Little Red Riding Hood Story

Date: 31^st July 2013

Day: Wednesday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Little Red Riding Hood

We moved back to our red colour theme. Today, I chose a famous fable that most children had heard before – Little Red Riding Hood. Before I played the children a short video about this story, we went through the character that would appear in the story.

Video Clip – Little Red Riding Hood Story

This is a simple and nice video clip that I found online with English subtitle. It’s easy for the children to listen and look at the words at the same time. Then we had a short discussion about the story especially when children confronted a stranger.

Literature Activities

This interesting activity is related to the story – “Little Red Riding Hood”. The children were divided into 3 groups with about 4 children in a group. Each group was given a dice, a piece of paper with sentences to fill in the blank and a piece of paper with pictures. There were 5 sentences for the children to fill in. They have to roll the dice and picked the picture accordingly to fill in the blank. The story might end up hilariously. The children had a good laugh at it. I think it was fun to have such activities. 

 

Sand art or Salt Art (Part V)

Date: 30^th July 2013

Day: Tuesday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Sand Art or Salt Art (Part V)

Today we focused on Derek and Zhen Yuan for their salt art. Both of them can choose 2 or 3 classmates to help out with them. Derek chose Wei Lok and Bee Chien while Zhen Yuan chose Jia Jia and Yi Han. All 6 of them started off with colouring their salt. I brought another 2 smaller glass bottles for both of them as Derek’s bottle was broken before he could start while Zhen Yuan’s glass bottle was too big.

Once all had done, both group of children started to fill up their glass bottle. I advise the children to give priority for Derek and Zhen Yuan to do it on their own while others just assist them whenever they need help. Co-operation is much required in this activity and I feel that the children somehow understand that much better. On the other hand, Derek shook his classmate’s salt art the other day. Other children were complaining about him. So today, I used this chance to talk about it with him. I can see that he understand why he shouldn’t have shaken his friend’s salt art. Hopefully he could remember this incident and be more considerate in our future activities. 

We have ended the salt art activities. We shall move on with our red colour theme before moving to other colours.

Sand Art or Salt Art (Part IV)

Date: 29^th July 2013

Day: Monday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Sand Art or Salt Art (Part IV)

Before I continued with the salt art, I shared a short story with the children, “The Little Red Hen”. The story is quite educational and the children learned about the moral of the story that if you wish to enjoy the final result, you might have to put in some effort by helping out.

Then I carried on with the salt art. Today, I only focus on Wei Lok as he brought his bottle last week but he couldn’t do it as the bottle was wet. So he was helping out his fellow classmates with their decoration of their glass bottles. Therefore, today I allowed him to choose a friend to help him while the rest of the class had free reading session.

Wei Lok chose Jia Jia to help him out with his salt art. He managed to use up all the fine salt he brought. However, only half of his bottle was filled up.

Tomorrow, we shall focus on Derek and Zhen Yuan’s salt art. 

Sand art or Salt art (Part III)

Date: 25^th July 2013

Day: Thursday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Sand Art or Salt Art (Part III)

Today, we continued with the salt art today. This time round, there were more children who brought the salt to school. Some brought very fine salt while some salt was a bit rough. So after looking at those packets of salt, we all decided to use up those packets of very fine salt first before we open others.

This time round, I gave each child a bowl, a spoon and some salt. Then I started to put the food colouring into each of the bowl. We have 3 colours – red colour, egg yellow colour and green colour. I tried to put different amount of food colouring to create light and dark colour of the salt mixture.

Then once everyone was done, the children started to put the salt mixture into their glass bottle. Only those children who brought their class bottles can do while others helped out. The children were amazed with their salt art. However, accident do happened with children around. Two of the children accidentally broke their glass bottles. They were quite disappointed with it. But I guess they learned something from it. 

Sand Art or Salt Art (Part II)

Date: 23^rd July 2013

Day: Tuesday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Sand Art or Salt Art (Part II)

The children were looking forward to doing this art. Before we start, Jun Qian brought a sand art souvenir that his mum got it from Egypt. It’s so beautiful design with mountains and bird. The children were amazed with it.

Only a few children brought the salt and bottles. I poured a little salt in a bowl and let the children taste it before we start to colour it. Yu Xi, Yu Xin, Wei Ni, Kern Ee and Zhen Yuan brought the salt. Therefore, I used the salt that they brought for them to mix the colours with the food colouring.

Bee Chien: Let me taste the salt! ooh, it's so salty.

Yu Xin is mixing the salt with green food colouring

Kern Ee: I want to mix it. 

We have limited food colouring therefore, some of the salt mixture I put more while some I put less for the children. Surprisingly, the mixture turned out to have lighter and darker colour. The children were amazed with such changes too. They were so excited to try it out with a glass bottle.

