Spider Art Work (part I)

Date: 6^th September 2013

Day: Friday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Spider Art Work (part I)

We revised the “Incy Wincy Spider” rhyme and the spider song we sang yesterday. The children were more familiar with the words this time rather than just murmured the words out.

Before head on with our spider art, I played them a video about how the spider spins their prey. The video showed the children how the prey got stuck at the web and the spider quickly ran over it to catch hold of it. Then it started to spin web all over the prey and took it away to a side to enjoy its meal.

Then I also showed a few pictures of the black widow to the children as that’s the art work that we need to do. 

Teacher: How many legs do a spider has?

Children: Four…..six…..eight… (They had given a few answers about it)

Teacher: Spider has eight legs. Let’s count and see. Spider are divided into two parts, the head and the abdomen. What other things that you can see from the black widow?

Children: Red colour… (There are some distinctive red marks on the back of the abdomen of a black widow.)

After watching the video and by looking at the picture, I do believe that the children had some idea about the look of a black widow. So I started of by giving each of a child, 2 different sizes of circle for them to cut it out. Then once they were done with the circle, I gave them some lines to cut for the spider’s legs.

Due to insufficient time left for today, we shall continue with the art work on Monday.

Incy Wincy Spider

Date: 5^th September 2013

Day: Thursday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Incy Wincy Spider

When come to black, spider comes to my mind. Then “Incy Wincy Spider” appears in my head. I believe most of the children had read or sing this nursery rhyme before. Even though their pronunciation of each word is not that cleared but I can actually tell that they had heard it before.

With the finger movement, the children started to sing the nursery rhyme:

Incy Wincy Spider

Climbed up the water spout

Down came the rain

And washed the spider out

Out came the sunshine

And dried up all the rain

And the incy wincy spider

Climbed up the spout again.

Then I also found an interesting song about spider from the internet and I wish to share with the children.

Spin the spider, spin (Tune: Farmer in the Dell)

Spin the spider, spin

Spin the spider, spin

Round and round and up and down

Spin the spider, spin

I asked the children to think of what other things that the spider can do so that we could fit it into the song.

The children gave a few suggestions such as: run, crawl, eat. We fit it into the song and do it with action. I also added one as “dance”.  Besides this, the children also shared some knowledge that they know about the spider such as how the spider hunt their prey, how the spider eat their prey etc.

We shall do the spider art the next day.

Oh, Think that you can Think!

Date: 4^th September 2013

Day: Wednesday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Oh, Think that you can Think!

Actually some time ago, I had read this story by Dr Seuss to the class. I remembered that time, the whole class listened to the story very quietly. There were some added children this time to the group, so I used this time to read them the story again.

As I expected, with all the exploration to colours and the language, the children started to notice other things in the same page as I read the story to them. They started to tell out different things in different colours.

This makes the story reading session more interesting. Though the story is a little bit too long for such young age, I do believe that they somehow enjoy the hilarious thought by Dr Seuss and those colourful pages.

We are going to do some art work or things related to black colour tomorrow. Hopefully the children could enjoy it. 

Black Crayon Art

Date: 3^rd September 2013

Day: Tuesday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Black Crayon Art

This black crayon art suddenly came into my mind. I believe it would be an interesting art work for the children to explore. These are the materials that I needed for this activity:

1)      rectangular piece of paper

2)      assorted colours of crayon

3)      black colour crayon (a must)

4)      some toothpicks

Before I gave each child a paper, I demonstrate it to the children first. I painted the paper in colourful crayon and covered it with a layer of black colour crayon. Then I used the toothpicks to start my drawing. The children were amazed by such art and they were very enthusiastic to start immediately they got their paper.

These are some of the drawings done by the children:

New Chapter: Black Colour

Date: 2^nd September 2013

Day: Monday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

New Chapter: Black Colour

Today, we started off with another new chapter of colour. It’s black colour. This colour has been suggested by the children a few times, so I think it’s time for us to explore into it now. We did a brainstorming session today. 6 children who are 5 years old from Pomegranate class joined the Stairfruit class today. So the numbers of children are bigger now yet more interesting.

Teacher: Can you name me anything that is black in colour?

Wen Xuan: Shoes.

Li Heng: Shirt.

Kwan Ming: Panther.

Emerson: Tire.

Yee Jie: Frog. (He saw the frog from the pond in the school which is black in colour.)

Wen Xuan: (She pointed to her face. Ah…she means “eyebrow”.)

Ei Jay: Mouse.

Zhen Yu: Hair.

Yee Jie: (He also pointed to his eyes. Ah…he means “eyeball”.)

Zhen Yuan: Chocolate. (Do you mean dark chocolate? He nodded.)

Yi Jie: Bird. (Yes, some birds are black in colour.)

Wen Xuan: Tadpole. (She actually said this in Mandarin, I helped her to translate it.)

Teng Hong: Bat. (Some children started to say batman...hahaha)

Wow, the children have a great observation of things around them. At least this time, they could tell me other things than just shirt, car or toys. We shall do some black colour activities or art work this week.

If parents have any idea or suggestion that you would like to contribute for this black colour theme, you are welcomed to post your suggestion here. 

Art & Craft - Purple Grapes (Part III)

Date: 30^th August 2013

Day: Friday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Art and craft: Purple Grapes (Part III)

After the children had completed all their purple grapes, we started to make sentences about the picture.

By looking at the pictures, we started off with simple sentences.

1)      These are grapes.

Teacher: What colour is the grapes?

Children: Purple.

Teacher: Yes, great!

2)      These are purple grapes.

Teacher: Alright, now look at the grapes, what does it taste?

Children: Purple…

Teacher: Taste…does it taste sweet or sour? Sweet is like sugar.

Children: Sweet.

3)      These are sweet purple grapes.

Teacher: When you eat grapes, does it has water coming out?

Children: Yes.

Teacher: Right, that’s called “juicy”.

4)      These are sweet juicy purple grapes.

From simple sentence we just added on words to make the sentences look interesting. We shall do this more often to motivate the children to create sentences by their own.

Art & Craft - Purple Grapes (part II)

Date: 29^th August 2013

Day: Thursday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Art and craft: Purple Grapes (Part II)

The water paint that the children did yesterday had dried up. When the children looked at their grapes, they said it’s not purple colour. I think I had mixed too much of blue instead of red. The mixture had turned out to be dark blue and not really purple.

Then I got an idea how to make it looks more like grapes. I gave each child a marker pen to let them draw circles to form grapes and I drew a shape of leaves for them to colour it green.

Ei Jay asked if he could coloured his grapes purple. I said: “Yes, why not? You can try to add on the purple colour onto your grapes.” Surprisingly, the outcome turned out to be pretty good and it looks more like a purple grapes. Then, other children saw the outcome, they also wanted to follow. So the children happily coloured their grapes and leaves after they had drawn the circle in their paper.