Whale Origami

Date: 28^th January 2014

Day: Tuesday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Whale Origami

The children had some Chinese New Year celebration such as calligraphy writing, visiting each other class etc in the morning. It’s such a joyful and merry event.

There were some absentees in the class today. I told the children that I shall play the video on Wednesday.

So today, we did a whale origami. For those 6 years old children, they somehow understand about folding an origami but for the 5 years old children mostly they needed guidance throughout the whole activities.

 

 

I wish to add on some language activities to this activity, however due to insufficient of time we shall continue tomorrow and watched the video at the same time. 

Movie Time: The Whale Rider

Date: 27^th January 2014

Day: Monday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Movie Time: The Whale Rider

I have the VCD of “Whale Rider”. Therefore I played the first disc for the children to watch.

The summary of the story is as followed:

In a small New Zealand coastal village, Maori claim descent from Paikea, the Whale Rider. In every generation for more than 1000 years, a male heir born to the Chief succeeds to the title. The Chief’s eldest son is Porourangi. His wife gave birth to a twin, a boy and a girl. Unfortunately, she and the baby boy die during child birth. Only the baby girl survived and they named her Pai. Koro, the grandfather to Pai, refused to acknowledge Pai as the tribe inheritors when Pai’s father has no intention to became the next Chief as he decided to move far away from his people physically and emotionally. This makes Koro called for all the 12 years old boy in the tribe to be trained as the next Chief. Meanwhile, deep within the ocean, a massive herd of whale is responding, drawn towards Pai and their twin destinies. When the whale became stranded on the beach, Koro is sure this signals an apocalyptic end to his tribe. Until one person prepares to make the ultimate sacrifice to save the people.

The story took place in quite a slow pace and there’s a lot of scene where the children doesn’t understand. Half way through the children started to wind and wanted to leave.

I guess, the children were not ready for such kind of movie. Therefore, I shall just pick the last ending part about 10 minutes to see how Pai rescued the whale. The children were curious to find out what happened to Pai too. 

The Whale Rider

Date: 24^th January 2014

Day: Friday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

The Whale Rider

I wanted to introduce this movie “Whale Rider” to the children. The movie might be a little slow pace for the children to understand. Therefore, I think I shall only play the last part of the movie.

However, I found a short clip on youtube to show it to the children. It’s just a 7 minutes video clip. It’s about Pai, the girl in the movie, was talking to the whale and she managed to lead the whale back to the sea. Unfortunately, the video clip didn’t show what happened after Pai leaded the whale back to the sea.

Children: What happen to the girl?

Teacher: I’m not sure. What do you think?

Kern Ee: The girl die.

Teacher: She die?

Kern Ee: Yes, cannot breathe.

Teacher: Just like the whale. They can’t stay too long in the water.

The children were interested to know the ending of the story. Yet, there were some of them wanted to watch from the beginning. I’m not sure if the children would enjoy it but I shall just play the movie next week and see. 

Art and Craft: Hand printing

Date: 23^rd January 2014

Day: Thursday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Art and Craft: Hand printing

Today, we do an art about the scales of the fish. I drew a big picture of a fish for each of the children. They have to use either any colour pencil or crayons to draw the outline of the fish. Then later on, they will use their hand to do the fish’s scale printing.

These are some of the pictures done by the children:

The result of the hand print is quite satisfying. 

The Snail and the Whale

Date: 22^nd January 2014

Day: Wednesday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Story Telling : The Snail and the Whale

I couldn’t find the English version of the book. Therefore I read the story in Mandarin. But in between, I do describe the story in some simple English for the children to learn some phrases or description.

The story is about a snail felt bored staying on the rock and wish to have an adventure out to the sea. It wrote a message on the rock asking for a free ride. A blue whale came to reply him. The whale took the snail at its’tail tip and set off for an adventure through the sea, to land where there’s beach and volcano, under the sea to look at sea creatures etc. Unfortunately, the sound of the motorboats scared the whale and it swam in to a cove. It was low tide then. As the whale was too big to swim out to sea by itself, the snail had an idea. He went to a school near to the cove and asked for help by writing a message : “Help the Whale”. The school children went off to look for the fire engine to help out the stranded whale. Finally, both the snail and the whale managed to be free from the situation and swim back into the sea.

The children finds the story very interesting especially when they see the snail still could grab hold firmly on the tip of the tail of the whale.

Then I asked the children if there’s any part of the story that attracted them.

Teng Hong: The shark.

