Worksheet - Word Search

Date: 26^th February 2014

Day: Wednesday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Worksheet : Word Search

Today I had chosen to do a worksheet with the children. It’s about the name of the sea creatures such as sea lion, stingray, anemone etc.

The children had their first experience of doing the word search last week, therefore, they could searched for the words much faster this time. 

Most of the children could actually follow accordingly and complete the work. 

More about Seal

Date: 25^th February 2014

Day: Tuesday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

More about Seal

In order for the children to have a deeper impression about seal, I played them a short video for them to learn more about seals.

During the video, we had some revision about the facts of seal such as the features of the seal, the diet of the seals and the predators of the seal.

Video Sharing: Video for Kids – Animal – Seal.

After watching the video, the children drew some pictures of the seal that they had seen. By reminding them about the features of the seal such as the shape of their head, the shape of their body, the numbers of flippers they have etc. The children somehow managed to draw the seal accordingly. It looks quite alike too. 

Seal

Date: 24^th February 2014

Day: Monday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Seal

We shall go in to another kind of underwater world creature. This time, we shall touch a little on this marine mammal where the children might be interested to learn. Before we move in too deeply, I showed them some facts about seal through the power point that I had prepared.

Facts on Seal

-        Can be found in all waters of the world

-        From the Arctic and Antarctic to tropical waters

-        Belong to the order Pinnipedia, which means “fin-footed”

-        Pinnipeds have four flippers – one pair in front, and one pair in back

There are 3 different families in the Pinnipedia group:

-        1) Phocidae – true seals

-        2) Otaridae – fur seals and sea lions

-        -3) Odobenidae – walrus

The features of the Pinnipedia group:

-        They are mammals

-        They are warm-blooded

-        Give birth and nurse their young

-        Breathe air

-        Have fur

Seal’s Diet

-        All seals are carnivores

-        They eat: fish, crustaceans and shellfish

Seal’s Predator: Orcas (“Killer Whale”)

Voting and Book Sharing

Date: 21^st February 2014

Day: Friday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Voting and book sharing

Before moving in to the book sharing session for today, we had a short discussion about what’s the next underwater sea creature that the children would like to learn. The children suggested some sea creatures such as dolphin, octopus, seahorse, seal and stingray. The children voted for their favourite sea creatures. The result of the voting was as followed:

-          dolphin (vote: 7)

-          octopus (vote: 5)

-          seahorse (vote: 15)

-          seal (vote: 16)

-          stingray (vote: 8)

As a result we shall start off next week with seal. It’s a marine mammal. Looking at the sea creatures that the children had suggested, we all decided that we shall cover all these as it’s the children’s favourite one. Therefore, we shall learn about all these in such sequence:

-          1^st : seal

-          2^nd: seahorse

-          3^rd: stingray

-          4^th : dolphin

-          5^th: octopus

Dear parents, you may wish to look into any books, VCD or even games suggestions for the above sea creatures to enhance the children’s understanding and interest.

Book sharing: The Shark in the Dark by Peter Bently

There’s a greedy shark which lives in the dark sea. When the shark is hungry, he will swim out to look for food. All the other fish were very scare and not willing to be his food. One day, when the hungry shark swam towards the school of fish again, they all went and hide at the shipwreck and asked squid if he could help them. Squid got an idea.

When the shark saw a dim shadow swimming towards him, he thought it was a little fish and might be delicious for a meal. However, when the dim shadow comes nearer and nearer, it appeared to be the shadow of a whale. The whale wanted to eat the shark. Therefore, the shark swam away quickly without any food that day.

As the dim shadow of the whale swam towards the light, it was just a big group of fish. The fish made up the shape of the whale and scared the shark away.

What does the sea water taste like?

Date: 20^th February 2014

Day: Thursday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

What does the sea water taste like?

Teacher: Where does the shark lives? Or the whale lives?

Children: Water.

Teacher: Water? In the river?

Children: No, not river. River is very small.

Teacher: Are you sure the river is very small? Alright, now, where does the shark live?

Children: Sea.

Children: Sea got beach.

Teacher: Yes, there’s beach there. Do you know the taste of the sea water?

The children shook their head.

