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.

Whale Origami (Part II) & Video Watching

Date: 29^th January 2014

Day: Wednesday

Time: 3:00-4:00pm

Class: Pomegranate

Theme: Underwater World

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Whale Origami (Part II) & Video Watching

Since the children could not really understand the movie – Whale Rider, therefore, I only played the last 20 minutes where the whales were stranded on the beach and how Pai rescued them.

The children still remember Pai and were anxious to know what she was going to do with the whales. Finally when Pai managed to get one of whale to move itself back to the sea, the children started to ask if Pai would come back alive. Yes, she did. She was being rescued when people found her at the beach few hours later. The children felt happy to know that.

After the movie was done, we went back to our whale origami. The children got their whale ready to be pasted on a piece of white paper. They could decorate the page by drawing some features underwater such as seaweeds.

One of the children even got Pai in his picture. How wonderful.