Carbohydrates

Date: 27^th June 2014

Day: Friday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm      

Class: Pomegranate      

Theme: Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Carbohydrates

By referring to the food pyramid, the children could see that there’s a large portion of food at the bottom of the food pyramid. I told them that those are the food that we could take daily. Most of the food contains carbohydrates. Carbohydrates give energy.

Teacher: Food that contains carbohydrates are usually starchy such as rice, flour, pasta etc.

Children: I like pasta.

Teacher: We could cook pasta one day. (There were so “yes” and “no” from the floor. I guess some might not like pasta.)

Teacher: Rice is our daily food. Do you know where we got rice from?

Children: From tree. (I drew a picture of a paddy)

Derek: Paddy.

Teacher: Yes, the rice we ate came from the paddy field. (I believe not many of them been to a paddy field.)

Chloe: 4 years old we have paddy. (I remembered their teacher brought in paddy to show them last year.)

Teacher: Usually you will feel full after eating rice, bread or pasta.

Video sharing: How Rice Made

Link: How Rice is Made

In the video, the children could see how a paddy field looks like. Besides that, the children could recognize the animal – a buffalo that helped in the paddy field. In the video, it also showed how the rice was being harvested, dried and processed. 

Sharing the drawings – My favourite food

Date: 26^th June 2014

Day: Thursday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm      

Class: Pomegranate      

Theme: Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Sharing the drawings – My favourite food

Today, I wanted the children to come out and share about the drawing that they did yesterday. They could make use of the sentences below to share it:

I like to eat ____________.

I like ______________.

At first, some of them couldn’t remember to use the sentences. They just tell me straight of what they like to eat. However, after a few practice, the children tried to remember to make full sentences.

These are some of the scenes of them sharing their drawings with their friends. 

Book Sharing – Giant Cake

Date: 25^th June 2014

Day: Wednesday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm      

Class: Pomegranate      

Theme: Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Book Sharing – Giant Cake

Since we mentioned about giant yesterday, therefore, I wanted to share another interesting story book today – Giant Cake.

This short story is about a petty baker who loves to bake but he never invited the children to taste his cake. One day, came a fairy and with the waved of her wand, the cake that the baker baked flew off into the sky. As it flew higher, it gets bigger. Suddenly, “Ping” “Pa” the giant cake burst into small pieces of cake. All the villagers including the baker himself came to the scene to have a share of the cake.

From that day onwards, the baker became generous and he always bakes cakes and invited the children to taste his cake.

Art & Craft – Draw out your favourite food

The children kept telling me of their favourite food. Therefore, I gave each of them a piece of paper to draw their favourite food. Some of them could draw a lot while some only a few. I shall let the children share their drawings tomorrow. 

Book Sharing – How to feed a Hungry Giant?

Date: 24^th June 2014

Day: Tuesday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm      

Class: Pomegranate      

Theme: Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Book Sharing – How to feed a Hungry Giant?

Since I mentioned about the word – hungry yesterday, therefore, today I would like to read them an interesting story about “How do you feed a Hungry Giant?” by Caitlin Friedman.

This story is a munch-and-sip pop-up book. This story is about a boy called Oscar who found a giant in his backyard one day. He noticed that the giant is hungry and wanted food. Therefore, he went in to the kitchen to look for all kinds of food he could find in the refrigerator and the pantry to feed the giant. However, the giant is so big that those foods are too little for him. When his mother found out that there’s a giant in the backyard, she invited him for dinner. Oscar helped his mother to prepare those foods for the giant. Everything has to be in extra large size. Finally, the giant had a wonderful feast.

Reading – Keeping Up to Date (1000 sentences of Today’s English) by Scott Ballantyne

-          1. Making Friends

-          2. Around Town

-          3. At Home

Note to parents: We are going to do some activities using those supermarket/ hypermarket leaflets. Those pictures come in quite handy for a few activities. I would appreciate if you could just remind or take note if your child collects any of it. Thank you.

