Shaping sea creatures with play dough

Date: 25th February 2015
Day: Wednesday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Beautiful Ocean
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Shaping sea creatures with play dough

Welcome back after the long festive holiday!

We did a circle time by getting the children to share anything about their Chinese New Year holiday.

Germaine: I use the box to do lion dance.
Jie Min: My mommy saw a lion dance.
Alice: I saw a lion dance at the supermarket.
Jia Xuan: I go to my grandmother house in Penang.
Hui Ting: Fire crackers.
[The above answers had been modified and corrected when they were sharing.]

The children needed some warm up after the long holiday. Therefore, we did some fun and creative activity today - play dough. The theme of our play dough today was to shape some sea creatures. They could do any sea creatures that come to their mind.

However, the children didn't know what to do. I gave them some suggestions or ideas and yet, they still needed some guidance in shaping their sea creatures. Every table that I visited, I did one sea creatures for them so that they could have some idea of what they could do.

School Closed for CNY

Date: 17th February 2015
Day: Tuesday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Beautiful Ocean
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Due to no electricity supply, the class was cancelled today.

School will be closed from 18th February 2015 (Wednesday) till 24th February 2015 (Tuesday) for the festive holiday - Chinese New Year. Class will be reopened on 25th February 2015 (Wednesday).

Happy Chinese New Year. Gong Xi Fa Cai.

Art Work - Jellyfish in the Bottle

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

Art Work - Jellyfish in the Bottle

Alice brought a big plastic bottle and a white plastic bag. As a result, we all will do one "jellyfish in the bottle" for everyone to play with.

First, I cut the plastic according to the instruction from the website. Then, I used a rubber band to tie a loose knot to form the umbrella of the jellyfish. Then, the children took turn to cut the tentacles for the jellyfish. I have to guide them as it's not easy to handle cutting plastic for the children.

After that, I got Alice to pour some water into the umbrella of the jellyfish and filled up the bottle with water. In front of the children, we tried to stuff the "jellyfish" into the bottle. Finally, the children could turn the bottle up and down to let the object in it to flow up and down and it will look like as though a jellyfish is swimming in it.

Video on Jellyfish

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

Video on Jellyfish

I found a jellyfish artwork online - jellyfish in the bottle. I wanted the children to understand the material that we needed. Therefore, I showed them the website and informed that they needed to bring a plastic bag and a bottle to school on next Monday.

I wanted to children to understand more about jellyfish. Therefore, I played them a video about it. The video speaks a little too soft and fast. The children couldn't follow it. As a result, we needed to play the video 3 times with explanation given from parts to parts.

Video Sharing - Video for Kids - Animal - Jellyfish

How to draw Jellyfish

Date: 12th February 2015
Day: Thursday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Beautiful Ocean
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

How to draw Jellyfish

I remember I saw a song for jellyfish online and I remember the lyrics. However, I don't remember where I got it from.

The lyrics for the song is as followed:

Jellyfish Song (Tune: My Bonnie is Over the Ocean)
This jellyfish lives in the ocean,
This jellyfish lives in the sea,
This jellyfish lives in the ocean,
This red jellyfish swim by me.
(The children suggested other colours to replace that. They mentioned about purple, yellow and black)

As I had read a book on jellyfish with the children, we briefly went through some facts about jellyfish.

Teacher: Does a jellyfish have mouth? (some said yes, and some said no)
Teacher: What does a jellyfish eats.
Children: Fish.
Teacher: Jellyfish has mouth under its bell and it has lots of tentacles. Can we touch the tentacles?
Children: No. It stings.

Then, we observed the drawing and pictures from the book and we tried to draw a picture of the jellyfish on the white board. I gave each of them a piece of A4 paper to draw their own jellyfish.

At the same time, I also taught the children to learn the wordings for numbers. I got some fish toys that the children can use it to learn to count. We sat down in small groups to do this.

Octopus Art and worksheet

Date: 11th February 2015
Day: Wednesday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Beautiful Ocean
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Octopus Art and worksheet

I wanted the children to do this yesterday, however, the material was not ready. Therefore, it was postponed till today.

With the octopus art and that the children had added the suckers onto it, they used it for the worksheet I had prepared. I'm proud with some of the children could still remember the sentences that we made together the other day when we observed the octopus art.

First, I placed the octopus on the worksheet and found out that those tentacles are too long and it also covered the sentences that I have typed below. Therefore, I suggested to the children that we make those tentacles a little curvy. I used a marker pen to roll it at first, but, it didn't curve properly. Then, I used a pencil to do it, it curved perfectly. The children were amazed and wanted to try it out immediately. Each of them started off with a pencil and most of them could curl the tentacles up properly.

Once they were done with the curving, I distributed the worksheet for them to paste their octopus art on it. I used the three sentences that the children made the other day and left some blanks for the children to fill in. They needed to search for the correct word to paste in those blanks. We all did it together.

These were some of the worksheets done by the children:

Alice's octopus

Germaine's octopus

Rui Xin's octopus

Dexter's octopus

What is jellyfish?

Date: 10th February 2015
Day: Tuesday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Beautiful Ocean
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

What is jellyfish?