I used Yu Xi’s glass bottle. Yu Xi and Yu Xin worked together as a group to start with the sand art. At first, those children who had the colour mixture in their hand refused to share their coloured salt. However, after they had seen Yu Xi and Yu Xin put the sand into the bottles, they started to volunteer to join in as well. Finally, they all used up all their coloured salt and they were happy to see such beautiful art. This actually inspired those who didn’t bring their materials today and we shall continue this on Thursday. 

Let's put it in the bottle. 

See, I can do it!

Note: Pomegranate class children are going to I-City Snow world as their field trip tomorrow. Therefore, there’s no blog update for 24^th July (Wednesday).

Sand Art or Salt Art (Part I)

Date: 22^nd July 2013

Day: Monday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Sand Art or Salt Art (Part I)

In the Power Kids video, we saw this kid doing sand art by colouring the sand with various colour and put it randomly into a nice glass bottle. So today, I brought 2 different sand art into the class to show it to the children.

 

The children looked at the colour. The first bottle was made with sand. As the sand was quite grey and brown in colour, after we had coloured it, the colour looks dark. This one was made by Teacher Ng and her daughter.

However, the 2^nd bottle was made from white sand, therefore, the colour looks brighter and lighter.

The children prefer the lighter colour one. It’s not easy to get white sand unless we go to the beach.

I have no idea who made this but it was left on my table for quite a long time.

Then an idea pop up. Salt might do the trick. So I quickly get some salt from the school kitchen and returned with a bottle of red food colouring. I mixed it in front of the children and let them see the changes of it. 

The worry was that salt might get dissolved when it touches liquid. Fortunately, it didn’t melt. The colour turned out to be quite pretty. So I told the children to try to get a packet of fine salt and a glass bottle from home. Then we shall begin our salt art this week. 

I found a simple story about “The Golden Goose”. The children took turn to read each pages of the story. The class ended after that. 

Colour the Malaysia Flag

Date: 19^th July 2013

Day: Friday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Colour the Malaysia Flag

The sun art that the children did the other day had dried. So I used a little time to add on something to it. I asked the children to describe the sun. I gave an example: This is a bright yellow sun.

The children were quite good in description. Below are the descriptions that they gave.

1)      This is a shinny sun.

2)      This is a beautiful sun.

3)      This is a hot sun.

4)      This is a bright sun.

5)      This is a bright yellow sun.

Then the children choose one of the lines above to describe their sun and wrote the line beside their sun art.

Our discussion the other day was about Malaysia flag. Therefore today, I got the children to colour the Malaysia flag accordingly. Surprisingly, the children’s concept of the flag colour is very clear. They could actually colour it correctly. We shall continue a little more on the flag before moving on to other topics for next week. 

Book Sharing - Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?

Date: 18^th July 2013

Day: Thursday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Book Sharing – Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?

We continued a little bit about yesterday’s discussion about Malaysia state. Yi Han went home and got some answers from her father. Therefore, I listed out the names of state that she got from her father. Then from there, I added other states name and got the children to read it. The Malaysia flag colouring page is not ready. Therefore, we continue with other activities for today.

Yu Xi told me yesterday that she got this book, “Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?” by Eric Carle so I requested her to bring and share with her fellow classmate today. Besides that, Yu Xi said that she wanted to read it to her friends. Therefore today, we started with this reading session by Yu Xi.

I hold the book while Yu Xi read along. All the children listen quietly. From this book, the children could actually repeat the lines with the colours as well. It’s an interesting book about colour.

Book Sharing – From First to Last by Dr Seuss

Since the children were sitting quietly, so I choose to share another interesting story with them. It’s a story by Dr Seuss. It’s full of imagination and it also mentioned about some colours in the story. The title of the story is “Oh, the Thinks you can Think!”

The children were amazed about colourful and funny creatures that appeared in the story.

We ended the class with some free running activity outside of the classroom for some stretching and refreshing moment for the children. 

Sun Art and others

Date: 17^th July 2013

Day: Wednesday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Sun Art & Others

I showed the children a colouring picture of Malaysia Flag.

Teacher: What do we call this?

Children: Flag….a flag….1 Malaysia.

Teacher: Yes, it’s a flag. Do you remember what colour for each part of the flag?

Children: We did this in 4 years old……we colour this before…..

Teacher: Let’s start with the moon. What colour should it be?

Children: Yellow.

Teacher: Wow, not bad. How about this one?

Children: The sun is yellow too. (The sun? Oh, the children thought that is a sun. )

Teacher: This is not a sun, this is a star. Let’s count and see how many pointed ends does it have? (The children counted, it’s fourteen.)

