with blue water paint one by one. While waiting for the paint to get dry, the children colour the rest of the big triangle as the shark's fin with colours of their choices. We leave the small triangles white as the shark's teeth.

Only a few of them manage to paste the fins onto the round shape. The rest of the children would need to wait till Monday to continue with it.

Learn More about Dolphins

Date: 22nd January 2015
Day: Thursday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Beautiful Ocean
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Learn More about Dolphins

In the book - Big, Bigger, Biggest Shark did mention about the difference between a shark and a dolphin. Therefore, today, we study some facts about dolphin and compare it with shark.

From the book, it teaches us how to differentiate when a shark or a dolphin swims up to the surface. The difference is at their tail. Sharks have vertical tails while dolphins have horizontal tails. After explaining that, when the children looked back at the picture in the book, they could tell which is a shark and which is a dolphin by just observing the tails.

Then, we watched a video that tells us the facts about dolphin: Dolphin Facts and fun Discovery

From this video, we managed to capture some facts about dolphin:-
- dolphins are mammals
- dolphins can't stay in water for too long, if not it will drown
- dolphins breathe through blow holes at the back of their head
- dolphins swim in groups

Experiment - Float or Sink

Date: 21st January 2015
Day: Wednesday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Beautiful Ocean
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Experiment - Float or Sink

I brought in a transparent plastic square container together with some items such as a ping pong ball, a badge and paper clip. None of the children brought anything from home, therefore, they might have to pick something from the classroom for the experiment today.

I poured in some water into the plastic square container and placed it on a table. All the children just observed at first to understand the concept of float or sink. Then it's their turn to try out with other items they could find.

Every time, when a child picked an item, they needed to predict if it will float or sink. After a few rounds, the children somehow understand and could make quite accurate prediction about a particular items from their observation.

Basically, the children picked items such as toy truck, a wooden block, a wooden train track, a plastic block, a plastic bowl, a water bottle, toys etc.

Ming Yen putting in a helicopter where the children predicted that it will float. 

Float or Sink

Date: 20th January 2015
Day: Tuesday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Beautiful Ocean
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Float or Sink

Today, I shared a short story on "sharks" and we went through some facts in the - 100 facts about Ocean. I guess some of the children will still have no much concept about the world around them. Hopefully by introducing some facts to them, they could somehow relate it in the future.

Then, I wanted to introduce - float and sink. As these 2 words appeared quite often during our reading or story sharing. Therefore, I wanted the children to understand the idea. As a result, I suggested that each child to bring 2 items that they think it will either float or sink to school tomorrow so that we could do an experiment with them.

We revised the facts about sharks before we called it a day.

As Jie Min was absent last Friday, I guided her to do the fish scales art before I leave the class.

Note: I was on medical leave again yesterday, therefore, there's no blog update for 19th January 2015.

Art and Craft: Fish Scales

Date: 16th January 2015
Day: Friday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Beautiful Ocean
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Art and Craft: Fish Scales

The children had learned the parts of the fish. I wish to carry out an art and craft on fish scales. Therefore, I printed out a picture of a fish. I brought in some colours, there's red, blue and yellow.

The children could choose any one of the colours mentioned above. Then, once they have chosen the colours, they have to dip the back of their fist into the colours and start to print it onto their fish body. The curve of the back of their fist actually will look quite like the scales of the fish.

Then once their water colour part is dried, they could start to colour their fish in any colour that they like.

Ean Jing printing her fish in blue. 

Kheng Yee printing his fish in red.

Kian Han printing his fish in yellow.

These were some of the work done by the children. Very pretty work!

Yu Han

Yi Ming

Rui Xin

Shyi Yee

Shang Feng

Alice

Angela

Germaine

Jun Yi

Hui Ting

More on Sharks

Date: 15th January 2015

Day: Thursday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Beautiful Ocean

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

More on Sharks

Today, we continue with the book – Big, Bigger, Biggest Shark.

We learned that some of the sharks like the coldest water at the Atlantic area while some prefer warm tropical water. Some sharks like the Portugeese sharks like to be at the very deep part of the ocean while a Lemon Sharks like to be a the shallow part of the sea. Mako shark swims very fast while nurse shark swims very slowly.

The book brings out comparison of different species of sharks. With this opportunity, we went through some opposites that mentioned in the book: -

-         big x small

-         fast x slow

-         deep x shallow

-         cold x warm

Book Sharing – Big Al by Yoshi & Andrew Clements

This story is about Big Al who is a big, fierce looking fish yet friendly. However, he has no friend due to his size and look. No matter how he tried by disguising himself or even trying to follow the pace of the group, up to no avail in making friends. Until one day, a school of fish was caught in a net, Big Al rescued them. From that day onwards, Big Al managed to make friends. 

Video Watching and discussion

Date: 14th January 2015
Day: Wednesday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Beautiful Ocean
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Video Watching and discussion

It's my first time using a portable projector. Therefore, it took me a while to fix and on the video for the children to see. Phew! Finally I managed to get the show on after 15 minutes of the help of another teacher.

Now, I wanted to show 2 videos to the children. The first video is about the amazing underwater world of Asia. In this video, the children get to see some of the sea creatures that we mentioned in our previous lessons such as the shark, octopus, jellyfish, stingray etc. The video also comes with labels for each sea creatures so that we know the name of it.

The second video is about whale shark. The children kept telling me that sharks eat people. Therefore I wanted to show them that the biggest fish - the whale shark, won't bite.

Video #1 :  Amazing Underwater World of Asia

Video # 2: Swimming with whale sharks

Big, Bigger, Biggest Shark

Date: 13th January 2015
Day: Tuesday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Beautiful Ocean
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Big, Bigger, Biggest Shark

We went through a book about ocean some time ago and I told the children that we shall start explore the ocean by starting with the big size sea creatures in the sea such as shark, whale etc. Therefore, I share a book about shark today.

