Change the colour to Golden

Date: 28^th June 2013

Day: Friday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Change the colour to Golden

We had done quite some work on green colour, therefore, today we vote again to see which colour is the next colour that the children are interested to work on. After a round of suggestion, only 2 colours were suggested, red and golden. Surprisingly, 10 children out of 11 voted for golden. As a result, our next colour would be golden.

Teacher: Can you name something or things that you know which is golden in colour?

Zhen Yuan: Bell.

Teacher: Bell?

Wei Lok: Yes, bell. Ding dong ding dong. (Oh, I can visualized which kind of bell he is talking about)

Yi Jie: Coin.

Phoeon: Diamond.

Jun Qian: Yes, diamond. Dig from the ground.

Teacher: What can we make out of golden colour?

Jia Jia: Bell. We can make a bell.

Teacher: What kind of bell?

Jia Jia: When someone comes to my house, can ding ding ding.

Teacher: Oh, you mean a door bell. But how do we do that?

Jun Qian: Only factory can make the bell. We cannot do.

Jia Jia: We can. (she can’t tell exactly how to start with it.)

Teacher: If that’s the case, can you all go home and look for something that can make the sound like a bell. Besides that, please look for something that is golden in colour as well.

Song – The Colour Song (sang in the tune of ABC Song)

Red and orange, green and blue,

Shinny yellow, purple too.

All the colours that we know, live inside in a rainbow.

Red and orange, green and blue,

Shinny yellow, purple too.

Note: Kindly bring any object that is golden in colour and any object that can make the sound like a bell. We shall be focusing on golden colour for this week. 

Blow the colours

Date: 27^th June 2013

Day: Thursday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Blow the colours

We did some art today. I prepared three colours, blue, green and red, and a straw each for the children to blow the colours. The children had to try their best to use the straw to blow the colours that I placed on their paper.

Some can did it quite well while some started to blow saliva on their papers. Some started to complain that they feel dizzy and uncomfortable at their stomach. Therefore, for those who had done, I quickly asked them to clean up and lie down on the floor and relax.

Phoeon: It's hard to blow. 

Bee Chien: Huu, Huu, I blow!

Look at our colours, beautiful!

Sunlight has colours too!

Date: 21^st June 2013

Day: Friday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Sunlight has colours too!

Today, I shared a scientific book with the children. This book is in Mandarin but I translated it into simple English for the children to understand. It’s a book about colours from the sunlight. Even though it kept mentioning that sunlight has colours yet the children still argued that there’s only bright colour in the sunlight.

There’s a simple experiment shown in the book. So I quickly prepared a cardboard as shown, a cup of water and a piece of white paper. We tried a few places to see if we can see the colours from the sunlight. However, only a few children could see the colours such as blue and red. While others still argued that they couldn’t see any colours at all. Wei Lok suggested we could try it at other time such as morning. We might try again at another time and place to see if we could see the colours more clearly.

Poem – When I see….

I shared a poem with the children today. It’s called “When I see….” The poem is as followed:

When I see red, I put my hand on my head,

When I see blue, I touch my shoe,

When I see green, I wash my face so clean.

When I see yellow, I wave to the fellow.

When orange is found, I put my hand on the ground,

When I see pink, I think, think, think.

Wei Lok: How about other colours? Like purple?

Kwan Ming: Grey.

Phoeon & Yu Xi: Golden.

Teacher: We can add on the poem but you must find the words that rhyme with the colours.

After a few discussions and matching the words, finally, we managed to add on the poem with other colours. This is how the poem sounds like:

When I see purple, I play with my bubble,

When I see golden, I play in the garden,

When I see silver, I play in the river,

When I see grey, I shall bake a cake in May,

When I see white, I will fly a kite,

When I see brown, I will go to the town.

When I see black, I put my hand on my back.

My Green Thing (Part II)

Date: 20^th June 2013

Day: Thursday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

My Green Things (Part II)

We didn’t have the time for the children to share their art work with their fellow friends yesterday. So today, we used some time for the children to share about their green things.

Teacher: What have you got here? What are these?

Wei Ni: This is a butterfly, a tree, T-shirt, love (heart shape), a plant, a skirt.

Yu Xi: This is a lorry, house, sweets, ice-cream, lollipop.

Teacher: Look at the ice-cream, there’s another name for it. Do you know?

The children looked a little puzzled at first, then some of them tried the word but didn’t got it correctly. I tried to give them some hints.

Teacher:  Pop…

Bee Chien: Popsicle.

Teacher: Yes, we called this kind of ice-cream called Popsicle.

Jia Jia: This is a butterfly, a caterpillar.

Yu Xin: Hill, grass.

Phoeon: grass.

Zhen Yuan: This is a car, grass, tree and fish.

Jia Hoong: This is a police car... a lorry.

