Observe the Crab

Date: 28^th March 2014

Day: Friday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm      

Class: Pomegranate      

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Observe the Crab

We practiced the song “Let It Go” and I added another phrase for them to read and sing.

Then, I have a frozen crab in hand. It’s a crab with flower pattern on it. I took it out from the fridge for the children to observe it. While the children were observing and touching the crab, they kept on complaining that the crab was pretty smelly. 

Derek holding the crab while Bo En looked at it. 

Xiang Qin touching the crab.

Qiao Yi dare to hold the crab.

Shang En observing the crab.

Song & Worksheet

Date: 27^th March 2014

Day: Thursday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm      

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Song & Worksheet

The children chose “Water and Ice” as their theme for their Mandarin Thematic class. The children are quite interested with the Disney movie – “Frozen”. The children are also interested to learn one of the song in it – “Let It Go”. Therefore, I used 15 minutes to read through the lyrics with the children before we sing. We only get to read parts of the lyrics and not the whole song. Some of the children could sing the song on their own while some just looked on. I plan to use only 15 minutes of each of our theme lesson to learn the lyrics and song, I guess it won’t take them too long to learn it up.

Worksheet: Spot the mistake

This interesting worksheet required the children to observe the picture of an underwater world. There are 6 mistakes in the picture itself. The children needed to spot it and tell me exactly what it is.

This doesn’t take them too long to spot all the mistakes. After the children had circled them all, they started to colour it. 

Fun with play dough

Date: 26^th March 2014

Day: Wednesday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm      

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Fun with play dough

We revised all the vocabulary before we start our class today.

I brought in some play dough for the children to explore with it. I have some red and green play dough. The children will have to decide which colour they would like to play with as no mixing of both colours allowed.

The theme of our play dough today is underwater sea creature. The children could use their imagination to make any sea creatures out from it. Some of the children didn’t know where to start. Then once they saw what their friend did, they also started to copy and try to make others on their own.

The girls are making some round and long stick with their play dough. Jia Xuan, Shang En & Xiang Qin. 

Yi Jie is trying to make a stingray. I;m not sure about Jing Heng. 

What's Qiao Yi doing? I wonder. Phey Zheng looks enjoying.

Game: Walk like a Crab

Date: 25^th March 2014

Day: Tuesday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm      

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Game: Walk like a Crab

We had learned quite some details about crab. Therefore, today we had a game of how crab walk.

Teacher: How does a crab walk?

Kwan Ming: Sideway.

Teacher: Anyone can demonstrate? [Some children stood up and started to walk sideway with their two hands acted like the crab’s pincer. How cute!]

Therefore, we had a racing game about how crab walked. The children were divided into 2 groups, where about 10 in each group. I brought in some toy fruits to be pretended as the food of the crab.

The rules are as followed:

-          Each child has to walk sideway like the crab from the starting line

-          Pick up a fruit with one of their hand and continue to walk sideway until they reached a pail at the finish line

-          Drop the fruit into the pail and run back to his/her group

-         By tapping gently on the next person’s head to indicate that he/she is allowed to start the race

-         Marks will be given according to the number of fruits collected.

-         Marks will be deducted for those who doesn’t follow instruction such as not walking sideway or tap too hard on their friend’s head

-         The winner will be rewarded

As a warm up round, I got every child to take turns to do it once. Then when the actual race started, the children will have to take turns until all the fruits are being collected.

Most of the children could follow the instruction and all of them had a fun time playing it!

Walking sideway like a crab. Jing Heng & Xin Yee.

Pick up a toy fruits on the way to the finish line. Teng Hong & Derek. 

Drop the fruit in the pail at the finish line. Elvina & Jia Xuan. 

Fingerplay & Worksheet

Date: 24^th March 2014

Day: Monday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm      

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Fingerplay & Worksheet

As the children are learning about crustacean animal now, therefore, shells are something that related to them. I introduced this finger play to them today:

Finger Play: Five Little Shells

5 little shells lying on the shore, 
     Crash went the waves and then there was 4.
4 little shells down by the sea, 
    Crash went the waves! Then there was 3. 
3 little shells, smooth as new, 
    Crash went the waves! Then there was 2. 
2 little shells, sparkling in the sun, 
    Crash went the waves! Then there was 1. 
1 little shell, left by itself, 
    I took it home, and put it on my shelf. 

We read it once. Then we have it with action. We might add in more action when the children are more familiar with it in the future. 

Worksheet: Drawing 5 spots on the starfish
Since I introduced the number 5 today, I chose this worksheet which is related to 5. Most of the children could understand after I had demonstrated it on the whiteboard. 

Art and Craft: Crab (Palm Printing) – Part II

Date: 21^st March 2014

Day: Friday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm      

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Art and Craft: Crab (Palm Printing) – Part II

We continued with the art work the children did yesterday. We looked at the picture of the palm printing and get the children to tell what is missing in the picture. The children could tell such as the eyes are missing, pincers are missing etc.

Therefore, I distributed the picture back to each of them for them to add on the missing parts and also decorate the rest of the part of the picture.

Shang En's simple drawing of her crab.

Kwan Ming's creative drawing of his crab picture.

Book Sharing: A House for Hermit Crab by Eric Carle

This is an interesting story about a hermit crab that is growing up. Hermit crab usually will exchange shells when they have outgrown their shell. Along his adventures of growing up, the hermit crab also picked up sea creatures such as sea anemone, starfish, coral, sea snail etc to be put on and decorated his shells.

Through the story, the children got excited to see those sea creatures that they could name. Besides that, it also introduced the names of the months from January to December. 

Art and Craft: Crab (Palm Printing)

Date: 20^th March 2014

Day: Thursday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm      

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Art and Craft: Crab (Palm Printing)

In order for the children to have a deeper impression about crab, I prepared some materials for doing the palm printing of the crab.

The materials needed as followed:

-          blank A4 size paper

-          orange water paint

This time round, I help the children to paint both of their hand while they placed their hand on the paper accordingly to form the picture of the crab. 

Teng Hong putting his palm to form the picture of the crab.

Jia Xuan got her beautiful palm printing of a crab.

Let’s learn more about crab

Date: 19^th March 2014

Day: Wednesday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Let’s learn more about crab

Today, we reviewed back all the vocabularies that we had learned so far. The vocabularies are as followed:

fish	gill	scales	shark	fin
whale	lung	seal	flippers	seahorse
snout	male	female	sea lion	walrus
tusk	pouch	crab	crustacean	pincer

Yesterday, I went through the concept of “pair” with the children as the crab has 8 legs, then it should also be counted as 4 pairs of legs. However, the children had some confusion about it. Therefore, today, I took them outside to look at their slippers as slippers come in pair. Hopefully from this activity, the children could understand the concept of pair. At the end of the activity, I get the children to walk back to their classroom in pairs. 

4 volunteers to make up the numbers of crab legs.

The children took off their slippers and started to count in pairs. 

The children walk back to their classrooms in pairs. 

Book Sharing: Crab

In the book of “Crab” it introduced quite some knowledge about crab such as their habitat, diet, young crabs, how to differentiate a male and female crab etc.

Book Sharing: Hermit Crab’s Friend

Cikgu Tee (the children’s BM teacher) is on leave today. As a result, I got some extra time with the children. I used this chance to bring in hermit crab. This story is in Mandarin; however, the children requested that I tell it in English. That’s a good start.

It’s a story about hermit crab and its friend such as the sea anemone. Hermit crab has soft shells and it always needed a shell to protect itself from its prey such as the octopus. The sea anemone will stick to the hermit crab’s shell and move around with it. Besides getting the leftover food from hermit crab, it also protects hermit crab from other dangerous prey. It’s a win-win situation.

Crab

Date: 18^th March 2014

Day: Tuesday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Crab

We had some brainstorming session about crab.

Teacher: Crab is considered a crustacean. Do you still remember where you see this word before? [No answer from the children. They are thinking hard about it.]

Teacher: Do you remember what do seals eat?

Children: Fish.....shellfish......crab...

Teacher: Crustacean is inclusive of crab, lobster, shrimp etc. [I drew a picture of a crab, lobster and shrimp.] Look at these creatures, what do they have in common?

Kwan Ming: They have a lot of legs.

Derek: They have this. [Showing his finger as pincer]

Kern Ee: Water.

Aiden: Water.

Teacher: Water is one of it. They live in water. How about their body? What do they have in common?

Kern Ee: Shell.

Teacher: Are those shells hard or soft?

Kwan Ming: Soft.

Teacher: Are you sure they are soft?

Children: No. Hard.

Teacher: Crustacean has hard shell and they mostly live in the water.

Then we look at the features of a crab. These are some of the features that the children mentioned:

-          It has eight legs

-          It has 2 pincers

-          It walk sideways

-          It stays in the sand, holes or rocks

-          It has a hard shell

It has 2 eyes

Worksheet: Alphabet Maze

Date: 17^th March 2014

Day: Monday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Worksheet: Alphabet Maze

Some of the children mentioned that they would like to learn another sea creature. Therefore, I suggested that we followed the one they had chosen earlier which we shall move in to either jellyfish/octopus or stingray. However, to my surprise, the children suggested something else instead. They wish to learn about crab. As a result, we shall move in to crab, lobster, hermit crab or prawn.

I needed some time to prepare the materials for our new subtopic – crab. Therefore, today, we shall do an alphabetical maze worksheet.

Most of the children could actually recognized the alphabet from “a – h”. However, the way “i” was printed a little differently, the children had some hard time finding it. Anyhow, the children managed to complete the rest of the maze by themselves. Only a few needed guidance.

Review on the Field Trip

Date: 13^th March 2014

Day: Thursday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Review on the Field Trip : KLCC Aquaria & KLCC Wading Pool

The children had an interesting trip yesterday and they were still talking much about it. Therefore, I used this opportunity to do a review of the visit. We started off the review from the starting of the journey in sequence - boarding the bus, arrived at KLCC, playing at the wading pool, having lunch in the park, took a walk to Aquaria KLCC and back to school.

Teacher: Which sea creatures or any creatures that attracted your interest during your visit at the Aquaria?

Xiang Qin: When the diver feeds the fish (Arapaima). [She said that in Mandarin.]

Kern Ee: Seahorse, shark, fish, jellyfish, octopus.

Kwan Ming: Shark, jellyfish, seahorse, stingray, fish.

Yi Jie: Turtle.

Bo En: Jellyfish.

Yee Shuen : Octopus.

Qiao Yi : Seahorse

Shang En : Octopus, jellyfish.

Xiao Xuan: [She didn’t say anything.]

Zhi Yi: Fish.

Aiden: Hammerhead shark [it’s a display in the Aquaria], octopus, jellyfish, seahorse, spider, otter.

Chloe: Spider, seahorse.

Xin Yee: Octopus, jellyfish.

Jing Heng: Octopus, shark.

Li Chuan: Eel, spider, millipede. [He said all these in Mandarin]

Teng Hong: Otter. 

Field Trip : KLCC Aquaria & KLCC Wading Pool

Date: 12^th March 2014

Day: Wednesday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Field Trip : KLCC Aquaria & KLCC Wading Pool

Most of the children arrived punctually today with all their belongings ready in their bag. Once everyone was ready, we boarded the bus around 8:40am. The children were merry and they sang songs in the bus. 

We arrived at KLCC Suria Park around 10am. Then we took a short walk to the wading pool. Once we arrived at the pool, the children got even more excited and wished to jump into the pool immediately. After getting them into their groups and changed into their swim suit, they headed to the wading pool. 

Approximately around 11am, the children took turn to get themselves changed and we all headed for another part of the park to have our lunch. We had it as a picnic style. I guess it was a wonderful experience to have picnic with their fellow friends outside of the school.

After lunch, we headed to the KLCC Aquaria which was just nearby. The children already started to talk about the sea creatures when they were all seated at the waiting hall while waiting for the entrance tickets.

I divided the children into 3 small groups which they were accompanied by Teacher Ng, Teacher Hoo and I. With the smaller group of about 7 children, we started to explore the sea creatures in the Aquaria such as seahorse, shark, jellyfish, octopus, eel, stingray etc.

We even got the chance to catch 3 different session of feeding schedule. The first one was the otter. Following by the freshwater fish, it has the largest freshwater fish – Arapaima in it. The last session was feeding the shark.  

The children were waiting for the shark feeding session.