I had prepared some water in two different containers which one is just plain water while the other one added with salt. I asked the children to observe and see if there’s any difference in it. They said no difference.

Children were taking turns to take a cup of water

I started to give each child some small amount of the plain water to taste.

Teacher: What’s the taste of it?

Children: Sweet….bitter (they said that in Mandarin).. (bitter? Hmm, not sure if it’s true?!)

Aiden: Taste good!

Then, I gave them another small amount of the salt water.

Teacher: What’s the taste of it.

Children: (stick out their tongue)..Yucks!!! Salty(said that in Mandarin)……not good.

Teacher: Would you like to have some more?

Children: No, no, no!

Teacher: Which water makes you feel like to drink more of the plain water?

Children: The 2^nd one. (However, some were confused with my question and said the other way round.) 

"Oh gosh!" said the children.

Kwan Ming: "Yucks!"

Anyhow, now the children know that the sea creatures live in the salt water. 

Whale Gets Stuck by Charles Fuge & Karen Hayles

Date: 19^th February 2014

Day: Wednesday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Book Sharing: Whale Gets Stuck by Charles Fuge & Karen Hayles

It’s midsummer in the Arctic where the sun shone all day and night. The whale loves to swim in the open sea. It loves to leap out of the water but unfortunately it landed on the ice floe and not back into the water. All the animals such as walrus, dolphin, narwhal, polar bear also came to help. However, none of their plans worked.

All the animals got tired and resting on the ice. The whale was sobbing. No one noticed that the ice floe was cracking. Then suddenly, all the animals fell into the icy water when the ice floe finally gave way. The whale was free at last.

Worksheet: Whale

It’s a maze worksheet of a baby whale searching for the mother whale. After the children had found the correct pathway, they will colour it. 

Art and Craft: Shark (Part II)

Date: 18^th February 2014

Day: Tuesday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Art and Craft: Shark (Part II)

Most of the children had completed the outline of the shark and the teeth of it. Therefore, today, I prepared 2 small circles for each child to cut as the eyes for the shark. The children needed to draw the eyeball by using a black colour and pasted it on the shark art they did earlier.

After that, the children started to draw those sea creatures that a shark would eat such as fish, jellyfish, eel etc to be pasted at the mouth of the shark as though it’s eating it.

These are some of the art work that the children did:

Jing Heng: My shark eats jellyfish.

Kern Ee: A fish in my shark's mouth. 

Derek's shark.

Art and Craft: Shark

Date: 17^th February 2014

Day: Monday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Art and Craft: Shark

Today, we are going to do an art about shark. The materials that I had prepared are as followed:

-          A piece of blue colour paper with the outline of a shark being drawn on it

-          One small piece of paper plate with the outline of a shark’s teeth on it

-          Gum and scissors

Most of the children had some problem in cutting the corner and needed guidance. However, all children managed to complete the cutting today. For those who had completed, they started to draw the shark’s food such as fish, jellyfish, squid, octopus etc to be cut out and pasted on the mouth of the shark. For those who had not completed, shall continue tomorrow.

Children: We cut, cut, cut. 

Xin Yee: Look, I can cut!

Bo En: I'm done with the cutting. I'm pasting the teeth.

Worksheet: Word Search on parts of the fish

Date: 14^th February 2014

Day: Friday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Worksheet: Word Search on parts of the fish

Today, I prepared some worksheets for the children to go through throughout the whole underwater world theme. There are some worksheets on maze, looking for the difference between 2 pictures or looking for mistake in the pictures, word search, some mathematics exercise and matching the dots accordingly.

I chose the word search for the children to begin with. This is about the name of parts of the fish where we had gone through it at the very beginning of the class. It took the children a while to search for the words. However, most of them could actually search for the words after a few attempts and demonstration.

We all had a fun time doing this worksheet. 

Book Sharing: Shark, Big, Bigger, Biggest by Jerry Pallotta (Part II)

Date: 13^th February 2014

Day: Thursday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Book Sharing: Shark, Big, Bigger, Biggest by Jerry Pallotta (Part II)

Today, we had completed the whole book about the types of shark. The children got to know quite a number of difference kinds of shark.