Kwan Ming: (I got the children to guess what Kwan Ming had drawn, most of them got it correctly.) Ya, lorry, car, school bus, ambulance, double-decker bus, (I pointed to the last picture, he said the car had a flat tire)

Kern Ee: This is a police car. A car. (Is it a green police car chasing a green car? He nodded with a smile.)

Yi Jie: Car, flower, grass, house, sun. (The sun is green in colour? He nodded shyly.)

After seeing all the children had presented their drawings, Bee Chien and Wei Lok were absent yesterday, so they requested to do one as well. Therefore, I gave them each a green paper and a white paper to do it. I thought they could complete it within 15 minutes, yet they took more than that. As a result, the class had to be ended right there. 

My Green Thing

Date: 19^th June 2013

Day: Wednesday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

My Green Things

A few children were absent today, so we didn’t start off with anything new. So I choose to do something simple and quiet. I gave each child a piece of green paper and a white paper. The children have to draw something that they know in green on the green paper. Then they will have to cut it out and paste it on the white paper.

If the children could write out the name of the things, they could do so. Yet, some children took quite a while to decide what to draw and the cutting session takes a while as well.

Somehow, the children managed to complete the drawing, cutting and pasting within an hour time. We didn’t have time to do the sharing part. So we shall just take up some time tomorrow to do the sharing part. Some of the children did it quite well. I still can see that the boys are quite into cars and other vehicles even though I asked them to come out with something naturally green. 

Storybook Sharing & Game

Date: 17^th June 2013

Day: Monday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Storybook Sharing & Game

Storybook – Colours, Colours Everywhere

Today we started off with a storybook sharing. This book was brought by Derek. Unfortunately, today he was absent. Anyhow, I still wanted to share this book with the children. The title of the book is “Colours, Colours Everywhere”.

All the children took turn to read each page of the book. This is a story about Billy bear and Betty bear exploring different colours and items. Then everyone shared what of the things that they saw in the picture or they know.

Game – Red, Yellow, Green

I adapted this game from “Duck, Duck, Goose”. I changed it to “Red, Yellow, Green”. The children sat in a circle. Then there’s a child who would go around and touching each child’s head and said the names of colours such as red, yellow, green, blue, orange etc. The indication colour we are looking for this time is “Green”.

If the child touches someone’s head and said “Green” then the person would have to stand up and chased after the child. The child has to quickly run and sit back at the empty seat. This game gives the children a good practice on saying those names of colours. 

"Red, Orange, Blue...."

"Green"...chase me

Father's Day Card Making -Part IV

Date: 14th June 2013

Day: Friday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Father’s Day Card Making (Part IV)

Today, we come to the final stage of the father's day card making. How fortunate that I started earlier for this art work, it took us about four days to complete it bit by bit. Today, I brought in some ladyfingers and winged beans for the children to do some colourful printing on their card. Besides that, I had also made about 12 holes on each of the paper plate for the children to put in the golden thread as the paper plate was meant to be hung up. 

So we started off we 2 children at a time, they had a choice to choose either to use ladyfingers or winged beans or both of it. I thought the ladyfingers would give a very good shape. However, some of the children said they didn't get the print out of the ladyfingers clearly and it was just a patch of water paint. I encouraged them to try out the winged beans instead as it gives a "H" shape. For those who used winged beans were quite satisfied with the outcome of it. 

Once everyone had their printing done, I gave each of them a golden thread which I had prepared earlier. I demonstrate how to start with it. Some children could catch it fast while some needed some help. This time round, many of those children who managed to get their thread done, volunteered to help the others. I just needed to guide them along at the side.

When all the parts had been done, the children kept saying that they would put in their bag and only give it to their father on Sunday. I'm glad that the children like the art work. 

Happy Father's Day! Hopefully you will like the children's art!

Father's Card Making - Part III

Date: 12^th June 2013

Day: Wednesday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Father’s Day Card Making (Part III)

Today, we continued with our Father’s Day card making. Some of the children were not done with their green beans pasting while some half done the decoration of the wording “I love you”. So I called group by group to complete whichever part the children were supposed to do.

I guess some of the children had observed how the other children did on their decoration of the word; they could do it much better with very little guidance. The children’s observation has improved.

I thought I could do the ladyfingers printing today, unfortunately, we were only left about 15 minutes which was not enough for that.

So we quickly cleaned up all the mess and I taught them a Father’s Day poem. The words are as followed:

Daddy, I love you,

Daddy, I love you,

For all that you do.

I’ll kiss you and hug you,

‘Cause you love me, too.

You feed me and you need me,

To teach you to play,

So smile, ‘cause I love you

On this Father’s Day

I added in some actions so that the children could remember the lines better. We only managed to go through the first part of the poem. Hopefully, we could continue it before end of the week.