Kern Ee: All of them.

My sharing to the children is that although we might be small sometimes but as long as we have the courage, we could solve a problem by ourselves. 

Trying out the Fishing Game

Date: 21^st January 2014

Day: Tuesday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Trying out the Fishing Game

I have not prepare the fishing rod, yet I have laminated the 12 sea creatures’ name onto a fish shape body. Then we went through the names of those sea creatures. The children were still not very familiar with all those names, therefore, I reduce to just six pictures for them to recognize.

We started off with the following sea creatures:

seahorse	sea anemone	starfish
shark	dolphin	stingray

The children come out one by one trying out to recognize the names of the sea creatures. Some of them could name more than 2 while some none.

As a result, I didn’t introduce the fishing game to them yet. We shall practice more. Hopefully by next week, they could start the fishing game on their own. 

Book Sharing: Sea Mammal In Alphabetical Order

Kwan Ming brought a book to share with us. All the sea mammals were arranged according to alphabetical order. 

Video Sharing : BBC Documentary about Humpback whale

Date: 20th January 2014

Day: Monday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Video Sharing : BBC Documentary about Humpback whale

Kwan Ming brought an alphabet book about sea mammal. We went through the book from A-Z of the name of the sea mammal that named after it. Example, E is for elephant seal etc. It’s an interesting book about names of sea mammal.

I believe the children still have a very weak impression of the whale as most of us have not really seen it with our own eyes. Therefore, I played a video that shared about humpback whale.

After watching the short video about humpback whale, I also played a 15 minutes video about killer whale. The children got quite excited especially when they noticed that the killer whale is about to catch some penguins and fish for their food.  

Fish vs Whale

Date: 16th January 2014

Day: Thursday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Fish vs Whale

We went in a little further about whale today. Whales are mainly divided into two main groups: Baleen and Toothed.

These are the comparison between a Baleen and a Toothed whale.

Types	Baleen	Toothed
Diet	Shrimp, krill, small fish	Squid, fish & marine animals
Blow Hole	two	single
Example of whales	Humpback whales, Right whales etc	Sperm Whale, Narwhal etc

Since now that the children had some idea about a fish and a whale, therefore, I got them to see if they could compare a fish with a whale.

Teacher: Now, could you tell me the difference between a fish and a whale?

Kern Ee: Fish is small.

Teacher: Right. Then, whale is big.

Derek: Fish cannot jump high. Whale can jump high.

Teacher: Is there anymore other differences?

Derek: Fish got fin on top. Whale don’t have.

Teacher: Fish is cold-blooded. Then how about whale?

Children: Warm-blooded

Teacher: Fish lay eggs. How about whales?

Kwan Ming: Whale lays baby.

Teacher: How many babies each time?

Children: One.

Teacher: Fish breathe by using …..? (I use hand movement to give hints)

Children: Gills.

Teacher: How about whales?

Children: Lungs. (This actually took them a while to answer me.)

Then I also showed them a picture of a pity whale which died on the land. Therefore, I throw a question to them asking the children “Why did the whale die?”

Children: Got rubbish. (They saw the next picture which was full of rubbish at the shore)…people touch and eat the whales….the hunter eat the baby.

This gives the children some thoughts about caring for the environment such as not throwing rubbish into the river or sea to avoid marine animals accidentally eat those and got suffocated. 

More on whales

Date: 15th January 2014

Day: Wednesday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

More on whales

Now, I wonder if the children came back with an answer for “Why can’t a whale sleep for too long in the water?”

Kern Ee: I don’t know. They will die.

Teacher: How will the whale die?

Derek: I don’t know. My father didn’t say.

Teacher: (giving hints) If the whales don’t move, do you think the whale will go up to the surface or down to the bottom of the sea?

Children: Down… to the bottom.

Teacher: How does the whale breathe? Do they use gills or lungs?

Children: (after a short thought) lungs.

Teacher: If the whale needs to breathe by using lungs, they need to move up to the surface for breathing. If the whale goes down to the bottom of the sea, what will happen to the whale?

Kern Ee: The whale will die.

Teacher: The whale will drown. They can’t swim to the surface that fast. They are very big and heavy.

Getting prepare for a fishing pond

I wanted the children to learn some vocabulary through games. Therefore, I get the children to colour some underwater sea creatures’ pictures and cut out the shape of a fish that I had printed out. Hopefully by next week, we could set up the play corner for this. 