Teacher: It represents 12 states and 2 Federal Territories in Malaysia. Do you know the name of all the states in Malaysia? (I wrote down a few states such as Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Labuan.)

Jia Jia: Pahang.

Teacher: Anyone else? (All given are places that children visited such as Putrajaya, Cyberjaya, Genting Highland, Cameron Highland…etc)

Note: Extra activity for home assignment is for the children to find out the name of all the states in Malaysia by asking their parents about it.

Art and Craft – Sun Art

Since we are still focusing on yellow colour, therefore today I got them to do a palm printing of the sun. I let those children who could colour their own palm and print it on the paper itself. Before the class ended, the children had chosen the next colour – red. So from tomorrow onwards we shall focus on red colour. 

Jun Qian: Look, I painted my palm yellow!

Kern Ee: I want to do a beautiful sun.

Weaving Art (Part II)

Date: 16^th July 2013

Day: Tuesday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Weaving Colourful Papers (Part II)

Today, we continued with our weaving art work from yesterday. Most of the children couldn’t complete it as most of them need to re-do it. Besides that, Yi Han was absent yesterday. Therefore, I got those who had completed yesterday to help around and guide those who needed help.

Fortunately, most of the children had a better idea today and could actually complete it on their own without much guidance. They were happy that they had finished the weaving art.

Games – Throwing the Bean Bag

Before we end our class today, I got them to a warm up game of recognizing the colours and their names. Most of them could recognize it while only one or two needs help. Basically, I used the colour round rubber ring for this game.

I put 5 colour rubber rings on the line. Those colours are red, orange, green, blue and yellow. I also prepared some flash cards for the children to pick and read it. At the same time, I got a small bean bag for the children to throw.

This is how we start. Each child will have to pick a card, read it loud and throw the bean bag accordingly. The rule here is the bean bag has to land inside the ring. This is also practicing the connection of their eyes and hands.

After 2 rounds of it, I let the children randomly say out the colour and throw at the colour rubber ring that they mentioned. It’s a fun game!

Weaving Art (Part I)

Date: 15^th July 2013

Day: Monday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Weaving Colourful Papers

It’s a brand new week again. Despite we are focusing on yellow colour, yet I wish to let the children explore a little bit out of just yellow colour. Therefore, today, I prepared some black colour based paper where I had already cut in order for the children to weave with colour paper strip which I had also prepared for them.

However, only a few children managed to get what I want while others got confused with the sequence of the weaving technique. After that few children completed their colour weaving, they started to go around helping out others who needs guidance.

From this activity, the children could actually practice their problem solving skills and also stimulate their willingness to guide others who needs help. I’m pleased to see such harmonious atmosphere among the kids.

Besides that, it also teaches the children to form their weaving arts in colour patterns. Though some randomly choose the colours but some actually wanted to go by colour patterns. 

Kwan Ming: I want to have a colour pattern. 

Derek: Is this correct?

Bee Chien was guiding Phoeon with her weaving art. 

Lemon Printing

Date: 12^th July 2013

Day: Friday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Lemon Printing

I went out for a field trip with the other class, therefore, there’s no blog update for 11^th July. We did our lemonade on Wednesday. I kept all the squeezed lemon in the fridge. I sliced the all the lemon that we used the other day so that they children could do a lemon printing today.

The rule is that they could use any colours to create their own picture. Before we start, I used the three primary colours : red, yellow and blue to do colour mixture and create another 3 colours out of it. As a result, the children have 6 colours: red, yellow, blue, green, purple and orange to do their painting. It is also a revision for the children about colour mixture. 

The making of lemonade

Date: 10^th July 2013

Day: Wednesday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Making lemonade

Kwan Ming, Derek and Zhen Yuan wanted to share the yellow items that they brought. So we started off with the sharing session today.

Kwan Ming: A yellow car.

Derek: Dinosaur.

Teacher: Wow, it’s yellow. What’s the name of the dinosaur?

Derek: I don’t know.

Teacher: Anyone knows the name of this dinosaur? (The children gave all sorts of names and laughed at it. But all those answers were incorrect.)

Teacher: Why not you all go back and find out the name of the dinosaur and tell us on Friday.

Zhen Yuan: (He was holding a cartoon character from “Despicable Me”) Blah Blah Blah…

Teacher: Is that the name of this toy?

Zhen Yuan: I don’t know.

Teacher: Children, anyone knows that name of this toy?

Children: Banana…..Potato…. (the children were laughing again while saying this) The toy only know how to say “banana”, “potato”… (I have no idea about the name of the toys anyhow, it’s interesting for the children to share their things)

Jia Jia, Phoeon, Yu Xin brought each a lemon to school today. Three children out of the class couldn’t consume honey. Therefore, I changed the ingredients to sugar. Before we headed on to the making of the lemonade, we had an interesting discussion about the ingredients of lemonade.

