Sub-theme Selection

20/02/2008 (Wednesday)

(i) The song, “The Farmer In The Dell” was introduced to warm them up. I drew the cartoon farmer and his wife, son and nurse. Thus, I asked them to guess the animals the farmer brought along. Some said cows, horses, pigs and also ducks. Then, I sketched the cartoon animals for them to guess. Ha…ha….ha…..Most of them guessed correctly. The continuation of the song would be,

“The nurse takes the dog, the nurse takes the dog, the nurse takes the dog,
Hi-ho derry, the nurse takes the dog.”


“The dog takes the cat, the dog takes the cat, the dog takes the cat,
Hi-ho derry, the dog takes the cat.”

“The cat takes the rat, the cat takes the rat, the cat takes the rat,
Hi-ho derry, the cat takes the rat.”

“The cheese stands alone, the cheese stands alone, the cheese stands alone,
Hi-ho derry, the cheese stands alone.”
(MI: Interpersonal, Linguistic, Body-Kinesthetic, Musical skills)

(ii) Next, we talked about the places animals stay. Basically, they were in the sky, on
the land and in the water. We were only going to focus on one area. They wanted the land animals. Then, the mind-mapping of the land animals were extended. There were 4 locations namely (a) jungle, (b) zoo, (c) safari, (d) house and (e) pet shops. They voted for their choice. Two votes were only allowed for each kid. The highest votes went to the zoo and safari. Before voting, I explained about Safari to them. They shared their experience too. All kids had been to a zoo but only EG mentioned that he had been to a safari. Finally, they decided to do Safari which was almost similar to a zoo. They were very excited about the safari.
(MI: Interpersonal, Naturalist, Linguistic, Body-Kinesthetic, Logical - Mathematical skills)

(iii) Next the kids shared their knowledge and experience of a zoo. I then distinguished the main difference between a zoo and a safari. They learnt that, animals are caged in a zoo whereas in a safari, they are free to wander. In fact, people are caged in a jeep for safety.

Then, we talked about the other facilities. There were ticketing counters, shops (food, drinks and others), walls, roads for jeeps and possibly of a train track.
(MI: Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, Naturalist, Linguistic skills)