Whales

Date: 13th January 2014

Day: Monday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Whales

We had a quick round of revision on the parts of the fish and also on the facts about fish.

Facts about whales:

•        Whales are mammals.
•      Whales breathe underwater using lungs. Therefore, they need to come up to the surface to breathe all the time. 
•      Whales give birth to one calf at a time, within 1-3 years.
•      Whales are warm-blooded animals.
•      There are 2 main types of whales, Toothed and Baleen.

After going through the facts about whales, I found an interesting session where I wanted the children to think about it or even going back home to find out from their parents. The question is “Why can’t whale sleep for too long underwater?”

Parts of a fish

Date: 10th January 2014

Day: Friday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Parts of a fish

Before moving in to other specific topic about underwater world, I went through the parts of the fish with the children today.

These are the vocabulary that they learned:

eye	mouth	head	fin
fins	tail	scales	gills

 

 

We went through the vocabulary then I got them to paste the parts accordingly. The children took turn to it for 2 rounds.

The children wanted to learn more about whales. Therefore, we shall start off with whales next week onwards.

Before we went into whales, I would like to let the children learn some facts about fish. Therefore, I prepared some simple lines for the children to go through and hopefully they could do some comparison with the whales in our later lesson in this week.

The facts about a fish are as followed:

u       Fish can swim.

u       Fish lives in the water.

u       Fish breathe underwater using gills and not lungs.

u       Fish have scales and fins. (no hair or fur)

u       Fish lay MANY eggs.

u       Fish is cold-blooded. 

Children could bring any books related to whales. It can be storybooks, information books or even toys about whales to share with their fellow classmates. 

Art Work – Fish Printing (Part II)

Date: 9th January 2014

Day: Thursday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Art Work – Fish Printing (Part II)

We continued a little further about the art work that we had done yesterday. The children added an eye and a mouth for their fish art.

Teacher: What is the fish doing?

Children: Swimming.

Children: In the water.

Teacher: What is the fish doing? Look at these blue blue round circles and you have painted. What are those?

Children: Bubbles.

Teacher: Yes, bubbles. Who is making those bubbles?

Children: The fish.

I have cut out some words for the children to reconstruct it to a correct sentence. The sentence is “The fish is blowing bubbles.” I put each word in a bowl. The children needs to look for the words and pasted them onto their fish art.

The six years old children managed to do it on their own while the five years old children mostly needed guidance. 

Kern Ee putting the words in order.

Xiang Qin managed to arrange the words on her own.

This is the outcome of the work. 

Book Sharing – Bubble Bubble & Art Work

Date: 8th January 2014

Day: Wednesday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Book Sharing – Bubble Bubble & Art Work

“Bubble Bubble!” is a noisy yet interesting book about a little fish who searched for the sea creatures who made the bubble. He bumped into an octopus, a dolphin, a turtle and finally found out that the whale was the one who were blowing bubbles.

Art Work – Palm printing

I prepared four colours – red, yellow, orange and green for the children to paint their hand to form the colour on the body of a fish. Then at the same time, I also prepared some blue paint for the children to print bubbles made by the fish. 

Book Sharing – Undersea Creatures

Date: 7th January 2014

Day: Tuesday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Book Sharing – Undersea Creatures

Kwan Ming brought a book called “Undersea Creatures” where it introduced all sorts of sea creatures. The children listen quietly as we went through all of it. Among the creatures mentioned in the book were as followed:

Lion fish, great white shark, banded sea krait, octopus, blackdevil anglerfish, leafy sea dragon, white spotted puffer fish, horseshoe crab, leopard seal, Portuguese man-of-war, brown of thorns sea star, giant moray eel, flying fish, blue spotted stingray, giant tubeworm and killer whale.

Out of all those creatures that we had gone through, the children decided to start with whale. Therefore, next week we shall focus on whales while this week we shall focus on some basic facts and art work about fish.

Book Sharing – Big Al by Andrew Clements and Yoshi

This is a story about a big, friendly yet scary looking fish who wanted to have friends to play with. Its name is Big Al. With its’ size and sharp teeth, it always scared other fish away. Though he tried a lot of ways such as disguise with seaweeds, coloured himself as other fish, or even buried himself in the sand at the bottom of the sea to look smaller didn’t help him to get any new friends.

However, one day, he rescued a school of fish where they were caught in the fisherman’s net. He ripped off the net with his sharp teeth and saved them. Finally, all the fish befriended with Big Al who is a fierce looking but friendly fish.