Anaconda

24/03/08 (Monday)

(i) Colouring
On Mondays, I have more crying kids. I had SJie, JH, JW, SR and also SC wanting to follow their mother. Thus, I prepared some colouring lion pages for the kids. I gave them a sample and most of them preferred their style as most of them are creative. LX’s colouring has improved as it was within the boundary. She managed to colour the whole head independently! JW, SYu, JN, JS, ZY, SY, SJ were independent whereas EG required more motivation to continue colouring the whole lion. Meanwhile, I guided ZJ on his previous homework, the kangaroo. He was rather independent with numbers. Some responsible kids in my class are JS, SYu, YZ, YW, JN, SC as they would pass up their homework independently. The others need persistent reminder.
(M/I: Spatial, Body-Kinesthetic, Linguistic, Interpersonal skills)

(ii) Anaconda and dialogue
Today, I recapped on our animal puppets story. They said the long snake scared away the
lions, crocodiles and many more animals. I told them that it is a giant snake called “The Giant Anaconda” which is normally found in South America. They were excited and disbelieved when I told them that scientists discovered Anacondas of about 25 until 50 feet.
Then, we recapped on the other animals in the plot. JW remembered the porcupines, WY remembered the chameleons, ZY remembered the eagles.
Next, we had 5 volunteers to represent each character. EG was the Giant Anaconda, JS was the eagle, JN was the lion, WY was the crocodile and M was the chameleon. I was the narrator. I guided them along the way. These were some of their interesting dialogue:

Lion : We are afraid because we cannot go out to play.
Crocodile : The Anaconda will eat us up!
Lion : The grass is too tall for us to see and fight the Giant Anaconda.
Eagle : Don’t worry, we can fly high and see him from the sky. We
will throw fireballs to Anaconda!
Porcupine : We will shoot the Anaconda with our poisonous spines.
Chameleon : We will jump to its body because it cannot see us.
We will scratch its eyes with our claws!
Narrator : So, they work together to attack the Giant Anaconda.
(M/I: Logical-Mathematical, Linguistic, Interpersonal, Body-Kinesthetic skills)

(iii) Craft: Eagle
After tea break, we gathered to make an eagle. I gave everyone a rectangle cardboard. They learnt to differentiate left and right foot. They have a choice to trace their left or right foot. Then, they cut along the line. That was the eagle’s body. Then, they drew eyes on it. Kids who needed more prompting were LX, SR, JH, ZJ and SJ. The others were quite good.
As, we did not have enough time, I showed them the way to fold the wings. It was similar to folding a paper fan. Some said that they could do that. Well, let’s just see how the results turn out tomorrow.
We ended the class by singing “The Elephant Song”. YZ, YW, JN and ZY were quite good at the song.
(M/I: Spatial, Body-Kinesthetic, Interpersonal, Musical skills)