Vote for New Topic

Date: 29th January 2016
Day: Friday
Time: 3:00-4:00 pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Happy Chinese New Year
Teacher: Ms Yeong

Vote for New Topic

Chinese New Year is at the end of next week. Basically, we will just carry out some simple activity next week to round up our Chinese New Year topic. Therefore, I wanted to know if the children could suggest the next topic to learn.

Usually for Starfruit class, I shall choose the topic for them. Yet, I wanted to see if the children could suggest anything this time. However, it take me quite a while to explain to them on choosing or suggesting a topic.

Finally, after a few rounds of explanation and demonstration, the children manage to suggest a few topics:-

Colours, Animals (wild animals), Swimming/Water, Food

Then, I explained each topic with some help of some drawings and get the children to vote for it.They could vote twice for their favourite topic. "Animals" and "Colours" are just 1 vote different. However, "Colours" won the most votes. As a result, "Colours" would be our next topic when we come back from Chinese New Year holiday later.

Count the Cookies

Date: 28th January 2016
Day: Thursday
Time: 3:00-4:00 pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Happy Chinese New Year
Teacher: Ms Yeong

Count the Cookies

Wow, the cookies are ready for packing. The task for the children today is to count and see how many cookies they could bring home.

Before we count the cookies, we counted the numbers of children in the class. There are 16 of them. After that, I brought in the two trays of cookies and get them to count the cookies from 1-16 and we set it aside as a group. Then, we continued to count another group of 16 cookies.

After a few rounds of counting, amazingly that the children could bring home 5 cookies each and there were 2 extra cookies left. One by one they came out to the table with a small plastic bag to pack 5 cookies into it.

Looking at the 2 cookies in the empty tray, some asked if they could try it. In order to be fair, I gave each of them a small piece instead of one big piece of it. They were very happy and contented with it and kept saying that the cookies are delicious!

Almond Cookies Making

Date: 27th January 2016
Day: Wednesday
Time: 3:00-4:00 pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Happy Chinese New Year
Teacher: Ms Yeong

Almond Cookies Making

As I stepped into the classroom, the children were very excited today and kept asking if they were going to bake any cookies today. Then, I said yes. I brought in all the ingredients for the children to work in the classroom.

We went according to the work delegated yesterday except for the task of adding in the vanilla essence. I accidentally left it out on my purchase list yesterday and we don't have any vanilla essence in the school. Therefore, I didn't add in any vanilla essence to our cookies. The 2 children who were supposed to help out in adding in the vanilla essence has been changed to help to fold the mixture of the flour later.

I didn't have any cookie cutter in hand, therefore, I asked the children to roll the dough into small ball and pressed it lightly before we sent it into the oven for baking.

I needed to guide the children while they picked up the portion of the dough and roll it into a ball. Therefore, I didn't get to lay my oily hand on the camera, no pictures were taken during that activity.

This is one of the tray of cookies when it was baked. Hope it taste nice!!

Discussion on the cookies making

Date: 26th January 2016
Day: Tuesday
Time: 3:00-4:00 pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Happy Chinese New Year
Teacher: Ms Yeong

Discussion on the cookies making

As I have mentioned to the children last week that we might be able to carry out the activity of baking some cookies this week. After discussed with the headmistress, we could carry it out on Wednesday.

Therefore, quickly we had some discussion on the ingredients and the method of doing it. After we had gone through the ingredients then, we delegated some task for the children to volunteer.

Basically, I needed the children to help me to put in the butter, sugar, salt, vanilla essence, fold in the flour, the rice flour and the ground almond into the mixture tomorrow.

These are the tasks that being delegated:

Add in the butter: Zhuo Hwa & Yi Tong
Add in the castor sugar: Lucas & Max
Add in the salt: Xiang Jing & Yi Rou
Add in the vanilla essence: Yen Rou & Shan Lin

Add in the plain flour: Gaby & Yien
Add in the rice flour: Haowen & Nyn Sze
Add in the ground almond: Jen Yao & Emely

Note: Cheng You & He Wei will do the mixture.

The children were quite excited and hopefully all will be present for the event tomorrow.

Role Play - Little Red Riding Hood

Date: 22nd January 2016
Day: Friday
Time: 3:00-4:00 pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Happy Chinese New Year
Teacher: Ms Yeong

Role Play - Little Red Riding Hood

Today, we carried out the role play of Little Red Riding Hood. Before we start, we went through the story again and quickly explained the things that each role would need to do. Basically we needed about 4 children to act out for each round.

Then, we did our first round of role play. The children had some idea about it, then we did another 2 more rounds.

Character	1st round	2nd round	3rd round
Little Red Riding Hood	Xiang Jing	Yien	Emely
Wolf	Yi Rou	Max	He Wei
Granny	Yen Rou	Nyn Sze	Yi Rou
Woodcutter	Gaby	Haowen	Zhuo Hwa

All the character was volunteered by the children themselves. As their actions were too fast and I also needed to guide them of their conversation, I didn't manage to take any photos of this activity. The children did enjoy the role play a lot. Hopefully we could carry out such activity more often in the future.

Things in Red

Date: 21st January 2016
Day: Thursday
Time: 3:00-4:00 pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Happy Chinese New Year
Teacher: Ms Yeong

Things in Red

We revised the story of the Nian monster again today by asking and answering the questions. The children could remember most of the content of it and tried their best to convey in English. Keep it up!!