This is the summary that we all did together after reading the book.

-          The biggest shark: whale shark

-          The 2^nd biggest shark: basking shark

-          The smallest shark: dwarf dogshark

-          The shark who stays the deepest in the sea: Portuguese shark

-          The shark who stays the shallowest in the sea: Lemon shark

-          The most dangerous shark: Great White shark or Bull shark

-          The longest shark: Thresher shark

-          The weirdest shark: Cookie Cutter Shark (the children can’t help laughing at it’s weird look and the bite that it did on the dolphin skin)

 

-          The most unusual shark: Hammerhead shark

-          The shark that swim the fastest: Mako shark

-          The shark that swim the slowest: Nurse shark

Video Sharing : Great White Shark

Date: 12^th February 2014

Day: Wednesday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Video Sharing : Great White Shark

The children were very excited when I told them that we were going to watch a video clip about the Legendary of Great White Shark. It’s a 40 minutes video but we skipped some of the parts to show the children about the features of the Great White Shark.

This was the discussion during the video watching.

Teacher: Look at the teeth of the Great White Shark.

Children: Very sharp.

Teacher: Does it look the same as the Whale Shark?

Children: No. Whale Shark has no teeth.

Teacher: Does the Great White Shark swims alone?

Children: Yes. One only. No friend.

Teacher: Look at the tail. Is it flat or pointed up?

Children: Pointing up.

Teacher: Look at the seal. What is the Great White Shark going to do with it?

Children: To eat it. The Great White Shark is going to eat the seal.

The children amazed to see that the Great White Shark would jump high on the water surface just to chase after the seal.

We shall continue with some other activities about sharks for this week before we moved on to another sea creature. 

More about Sharks

Date: 11^th February 2014

Day: Tuesday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

More about Sharks

Video Watching – Whale Shark

This short video shows clearly the features of a whale shark. The children were amazed to know that the whale shark doesn’t have sharp teeth like other shark. Even though it’s the biggest fish in the ocean yet it doesn’t bite.

Today, we continued to explore a little further about sharks. We went through the book “Sharks, Big Bigger Biggest” to find out more about Port Jackson sharks, Zebra Sharks and the Great White Shark.

The children were very interested about Great White Shark. Looking at it’s sharp teeth the children can’t stop talking about how it bites, how its’sharp teeth looks like.

Book Sharing: Big Shark’s Lost Tooth by Steve Metzger

This is about a Lemon Shark named Chomp who had lost his first tooth. He was wondering if the Tooth Fairy who used to visit boys and girls on land would come to visit him.

Due to insufficient time, we read only up until the part where Chomp was wondering if the Tooth Fairy would visit him. We shall continue the story some other time. 

Sharks

Date: 10^th February 2014

Day: Monday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Sharks

Shark is also an area where the children were quite interested in. Therefore, we went into the “shark”topic today. Before we went in deeper into the topic, I just threw a question to the floor to see how much the children could tell about sharks.

Teacher: What do you know about shark?

Yee Shuen: Got sharp teeth. (She said that in Mandarin)

Kern Ee: Side got gills.

Teacher: That’s good.

Chloe: Shark got eyes.

Kern Ee: Shark got tails.

Teacher: Yes.

Derek: Shark got fins.

We summarized a little of what the children know about shark.

-          Shark lives in the sea.

-          Shark eats fish, people, octopus, shrimps, prawns, seal, sea lion etc (these were given by the children themselves)

-          Baby shark is called pup.

Book Sharing: Sharks, Big, Bigger, Biggest by Jerry Pallotta

This is a book about comparison betweens difference types of sharks such as the size, the habitat of certain sharks etc. It also brings in some mathematics concept for the children. It might be quite abstract for some of them to understand, we treat this as a fact book for them to go through.

Book Sharing: The Hungry Shark by Lorraine Lee (Pelangi)

This is a simple yet interesting story about the hungry shark hunting for its lunch. With its simple and short sentences, the children could understand the shark’s diet in the ocean.

After that, I distributed a piece of blank paper for the children to draw their favourite sea creature that appeared in “The Hungry Shark” story. Most of the children drew jellyfish while some of them drew all the sea creatures that appeared in the story.