Dear parents, there’s no blog update tomorrow (Thursday, 13^th June, 2013) as I’ll be following on a school field trip. Sorry for any inconvenienced caused.  

Father's Day Card - Part II

Date: 11^th June 2013

Day: Tuesday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Father’s Day Card Making (Part II)

Today, we continued with the father’s day card making. I brought in some green beans for the children to paste on the card. I wrote the word “DAD” on the paper plate that the children had painted yesterday and the children paste the green beans on it.

Due to some discipline reason, all the bottles of glues were being confiscated for a while so I can only put the glue for the children on a plate. The children had to use their little finger to put the glue on the words and paste the green beans.  I thought it would be a simple task. Yet due to the glue was very sticky on their little fingers, it complicated the pasting process.

After a while, some children started to ask for help. I tried to give them some guidance and encouragement so that they could try again. Fortunately, some of them carried on and managed to complete the task.

For those who had completed the green beans pasting, they wrote the word “I Love You” under the word “DAD”. Then I gave them some colourful glittering glue to decorate their words.

No pictures were taken as we would like to keep it a surprise for fathers to see their children’s art work.

Tomorrow we shall continue with some more decoration of the card. Hopefully we could complete it by Friday as I planned to teach them a Father’s Day poem as well.

Father's Day Card Making & Colour Exploration

Date: 10^th June 2013

Day: Monday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Father’s Day Card Making & Colour Exploring

Father’s Day is this coming Sunday, so I prepared some materials for the children to start with the Father’s Day card making. Instead of making a card, I used paper plate instead. Hopefully it will be a different one this year.

The materials basically I would be using are as followed:

1)      1 large paper plate

2)      Water colour paint (assorted colours)

3)      Green beans

4)      Colourful ribbons

5)      Some lady fingers for printing

Today, the children only managed to colour the paper plate in their preferred colour. Since there’s some colours left on the paint tray, we did some exploration about mixtures of colours today.

This is the outcome of our colours. There’s only one colour where I couldn’t really figure out exactly what colour should I call it. 

I spy, you spy

Date: 7^th June 2013

Day: Friday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

I spy, you spy

We did the colour mixture of blue and yellow yesterday and we got green. So today, I played a video clip about “Little Yellow, Little Blue” by Leo Lionni. The children can see the changes of the mixture of these two colours clearly.

Then after that, we played a game called “I spy, you spy”. I got the children to pair themselves in two and search for a green object from the classroom and share with their fellow classmate. There’s only one group of children came back with 2 objects and they insisted to present the one they were holding. So I got them to discuss again which one to present. Finally, they managed to come to a conclusion to only present one of the objects. 

"I spy a green crocodile"

As we still got some time before the hour ends, I gave each of the children a colour sock. They have to search for another pair of the same colour from the pile of socks. Wow, the children could do it quite fast. Then I asked if they could roll the 2 socks together and form it like a ball.  All the children tried very hard to roll it and pull here and there to form a ball. After a while, some of the children started to ask for help.

Wei Lok managed to form a ball after a few tries and I got him to show his friends how he do it while I helped out the rest of the children. When some of them finally got it, they happily showed me their socks ball. Dear parents, maybe you might want to let your child to sort out their socks and try to roll it into a ball. It’s a fun and motivating exercise for their motor skill and building their self-confidence. 

"Roll, roll....I'm trying hard to roll it"

"Is this like this? I need help"

Play with the Frog

Date: 6^th June 2013

Day: Thursday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Play with the Frog

The children were very enthusiastic to play with the frog art that they did yesterday. So I got them to read the below nursery rhyme while acting with their frog accordingly.

The wordings are as followed:

Five little froggies sitting on the well,

One looked up and down he fell,

Froggie jumped high, froggie jumped low,

Four little froggies danced to and fro.

Four little froggies sitting on the well

(continue until there’s no more froggie)

I got 5 children to sit on the table as though they were sitting on the well. Then the other group of children will say the nursery rhyme until no more froggie left on the table. Some of the children were quite alert when comes to their turn especially they have to looked up and fell down. The children were so cooperative and they enjoyed the whole activities. 

Haha, the frog looked up and down he fell!

The froggie jumped high and low

Colour Mix

After the froggie activities, we still got some time. So I take this opportunity to ask them the mixture of colours.

Teacher: Which two colours I mix together you will get green?

Kwan Ming: Blue and yellow.

Teacher: Are you sure?

Kwan Ming: Yes, I saw it on television.

Phoeon: Red, yellow, pink….

Teacher: Is there any other answer?

Children: No….I don’t know…

Jun Qian: Can we test it?

Teacher: Sure.

I brought in some blue and yellow paint. First, I painted blue on the paper and then followed by yellow. The children were amazed to see the changes of the colours.

Children: Wow, it changed to green.

Children: Kwan Ming you are so clever.

I got some scrap paper ready and let the children tried it out themselves. 