Now, since the Nian monster is afraid of red colour. Therefore, today, I wanted the children to share their thoughts about things in red. However, they only managed to share a few common things such as apple, red table, red chairs, strawberry, fire crackers, angpao packets and not more.

Then, suddenly I remembered a story that related to red - Little Red Riding Hood. Some of the children said they didn't know what story is that. As a result, I played them a short story about it.

Video: Little Red Riding Hood - Kids Stories - LearnEnglish Kids British Council

From this simple story, the children could understand and repeated some phrases in it. I told the children that we could arrange a role play for this tomorrow.

The story of Nian monster

Date: 20th January 2016
Day: Wednesday
Time: 4:30-5:30 pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Happy Chinese New Year
Teacher: Ms Yeong

The story of Nian monster

The children would have known this story from their Mandarin teacher. However, I hope that the children could listen again to the story in English. Therefore, I played them a video about the Nian monster today.

Video: The Story of Nian - A Chinese New Year story

The presentation of the video amazed the kids and they could observe the drawing as well as the story. I played the story again after giving some explanation and the children also expressed their thoughts about the story.

Then, I get them to add in the details of the Nian monster on the board. I only drew the mane which looked like a lion. The children volunteered to add in the details for it. Apparently, it turned out to be quite a beautiful Nian monster. Great job, kids!

Here are some pictures taken during the activity today:

Finally, this is how the Nian monster looked like by Starfruit class:

After that, I gave each of them a piece of paper to draw out the Nian monster that they have in mind. Only Yen Rou and Max wanted to draw it on their own while others add in details from the outline that I gave them.

Here are some pictures of the Nian monster that the children had drawn:

Yen Rou

Max

Shan Lin

Gaby

Ways of sending greetings (Part II)

Date: 19th January 2016
Day: Tuesday
Time: 3:00-4:00 pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Happy Chinese New Year
Teacher: Ms Yeong

Ways of sending greetings (Part II)

Most of the children had done their greetings cards yesterday. Therefore, today, we needed to add in a message in the greetings cards.

Basically, the message would sound the same - Gong Xi Fa Cai. Yet, the children needed to tell me the person that they wanted to address the card to. Most of them would like to address the card to their parents.

They used colour pencil to trace the message that I wrote in the card.

Ways of sending greetings

Date: 18th January 2016
Day: Monday
Time: 3:00-4:00 pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Happy Chinese New Year
Teacher: Ms Yeong

Ways of sending greetings

Today, I wanted to introduce greetings cards to the children. Then, I gave them a situation to solve.

The situation sounds like this:
Yi Rou is staying in Malaysia. Gaby is staying on an island very far far away. Yi Rou missed Gaby and wanted to send her greetings of Chinese New Year to her. What are the ways for her to send her greetings?

Gaby: sit on a boat
Max: swim there
Gaby: cannot, got shark
Yi Rou: ask the crocodile to come and sit on the back
(Wow, she can summon the crocodile. Hahaha!)
Shan Lin: take a car and take a boat
Max: take a jeep and take a boat
Gaby: row a boat there
Haowen: run, run, run to her house
Yi Rou: cannot run, got shark

After about 10 minutes of debates, the children still believe that taking a boat there is much safer. That's alright with me. Then, I gave them another situation to solve - is there any other way to send Yi Rou's greetings to her without going there? They paused. Not sure what to answer. Then, I hinted them with the gesture of making a phone call. Haowen suddenly said phone call, phone call.

I gave them another situation - what if Gaby cannot reach by phone. Yi Rou cannot call her. The children started to comment that Gaby sure can be contacted by telephone. I asked if Yi Rou can send a card to Gaby? They said yes.

With this introduction, I showed them some sample of greetings cards and one of them made by myself from those angpao packets that the children brought. The children said they also wanted to make one.

So I gave each of them a small piece of pink colour manila card that I have folded into like a card for the children to work on it. They chose words and pictures from the angpao packets and pasted it onto their card.

Here were some pictures taken during the activity:

Worksheet - Things people before Chinese New Year

Date: 15th January 2016
Day: Friday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Happy Chinese New Year
Teacher: Ms Yeong

Worksheet - Things people before Chinese New Year

I played a video about things that people do before Chinese New Year earlier. In conjunction with the worksheet that I have prepared, I played that video again so that the children could have deeper impression about it. In the video, it also introduces spring couplets. I noticed there were some spring couplets pasted around the school. Therefore, after the video, I brought the children out to search for the spring couplets. A few of them could quickly spot the spring couplets pasted on the notice board or on the wall.

After that, we returned back to the class to complete the worksheet that I have prepared for them.

Decorations Making with Angpao Packets (Part II & III)

Date: 13th & 14 January 2016
Day: Wednesday & Thursday
Time: 3:00-4:00 pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Happy Chinese New Year
Teacher: Ms Yeong

Decorations Making with Angpao Packets (Part II & III)

I combined the blog for these 2 days as the children were doing almost of the same thing. The children had been exploring the cutting skills and methods of making such decorations. Some children even tried to teach others how to cut and fold.

I brought in some yarn to tie the art work that the children had done. I took me quite a while to complete all of them.

Here were some pictures taken during the activity where the children were cutting: