Final Activity - Sushi Rice Making

Date: 9th October 2014
Day: Thursday
Time: 10:00-11:00am
Class: Pomegranate
Theme: Yummy Food
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Final Activity - Sushi Rice Making

Early this morning, I had already get the rice cooked as we needed the rice to be cold by the time we used it. On the other hand, I have also pre-cooked some fresh sweet corns. 

At 10 o'clock, I brought in all the ingredients that we needed into the class. The children were very excited and kept looking at the ingredients and wished to start as soon as possible. 

First, I took out all the rice from the rice cooker and put it in a big bowl so that we could mix in the ingredients that we needed. Then, I get some of the children to help out to shred the carrots. Once it was done, I mixed in the carrots, sweet corns, Kewpie mayonnaise spread and some Kewpie roasted sesame sauce. The children helped to mix all the ingredients together by taking turns. 

I seasoned the rice to its best taste before putting it into a small bowl for each child. At the same time, I also cut the seaweed sheet into half for the children to wrap up the rice. The children requested to put in some cucumber, therefore, I sliced some Japanese cucumber for the children to wrap it with the sushi rice.

The children said it's delicious and they kept asking for more seaweed. 

Introduction of Ingredients & Voting for new topic

Date: 8th October 2014
Day: Wednesday
Time: 10:00-11:00am
Class: Pomegranate
Theme: Yummy Food
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Introduction of Ingredients & Voting for new topic

I would like to introduce the ingredients to the children before the activity tomorrow.

Basically, we needed the following ingredients for making the sushi rice:-

-1) Japanese rice
-2) a carrot
-3) some fresh sweet corns
-4) a packet of seaweed (those that used for wrapping sushi)
-5) a small bottle of roasted sesame sauce
-6) a small bottle of sandwich spread

I briefly went through the steps for the making of the sushi rice to the children so that they could have some idea about it tomorrow:-

Steps of making sushi rice:-
-1) Cook the Japanese rice
-2) Cook the fresh sweet corns
-3) Sliced the carrot
-4) Mixed all the above ingredients together with the sandwich spread & roasted sesame sauce

Since the theme is coming to an end soon, we needed to choose another small topic to start off with. We only have about 6-8 weeks time only. Therefore, we needed a topic that we could do for that duration. I guided the children to vote for the topic.

The children suggested the following topic:-
-transportation
-animals
-colours
-family
-storybooks
-in a house

After a round of explanation and discussion, the children started to vote for their favourite topic. Finally, the children chose - "In a House" as their next topic. I believe this was being influenced by the reading passage that we did earlier about - "In the Home". Hopefully the children would enjoy the new topic. We shall start on next Monday.

Role Play - Shopping (Part IV)

Date: 7th October 2014
Day: Tuesday
Time: 10:00-11:00am
Class: Pomegranate
Theme: Yummy Food
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Role Play - Shopping (Part IV)

There are about another 6-7 children who didn't get to take turns last Friday. Therefore, today, we continue with our role play activity today. 

I only observed from nearby and I noticed that the children could start to do some simple sum. Only that they didn't know exactly how much to return the change. Therefore, I only guided them from there. 

Just before the class ended today, I reminded the children about the activity - sushi rice making that we shall carry out on Thursday. 

Role Play - Supermarket (Part III)

Date: 3rd October 2014
Day: Friday
Time: 10:00-11:00am
Class: Pomegranate
Theme: Yummy Food
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Role Play - Supermarket (Part III)

Initially, there's no class for today as most of the teachers had gone to participate in the activity for the  Ninth Day Celebration. However, one of the teacher manage to handle the other class temporarily so that I could carry out the role play with the Pomegranate class today.

Today, there's 3 roles which the children needed to take their turn - cashier (2), shopkeeper (1) and customers (the rest of the group). We followed the name list and each time we would select 3 children to play the role. Each round will take about 5 minutes so that we could be able to get everyone involved. Unfortunately, there's still a small group of children couldn't get their chance to play the role. We might have to continue with it next week.

I just stood nearby to observe how the children carry out the activity. They had lots of fun.

Our theme - Yummy Food is coming to an end soon. We shall carry out an activity that could include most of the food group that appears on the food pyramid. After a short discussion with the children, they decided that they would like to make - sushi rice. I shall prepare all the ingredients next week.

Note: 6th October, 2014 (Monday) is a public holiday. Therefore, there will be no blog update for that day.

Role Play - Supermarket (Part II)

Date: 1st October 2014
Day: Wednesday
Time: 10:00-11:00am
Class: Pomegranate
Theme: Yummy Food
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Role Play - Supermarket (Part II)

The children were so eager to start off with the role play. As they are not very familiar with the counting and money, I acted as the cashier today. I got another volunteer to be the shopkeeper while the rest of them were customers. 

I distributed the money randomly to each of them while kept some small change at the cashier. Each child will only allow to buy 2 items each time or less so that the flow would be much better. 

From this activity, the children get to learn to count with simple numbers. They were still quite confused when I didn't give them back any change. I do believe, after a few rounds, they will somehow get the concept of it. 

The children were doing shopping.

Chloe is counting her items.

Jing Heng also doing his counting with his fingers.

Jia Xuan paying for her goods.

Yee Shuen is happy that she got the payment right.

Role Play - Supermarket (Part I)

Date: 30th September 2014
Day: Tuesday
Time: 10:00-11:00am
Class: Pomegranate
Theme: Yummy Food
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Role Play - Supermarket (Part I)

Today, we needed to prepare some "money".  I used the A4 paper and divided it into eight equal pieces and cut it out. There were 11 of them this week. Therefore, I divided the children into 3 big groups. I needed more children in colouring blue for RM1, as a result, there were 5 in that group. Then 3 to colour red for RM10 and another 3 to colour green for RM5. 

At the same time, some children brought us some empty boxes and plastic cover of food item. I stuffed the plastic cover with some old newspaper so that it looked more solid and labelled all with prices. 

The children were excited looking at those items that they had prepared for the role play. We shall try it out tomorrow. 

Note: This coming Thursday is Double Ninth Festival which the school will organise some activities for the children to participate. The activity will take place in the morning for two days, Thursday & Friday. As a result, the English thematic class will be cancelled on those days. 

Where do we buy food from?

Date: 29th September 2014
Day: Monday
Time: 10:00-11:00am
Class: Pomegranate
Theme: Yummy Food
Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Where do we buy food from?

10:00-10:30am - snack time

My intention was to bring in a role play for the children for this theme. Therefore, we had a brainstorming session on where do we buy food from. 

Teacher: Where do you think we can get food from?
Children: Supermarket.
Children: Pasar Malam (night market). 
Teacher: Yes, we can also get it from the morning market. We shall set up a supermarket and some role plays. What do you think we could do?
Children: Buy things...Food....

Then from the discussion, I managed to sort out some role play for the children to do - cashier, shopkeeper and customers. 

I have some empty biscuits, cereals boxes to show to the children that we could use it as our stock. We concentrated on food. Therefore, the children were requested to bring empty boxes of food to school so that we could set up our supermarket. 

On the other hand, we also needed some "money". I used this opportunity to introduce RM1, RM5 & RM10 to the children. At once, the children could differentiate the distinctive colours - blue (RM1), green (RM5) & red (RM10). I shall cut out some rectangular paper for the children tomorrow to colour it accordingly.