Brainstorming on Food

Date: 23^rd June 2014

Day: Monday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm      

Class: Pomegranate      

Theme: Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Brainstorming on Food

Before we went in deeper into the food topic, we took about 10 minutes to decide a name for our theme this time. Many titles had been given such as Nice Food, Food that I like, Yummy Food, Good Food, Very Good Food etc. The children cast their vote and finally they decided to use “Yummy Food” as their title of their theme.

Teacher: Why do we need to eat food?

Derek: To make our body strong. Food got fibre.

Kern Ee: The food is let our body stronger.

Kwan Ming: We grow taller.

Chloe: We grow bigger, bigger.

Teacher: Yes, you are no longer the size of a baby. You have grown taller and bigger now.

Teacher: When do we eat food?

Children: Morning….afternoon….

Teacher: What kind of signal our body will tell us that we need to eat food?

(No answer from the floor. I have to start to give hints like rubbing my stomach.)

Teng Hong: Stomachache.

Teacher: Not stomachache. Your stomach will rumble. What is that feeling?

(I started the word with “h” with some blanks for the children to fill in. They had shouted a few alphabets. Finally Kwan Ming got the answer – hungry)

Then I briefly introduced the food pyramid to the children to let them have an idea about food intake each day. We shall do some activities about the food pyramid this week before we move in to each section to explore more on food. 

Final Activity for Walking with Dinosaur

Date: 20^th June 2014

Day: Friday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm      

Class: Pomegranate      

Theme: Walking with Dinosaur

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Final Activity for Walking with Dinosaur

I knew that the children were quite immersing in this Dinosaur topic. However, the facts and details were quite difficult for younger children like those 5 years old to participate in group discussion. Therefore, I asked the children if they would like to move on to another new topic and the children agreed. After a round of voting, the children decided to move on to the new topic – Food.

As a result, we did some packing on those worksheets that the children had done. As I had promised them that I will allow them to play the “Dinosaur Memory Game” one more time before we end our dinosaur theme today.

As I observed, most of the children could actually recognized the pictures with the name of the dinosaur while playing this memory game compared to the beginning of the session. Hopefully they will continue to do self reading on this topic if they are still interested in it.

We are moving on to “Food” from next Monday onwards.

Euoplocephalus and the Lethal Tail

Date: 19^th June 2014

Day: Thursday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm      

Class: Pomegranate      

Theme: Walking with Dinosaur

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Euoplocephalus and the Lethal Tail

We studied about the Diplodocus and its cracking whip yesterday. Today, we carried on by looking at Euoplocephalus and its lethal tail.

Facts about Euoplocephalus:-

-          Its name means “Armed Head”

-         It lived during the Late Cretaceous period

-         It feeds on plants

-         It has bony plates and dangerous spikes on its back, shoulders, and sides of the head, as well as double-headed solid club on its stiffened tail

-         Even its eyelids were protected by armor

By reading the facts about Euoplocephalus, the children were reminded about the details and facts on stegosaurus especially when I mentioned about the plates and spikes. Great! The children could link up some details and words from each other.

Reading – Keeping Up to Date (1000 sentences of Today’s English) by Scott Ballantyne

-          1. Making Friends

-          2. Going Places

-          3. Around Town

-          4. At Home

Diplodocus and the Cracking Whip

Date: 18^th June 2014

Day: Wednesday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm      

Class: Pomegranate      

Theme: Walking with Dinosaur

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Diplodocus and the Cracking Whip

When we were studying about Brachiosaurus that time, the children actually noticed about Diplodocus. However, we didn’t get to cover it that time. When Kwan Ming brought a Diplodocus toy in today, we went through some facts and details about Diplodocus.

The facts about Diplodocus:

-          Its name means Double beam (after it vertebrae)

-          It lived during the Late Jurassic period

-          It’s diet on plants

-          One of the longest dinosaurs

-          It may have defended itself against attackers with its enlarged, sharp hand claws, and used its long neck and tail to strike attackers.

Book Sharing – Opposites with Dinos

In this book, it introduced some opposite words such as in, out, open, shut, hot, cold, tall short, dirty and clean.

After reading the book, we went through all the opposite words with actions.

Then, we had a fun activity. When I say a word such as “in”, the children will need to do the opposite action with words. Most of them could get it while some still need some focus and practice. 