This is a information book about the different size of the shark. After reading a few pages, we could summarized the information as followed:

- The biggest shark - whale shark
- The smallest shark - dwarf dogshark
- Adult zebra shark has spot while pup looks like a zebra

Since we were talking about the type of fish here, I take this opportunity to introduce the part of the fish. I printed out a picture of a fish with labels. However, the words are not clear. Therefore, I printed out the words on a red paper, then, I guided the children to go through the parts of the fish together while I label the parts at the same time. Then I pasted on their classroom's noticeboard so that they could look at it all the time.

Note: I was on medical leave on 12th January, 2015 (Monday), therefore, there's no blog update for yesterday.

Book Sharing - Blaze, The Baby Dolphin

Date: 9th January 2015
Day: Friday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Beautiful Ocean
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Book Sharing - Blaze, The Baby Dolphin

Germaine brought a book since last week, she wanted to share it with her fellow classmates. Therefore, today, I used some time to read the book to the children.

It's a book about the life of a baby dolphin.

After sharing the book with the children, we have about 20 minutes left for the day, I got some blank paper and start drawing some small sea creatures for the children to colour it. Then, we cut it out and pasted it on our title - Beautiful Ocean. It will be placed on the wall for the children to read it all day long.

Fish Printing - Part II

Date: 8th January 2015
Day: Thursday
Time: 3"00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Beautiful Ocean
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Fish Printing - Part II

As I mentioned in my blog yesterday that we shall do a language activity for this fish printing art and craft. I guided the children to make a simple sentence about the picture that they had done yesterday.

The sentence that the children came out with is: The fish is blowing some bubbles. 

I typed out these 6 words for each child. Then I cut and put it and put them into 6 different bowls. The children needed to pick up a word from each bowl and rearrange the sentence in correct order.

Some of the children could recognise the words and put them in correct order while some couldn't. I have to guide them one by one. We could do more practise on such exercise so that the children would be familiarize themselves with sentences arrangement.

Here are some of the work done by the children:

Art work done by Yi Ming

Art work done by Dextor Wong Kai Yuan

Art work done by Chia Rui Xin

Art & Craft: Bubble, bubble (hand printing)

Date: 7th January 2015
Day: Wednesday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Beautiful Ocean
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Art & Craft: Bubble, bubble (hand printing)

I shared a book on "Bubble Bubble" with the children. This interesting book is about a fish who found a giggling bubble and wish to search for the sea creatures that blows it. Along the way, the children could see other sea creatures that mentioned in the book such as sea turtle, dolphin, octopus and finally the whale who blew the bubble.

Art & Craft - Hand printing of a fish
I prepared some water paint - red, blue, yellow, orange and green for the children to choose. I helped them to colour their palm with the colour that they want. Then, they will print it on the paper that I had prepared for them. Lastly, they will use one of their finger to dip some blue colour and makes some dot next to the fish as though the fish is blowing some bubbles.

I helped to paint the water colours on Germaine's hand.

Alice printed it on to the paper.

Wow, look at Rui Xin's fish, it's so colourful.

Ming Yen making the dot dot as the bubbles on his fish art.

I planned to carry on with some language activity for this art and craft. Due to insufficient time today, we shall do it tomorrow.

Who Likes Water?

Date: 6th January 2015
Day: Tuesday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Beautiful Ocean
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Who Likes Water?

We did a brainstorming session about what kind of creatures that lives in the sea.

Teacher: Can you tell me who lives in the sea?
Children: Dolphin....whale....fish....

As the children could only tell me about a few kinds of sea creatures, we went through some flashcards about sea creatures which introduces crabs, lobster, cuttlefish, octopus, shark, jellyfish, sea anemone etc.

Then, I share a book - Who Likes Water for the children to understand which creatures like water besides fish and sea creatures.

After that, I drew some sea weeds, rocks as the bottom of the sea and get the children to fill in the rest of it on the whiteboard. Then, I gave them each a piece of paper to see if they could draw their own underwater world.

This is the final look of the drawing that the children had done. 

Brand New Start - Theme Topic Voting

Date: 5th January 2015

Day: Monday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: -

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Brand New Start - Theme Topic Voting

It's year 2015! Welcome back to our blog! This year, we have about 16 children in this class. It's another brand new class.Hopefully the children could enjoy my class this year.

Without much delay, I get the children to vote for the new topic for their English thematic class. These were the topics that they had suggested after I brought them to look at other thematic topics that we had done so far:

1) food

2) insects

3) animals

4) ocean

5) transportation

Each child could vote for their favourite topic 3 times. Therefore, they have to be sure which topic they were interested. After a round of voting, "ocean" is the topic that outstanding compared to the other topics. The children were cheering when they got to know that the topic that they wanted was being selected. 

Our new thematic topic would be - Beautiful Ocean.

Hopefully parents could co-operate in providing materials on books, vcd or even movies about underwater world that they could find. This would helps the children to understand more about the topic.

Picture Book Making - Part III

Date: 27th - 31st October 2014
Day: Monday - Friday
Time: 4:00-5:00pm
Theme: Beautiful Rainbow Colours
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Picture Book Making - Part III

This would be the final week for our thematic class for year 2014.

The children were quite happy that they could complete their book by this week. Basically, the children needed to paste all the pictures and the 2 sentences into their book. Then, each of them would come to me and I would draw the first animal that they had chosen on their front page. The children also used variety of colours to decorate their title of their book.

This is one of the sample of the picture book done by the children: