Train Making (part I)

Date: 20^th March 2013

Day: Wednesday

Time: 4:30 – 5:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Happy, Happy Transportation – Train Making

The children were very excited as they know that they were going to make the train today. We sat down in a corner to go through all the materials we have: all sizes of boxes, tissue rolls, egg cartons, soft drinks can etc. Everyone is eyeing on the materials to see which one to choose later.

Before we start, I let the children drew lots. This is to give chance for them to work with everyone and not with the same friend all the time. I divided them into 4 groups with about 3 children in each group. It’s a mixture of 5 years old and 6 years old.

They were so eager to start by looking at the boxes and discussed how to start. Only a one or two children still couldn’t get the idea of a group making only one train and they seems to walk around trying to create one for their own. After a short talk with them, they seem to move back to their group and work together. 

The children tried all kinds of ways, glue or even using the sticky tape also can’t get their parts of trains together. It seems will get lose. We shall have a review and later discussion tomorrow on how to get the parts of the train together.

At the beginning most of the children were quite lost of how to start. But after they have observed others, they seem to have some idea what to do with the materials. I’m glad that after a while they manage to form ideas by putting things together. Working in a group helps them to stimulate better idea to form it.

However only 3 groups of children managed to complete their train while one of the group was not successful. We shall continue tomorrow.