Teacher: Can you guess the ingredients of making the lemonade?

Children: Lemon…..sugar…..honey (we cut out honey, so we opt for sugar)

Wei Lok: Flour.

Teacher: Flour? Is that the one that we used to bake cake? (Wei Lok nodded his head)

Therefore, I played a short and simple video about how to make lemonade for the children. Wei Lok laughed, “Haha, no flour.” There’s only 3 simple steps to make lemonade:

1) Squeeze the lemon

2) Add sugar

3) Dilute with water

Phoeon suggested those who brought the lemon will cut the lemon into half. The children agreed. Therefore we started by cutting the lemon into half. As we don’t have a juicer, I asked the children how we could squeeze the juice out from the lemon.

Children: With our hand…..hammer….(the children all laughed while saying that)

So, I got Jun Qian to try out with his hand. He said it’s very difficult to squeeze. Then I got him a fork and asked him to try again. I showed him how he could use the fork to twist and turn the flesh of the lemon to allow the juice to come out. He said it’s much easier by doing so.

One by one the children queued up and waited for their turns to poke the fork into the lemon and squeeze the juice out. At the same time, the children tasted the juice on their hand and commented that it’s so sour! Surprisingly, some said nice.

After that, I poured all the juice into a jug without the seeds. I started to add in 2 tablespoon of sugar and diluted it with some water. Unfortunately, it tasted so sour that I myself can’t take it too. So I added in some more sugar. The children counted together as I only add 2 tablespoon each time. With this repeating action until I got a balance mixture of taste. I asked the children how many spoon of sugar I have added so far. Children: “Thirteen.” Wow, the lemons are really sour. Lastly, I found some ice cube and put it into the mixture and our lemonade is done. The children were so excited and wanted to taste it immediately. Happily each of the children got their drink and that’s ended our class for today.

Note: With adult supervision and guidance

I squeeze.....

So much juice!!

Yellow, Yellow, Yellow

Date:9^thJuly 2013

Day: Tuesday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Yellow, Yellow, Yellow

Yesterday the children had already voted for a new colour to be learned. The children suggested quite a few colours such as red, pink, purple, yellow, black etc. However, most of the children voted to learn about yellow. So this week we shall move into yellow colour.

Today, we did a brainstorming session about things in yellow. We started with animals, followed by fruit or vegetables. These were the things that the children mentioned:

Animal: lion, leopard, giraffe, duckling, baby chick, duck

Fruit or Vegetables: lemon, banana, star fruit, pineapple (fresh), durian (fresh), apple (fresh – pale yellow)

Coincidence, I have a lemon to show it to the class. Jia Jia’s parents put some lemon slices in her water bottle, she also shared it with us. Besides that, I had some dry corn cob; I showed it to the children. They excitedly shouted out, “Corn”

Teacher: What’s the colour of the corn?

Children: Yellow.

Game – Who has gone with the wind

It’s had been quite a while we didn’t play this game. The children asked if they could play this. Since today, many of them were wearing all sorts of colours, it would be interesting. So the game ended the class for today.

Home work for children:

1)      To find a yellow thing from home to share with their fellow classmate

2)      To ask if they could take honey as a drink or not (I wish to make honey lemon juice)

Rainbow

Date: 8^th July 2013

Day: Monday

Time: 3:30-4:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Colours

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Rainbow

Jia Jia brought something in golden colour and she would like to share it with her classmate.

Teacher: What is this?

Jia Jia: Golden spoon. Golden fork.

Teacher: Who does it belongs to?

Jia Jia: My mother.

Teacher: Where did your mother got this from?

Jia Jia: From a friend. (She replied this in Mandarin.)

Book Sharing – Colour Dance by Ann Janas

This is an interesting book introducing the primary colours, blue, yellow and red. The mixture of colours that creates new colours amazed the children. Then I asked the children if we could paint the 7 rainbow colours by only using these 3 primary colours. The children doubt about it.

Therefore, I prepared the 3 primary colours and some papers. Before I start, I got the children to tell me the sequence of the colours of the rainbow. Then from there, we look at the mixture of the colours. The children were surprised to find out that those colours in between the primary colours are the mixture of it.

I started with red. Then I painted yellow where I also got orange in between. After that I painted blue where I will get green in between. Then I painted red again to make indigo. I have to put a little bit more of blue to make it darker. Then lastly for violet would be the mixture of blue and more red instead.

The children also tried out to paint the rainbow of their own. Even though some of them didn’t manage to get all the colours done but they had tried their best. I’m proud of them.