Plateosaurus the Gentle Giant

Date: 17^th June 2014

Day: Tuesday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm      

Class: Pomegranate      

Theme: Walking with Dinosaur

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Plateosaurus the Gentle Giant

Dinosaur in Focus introduced this dinosaur. We didn’t get to cover it when we studied about Brachiosaurus. Therefore, we just briefly went through some facts about this gentle giant.

The facts about Plateosaurus:

-          Its name means flat lizard

-          It lives during the Late Triassic period

-          It feeds on plants

-          It’s one of the first large plant eaters

-          They lived in herds

-          It has a long neck with a robust legs and powerful back legs.

Teacher: Do you still remember which dinosaur has a long neck?

Children: Brachiosaurus.

Teacher: Good. What about powerful legs?

Kwan Ming: T-Rex.

By observing the Plateosaurus from the book, the children could tell me that this dinosaur walks on two legs instead of four. Besides that, some of them even remember and tell me that Brachiosaurus walked on four legs.

Reading – Keeping Up to Date (1000 sentences of Today’s English) by Scott Ballantyne

-          1. Making Friends

-          2. Going Places

-          3. Around Town

-          4. At Home

Dinosaur and Flight

Date: 16^th June 2014

Day: Monday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm      

Class: Pomegranate      

Theme: Walking with Dinosaur

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Dinosaur and Flight

By referring to the book – Dinosaur in Focus, we learned a little more about those dinosaurs that fly. We learned that these kind of dinosaurs evolved through time.

On the other hand, we also referred to “The Great book of Dinosaurs” to learn more these flying dinosaurs. From the reference book, it says that these kind of dinosaurs hunt for fish. Some of them looked weird too such as the Pterodaustro.

The facts about Pterodaustro:-

-          It eats fish and other sea creatures

-          Its name means “southern wing”

-          Its huge jaw filtered those tiny creatures from the waters.

Book Sharing – I wish I had a Dinosaur by Ian Anggabrata with Mingga Anggwan

It’s an imagination book about the fun thing children could do if they have a dinosaur such as getting to school faster than the school bus, the children could sit on the back of the dinosaur for school field trip etc. 

Book Sharing : Explore Dinosaur by John Malam

Date: 13^th June 2014

Day: Friday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm      

Class: Pomegranate      

Theme: Walking with Dinosaur

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Book Sharing : Explore Dinosaur by John Malam

The children were being exposed to the whole history of Dinosaur from the studies made by the Paleontologist. With the changes of climate and environment of the Earth, the dinosaur started to evolved from time to time to suit the surrounding.

Different dinosaur appeared at different period of time. Some of the children could tell by looking at the shape and features of the dinosaur. I guess, they had learned quite some information about it.

We browse through page by page of the book and just explain briefly of each page for the children to understand.

In the book, it did mention about the extinct of the dinosaur. The children were quite excited to voice out their opinion of the extinction of it. \

Teng Hong: A rock killed the dinosaur.  It came like this and boom. No more dinosaur.

Teacher: Where did the rock came from?

Teng Hong: Space.

Kwan Ming: Meteor killed the dinosaur.

Teacher: How about earthquake and volcano? Did it kill the dinosaur?

Jing Heng: Yes, volcano. Like this. (He waves his hand high up as if something had exploded.)

Teacher: The lava that comes out from the volcano killed the dinosaur. Is lava hot or cold?

Children: Hot.

We shall explore more of the other dinosaur next week as well as the extinction of the dinosaur.

Archaeopteryx and the Ancient Wing

Date: 12^th June 2014

Day: Thursday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm      

Class: Pomegranate      

Theme: Walking with Dinosaur

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Archaeopteryx and the Ancient Wing

Archaeopteryx lived during the late Jurassic period. It is considered under the Theropods. It’s a carnivorous which eats insects and fish. It’s is quite a small dinosaur. It is slightly larger but much longer than a pigeon but much smaller than a 10-year-old boy. 

Reading – Keeping Up to Date (1000 sentences of Today’s English) by Scott Ballantyne

-          1. Making Friends

-          2. Going Places

-          3. Around Town