Will it turn colour?

See, it turned green!

This is what the children did!

Art and Craft - Frog

Date: 5^th June 2013

Day: Wednesday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Art & Craft – Frog

Yesterday, the children had already printed both of their palms on the green manila card and cut it out according to the shape. Today, we continued with the making of the frog.

I prepared some small size paper plate for the children to paint green on it as the body of the frog. I get the children to come group by group for easy monitoring and guidance. 

After the paint had dried on their paper plate, I gave 2 big round shape in white and 2 small round shape in black for the children to cut out as the frog’s eye. At first, the children kept arguing that the whole craft doesn’t look like a frog. But then when they started to paste the eyes and legs to the paper plate, they started to realize that it could be a very cute frog especially for those who design their eyes in such a way. Lastly, I gave them a marker pen to draw the mouth of the frog. 

Frog is Green

Date: 4^th June 2013

Day: Tuesday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Frog is Green

Book Sharing – 365 Days of Baby Einstein

Jun Qian brought a book to share with his friends. There is a lot of information that children can find. Jun Qian’s mother is very considerate by labeling those pages that introduce to colours. Jun Qian wanted to share each page with his friends. So I hold one side with him holding on the other side, we went through each page with the children.

Some of the pages required the children to identify the object’s colour while some require the children to search for the required colour. All the children were very enthusiastic to test their eyesight to search for the answer.

                                                                                                

Art and Craft – Frog

There’s a picture of a frog and description of it in Jun Qian’s book. So I took the opportunity for the children to learn a little bit about the frog and do the art work for it.

I prepared some green manila card and got the children to trace their hand on it. The children need to cut out the hand and set it aside. It is the leg of the frog. Due to lack of time, we can only continue with the art tomorrow.  Hopefully all the children cut the trace lined accordingly to form the leg of the frog.

Green Colour

Date: 3rd June 2013

Day: Monday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Green Colour

We started with exploring items with green today.

Teacher: Could you name me something in green around you?

Children: Tree…leaf…grass…broccoli….lady finger…

Teacher: Wow, you all can name quite a number. How about animals that is in green?

Children: Frog…crocodile (the children insisted that it’s in green)…turtle…caterpillar…

Teacher: Not bad.

Then I introduced a song on green.

There’s a colour we all know (Tune: Old MacDonald Had a Farm)

There’s a colour we all know

G-R-E-E-N

It’s the colour that means “Go!”

G-R-E-E-N

Oh, grass is green and lettuce is green,

Leaves and spinach and peas are green

There’s a colour we all know

G-R-E-E-N

We took some time to go through all the words and meaning in the song before we all sang it together.

Video Clip – A Colour of His Own

I have shared this story with the children from the book. At the same time, I also found an interesting video sharing the same book. So I let the children watched it so that they could understand the story better. 

What's your favourite colour?

Date: 31^st May 2013

Day: Friday

Time: 4:30-5:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

What’s your favourite colour?

Today we moved on with colours. I got the children to think what their favourite colour is. They have to use this phrase: “My favourite colour is …….. because… (if they could tell).”

Kwan Ming: My favourite colour is green. (Why do you like green?) I don’t know.

Derek: My favourite colour is red because it looks like fire.

Yu Xi: My favourite colour is golden. (Why do you like golden colour?) It’s nice.

Phoeon: My favourite colour is yellow. It’s so beautiful.

Jia Jia: My favourite colour is orange because it’s very beautiful.

Kern Ee: My favourite colour is green. (Why do you like green?) I don’t know.

Zhen Yuan: My favourite colour is white. (Why do you like while colour?) A white fire. (I didn’t get it at first, then he was pointing towards the grill and the sky, I think he means the lightning that he sees.)

Yi Jie: My favourite colour is green. I like the tree. (He said that after I gave him some clues)

Jun Qian: My favourite colour is golden because it’s very beautiful.

Wei Lok: My favourite colour is golden. It’s very shinning.

Yi Han: My favourite colour is golden because it’s very bright.

Wei Ni: My favourite colour is golden. It’s so bright.

Yu Xin: My favourite colour is green. (Why?) I don’t know.

Jia Hoong: My favourite colour is green. (Why?) (He didn’t answer me.)

Wow, so many of the children’s favourite colour is golden colour. I guess it’s because it’s much shinier than yellow. I decided to get the children to work on one colour each week or for few days. So after a round of suggesting and voting, the children had decided to start off with green colour.

Storybook sharing – My Very First Book of Colour by Eric Carle

Wei Ni brought this book to share with her friends. This is a very interesting book where children had to match the picture to the colour on the top page. The pictures are big and the colours are beautiful as well.

Storybook Sharing – A Colour of His Own by Leo Lionni

I shared this book with the children about a chameleon who is searching for this own colours and found a friend as well. It’s an interesting book about colours.