Potato Rhymes

Date: 8^th April 2015

Day: Wednesday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Potato Rhymes

The soil was not ready for the planting of the potato today. Therefore, I teach the children to sing a song on potato.

We wrote down the song on a piece of mahjong paper. Then, we added in some actions. This is not just a counting song, yet, it’s also a recipe for the mashed potato. The children wanted to try it out. Therefore, after singing the song, I get the children to tell me the ingredients of the mashed potatoes. I needed to give some hints.

The lyrics of the potatoes rhymes:

One potato, two potatoes, 

Three potatoes, four

Five potatoes, six potatoes, 

Seven potatoes, more

Eight potatoes, nine potatoes, 

Ten potatoes, all

Milk and butter, milk and butter, 

mash, mash, mash, 

Salt and pepper, salt and pepper

stir, stir, stir

Mashed potato, mashed potato, 

mashed potato all. 

Finally, the children managed to search for the answer from the song. Basically, the ingredients to make the mashed potatoes are as followed:

 

1)      Potatoes

2)      Butter

3)      Milk

4)      Salt

5)      Pepper

Kian Han brought 2 potatoes to show it to his classmates. It’s quite a big one. Therefore, I suggested that we get 2 children to share one potato for the mashed potatoes. The children couldn’t tell me exactly how many potatoes do we need. Therefore, I get them to stand in pairs. However, it’s an odd number. There’s a group with three. I promised to get a big potato for their group. After counting all of them, we needed around 8 potatoes. We did some counting and mathematics sum for the children to understand numbers.

Most probably the soil will be ready by tomorrow and we shall plant the potato in the school garden.

Potato

Date: 7th April 2015
Day: Tuesday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Yummy Food
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Potato

Potato contains carbohydrates. Therefore, I picked this as our subtopic for carbohydrates.

Today, we learned about the growing stage of a potato. Coincidence, in my hand, there's a big potato that already started to germinate. Therefore, we could plant it.

From the picture that I had drew on the whiteboard today, the children learned about shoot, roots and sunshine in our lesson today. The whole growing process needed about 12 weeks. At first, I was a little worried how the children could understand the numbers of days. Then, suddenly I thought of an idea. The children will bring their reading material home every Friday. We can consider each Friday as a week.

If we get the plant the potato by this week, then we can start by counting the numbers of time the children bring their reading material home. We shall do a chart for the growth of the potato.

Worksheet - Food that contains Carbohydrates

Date: 6th April 2015
Day: Monday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Yummy Food
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Worksheet - Food that contains Carbohydrates

Today, we read on a little more on carbohydrates from "Good Enough to Eat". We learned that we can know the food that contains carbohydrates from its taste. If it tastes starchy or sweet, it most probably contains carbohydrates.

I prepared a worksheet for the children to work on carbohydrates. From the worksheet, the children once more understand that carbohydrates is the main source of energy. Then, they have to select and circle those food that contains carbohydrates. Lastly, they colour their pictures.

A sample of the worksheet was done as so:-

Potatoes are consider the easiest food to find for the children to explore into carbohydrates. Coincidence, one of the potatoes that I bought last week started to germinate. I wanted to take this opportunity for the children to learn more about potatoes.

We shall work on the growth and the recipes of potatoes for the next few days.

Book Sharing - How Do You Feed A Hungry Giant?

Date: 2nd April 2015
Day: Thursday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Yummy Food
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Book Sharing - How Do You Feed A  Hungry Giant?

Today, I would like to share a story book with the children about food. It's called "How Do You Feed A Hungry Giant?"

How Do You Feed A Hungry Giant? by Caitlin Friedman
A boy named Oscar discovers a giant in his backyard one day. The giant is holding big sign that says - "Food Please". Oscar quickly get food from his kitchen to feed him. Unfortunately, the giant just gobble up all the food such as pizza, chocolate cookies -  in just one single gulp. Oscar's mum got to know about this and cook the giant some gigantic big size food. Finally, the giant is well fed.

The children were amazed by the food that a giant will eat.

Note: The children are going for a field trip tomorrow. Therefore there will be no blog updates for 3rd April 2015, Friday.

Carbohydrates

Date: 1st April 2015
Day: Wednesday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Yummy Food
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Carbohydrates

We started to explore food according to the food pyramid. Today, I introduced some food that contains carbohydrates such as bread, potato, pasta, cake etc. Then, we also refer to the book - Good Enough To Eat by Lizzy Rockwell. We shall refer to this book along the way during our exploration of food in this theme.

Besides introducing carbohydrates to the children, I also read some parts about digestion.

There were about 15 minutes left before we call it a day, the children took a piece of paper each to draw their favourite food in it.

Food Chart

Date: 31st March 2015
Day: Tuesday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Yummy Food
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Food Chart

Today, I brought in some charts on food. I get the children to read through all the food that we could find in the chart.

Then, I asked the children to tell me what their favourite food is.

Teacher: What is your favourite food?
Germaine: Maggi mee.
Jie Min: Porridge
Alice: apple
Dexter: rice
Ming Yen: orange
Shyi Yee: apple
Angela: grapes
Shang Feng: kueh
Jun Yi: orange
Rui Xin: grapes
Yun Han: grapes
Kai Yuan: porridge
Huei Teng: apple
Kian Han: orange
Yi Ming: strawberry

Teacher: Why do we eat food?
Children: (no reply from them)
Teacher: When do you eat food? (I rubbed my tummy to give some hints)
Children: Hungry.

New Theme Topic

Date: 30th March 2015
Day: Monday
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Class: Starfruit
Theme: Yummy Food
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

New Theme Topic

Today, I get the children to choose a name for their new theme today. So the children suggested some new names for their topic. These were their suggestion:-

1) Yummy Food
2) Nice Food
3) Yummy yummy Food

After one round of voting, finally, the children mostly voted for - Yummy Food.

We started off by introducing the food pyramid today. I only focused on the most bottom part of the food pyramid - food that contains carbohydrates.

I introduced the name of food that contains carbohydrates to the children today - bread, noodles, rice, flour, pasta etc.