We went through briefly some facts about jellyfish from the book. Children might know what a jellyfish is, yet, they knew not much about it. Hopefully, through this jellyfish session, the children could learn some facts or information about a jellyfish.

We shall explore more about a jellyfish from books and video for this week.

Book Sharing - Tiddler, The story telling fish by Julia Donaldson & Axel Scheffier

Tiddler, is a fish, who loves to imagine stories. He is always late for class and would tell a story whenever he steps in late. Most of the fish won't believe his story except Little Johnny Dory who would tell Tiddler's story to his grandma. Every day, Tiddler would make up stories for his friends. Unfortunately, he was lost in a net one day while thinking hard about his story for the day. When the fishermen threw him back into the sea, he was lost. He managed to find his way back home when he heard someone was telling his story. He managed to track it down and got back home. He felt a relief about his story after all. 

Art and Craft: Octopus (Part II)

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

Art and Craft: Octopus (Part II)

Since the children had done the first part of the art on Friday, we continued with it today. Before we started the art work, I showed them a sucker accessory that I brought from a DIY shop over the weekend. The children observed the sucker accessory and try it on the board. They put it on and pull it off from the board. I believe, the children could understand the usage of the sucker on the octopus' tentacles.

Yu Han sticks the sucker accessories on the board. 

She tried to remove it. 

Then, I got the children to add on the suckers onto their octopus' art. It took them a while as some of them wanted to colour their octopus in various colours besides adding in those suckers.

Once they were done with it, we all sat down and looked at the art work and I guided the children to make some sentences about it.

These were the sentences made by the children (as a group, not individually) :-

1) The octopus' suckers are sticky.
2) The octopus catches sharks and fish.
3) The octopus can change colours.

We were almost done with octopus. We might move on to jellyfish later of the week.

Blue-ringed Octopus

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

Blue-ringed Octopus

Blue-ringed octopus was mentioned quite a few times in book sharing's session and also in the fun facts video that I showed them. Therefore, I decided to share a short video about blue-ringed octopus so that they know how it looks like.

Video sharing - Blue ringed octopus

Then, we did an art work on octopus. I drew some circle for the children to cut. On the other hand, I have cut out some colour stripes for the children to paste it onto the circle as the tentacles of an octopus. The children needed to count the stripes paper correctly. Some could do it individually while some needed guidance. The children could past it whatever they think those tentacles should look like.

We only managed to complete the art work until this stage. We shall continue with it on Monday.

Revision on the facts about octopus

Date: 5th February 2015
Day: Thursday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Beautiful Ocean
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Revision on the facts about octopus

After watching the video on Monday, hopefully, the children will still have impression on the facts about the octopus. Therefore, we went through the facts we mentioned on Monday and I added on some for them today.

Basically, the facts that we went through were as followed:

1) Most of the octopus are venomous, yet, only blue-ringed octopus' venom could kill a person
2) The female octopus is called hen. It lays a lot of eggs
3) Octopus will change colour to hide from their prey
4) Octopus would eject black ink to escape
5) Octopus has good eyesight and poor hearing

Then, I got the children some toys and I also divided the class into 2 big groups. The children needed to work together by using all the toys I put on the floor to form a big octopus. At the beginning, most of them were doing their own octopus. I have to keep reminding them to make only one octopus per group.

After a while, I have to interrupt to guide one of the group while the other group observe. Finally, they managed to complete their task.

Note: I was on emergency leave on 4th February 2015. Therefore, there's no blog update for yesterday.

Fun Facts about Octopus

Date: 2nd February 2015
Day: Monday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Beautiful Oceans
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Fun Facts about Octopus

Today, we explored the facts about octopus. Before we went into the facts part, I got some children to draw an octopus on the board.

Then with their drawing, we somehow learn the parts of the octopus before I played them the video about the fun facts of the octopus.

Video sharing - Fun Facts about Octopus

I played the video twice for the children to catch some of the points in it. Then, we went through some of the facts on board.

Basically, we just covered the following facts for today: -

1) The plural forms of octopus - octopi, octopuses, octopodes
2) Octopus has 3 hearts
3) The blood of octopus - blue
4) Octopus have suckers
5) Octopus is shy

We shall cover more facts for the rest of the week.

Note: Tomorrow is Thaipusam. It's a public holiday. Therefore, there's no blog update for 3rd February 2015.

Whale's song by Humpback whale

Date: 30th January 2015
Day: Friday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Beautiful Ocean
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Whale's song by Humpback whale

Today, we tried to summarize all the facts and information that we had learned about whales. I also shared a book about whale singing.

Book Sharing - Little Whale's Song by Fran Evans
This is a story about a baby whale who got lost with his family. He couldn't remember his family song and asked all the sea creatures that he met to teach him to sing. But all those sea creatures sound different from him. Until a manatee asked him to listen to his own voice and he could actually sing it out. He managed to sing his family's song again. Finally, his family manage to locate him and get together again.

Video Sharing - Humpback Whale singing

On the other hand, Germaine brought some flashcards about sea creatures to share with her fellow classmates.

Kian Han brought an octopus soft toys to share with his classmates. Therefore, our next sea creature would be the octopus.