How a boat/ship sink?

Date: 3^rd May 2013

Day: Friday

Time: 4:30 – 5:30pm

Class: Pomegranate

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Happy, happy transportation – How boat/ship sink?

The children know that a boat or ship floats. Therefore, today we had a discussion about how a boat or ship sinks. I threw the question to the children. This is what they replied.

Jia Jia: The rock hit the boat. (Teacher: The boat moves or the rock moves?)

Yu Xi: The boat moves. The boat bang the rock.

Phoeon: The boat is too small. (Teacher: Too many things on the boat? Phoeon said no. But still doesn’t know why it sinks.)

Jun Qian: The boat got a hole. Water go in.

Zhen Yuan: The ship moves like this. The ship hit this. (Teacher: What is this? A rock? He said yes. )

Derek: The ship moves. The rock moves. Then bang.

Kwan Ming: The water got elephant. (Teacher: Water got elephant? Kwan Ming just laughed.)

Wei Lok: Yes, the boat got a hole. The water got elephant and the boat sinks. (The children laughed.)

I used this chance to introduced liners which carried passengers in the olden time when there’s no jet. It can carries about 2,000 people on board. Now, most of the liners are used as cruise ships. By looking at the picture, the children argued that the liners looked very small from the picture. No matter how I described how big and how long it is, the children still can’t get the idea. So I had an idea to show them a good example of liners that is Titanic.

Just right before we call it a day, I showed them a short video clip about Titanic and how Titanic sink. The children were very anxious when they got to know that Titanic was sinking after hitting the iceberg. They came out with expression such as “Oh no!” “No no no…the ship is sinking.”

It can be a little scary for the young kids to learn the fact that people died during such incident. I have to comfort some of them after watching the video clip. I hope there’s no nightmare for them.