Porcupine Craft

31/03/2008 (Monday)

(i) Corner Playing
At the playground, the early kids ran for 2 to 3 rounds around the field. My objective was to encourage them having fun and mixed around rather than staying indoor for books. After all, spend more time indoor most of the time. In the classroom, the kids were happy to have a new friend, Yee Ping. For Corner Playing today, I introduced them a few games. (a) 3D animal puzzles, (b) animal board puzzles. YW, SYu and SJ enjoyed the 3D puzzles. They learnt to match the numbers from the separated pieces. Meanwhile, YP, JN and JS chose to play with the train and blocks. ZY, EG, ZYg, JHg preferred lion dance. In fact, SYu, SJ, LX and JN asked for drawing after a while.
(M/I: Body-Kinesthetic, Interpersonal, Logical-Mathematical, Linguistic skills)

(b) Getting to know you
We formed a circle and they learnt to introduce themselves to friends. Basically, they answered the 3 questions. (a) What is your name?(b) What do you like to eat? (c) Which is your favourite colour? They were very cute as most of them would say, "I like to eat fish". JN said she likes to eat rabbit, ZY said he likes to eat chicken meat, ZYg said he likes to eat dog.......woh......their imagination really stretched! Next, we sang the song, "Doe, Ray, Me" with actions. They loved the song and were attentive to the lyrics and their meanings.

Doe, a deer, a female deer,
Ray, a drop of golden sun,
Me, a name I call myself,
Far, a long, long way to run,
Sew, a needle pulling thread,
La, a note to follow so,
Tea, a drink with jam and bread,
That will bring us back to Do (oh-oh-oh). (Repeat)

Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-doSo-do!
(M/I: Interpersonal, Linguistic, Logical-Mathematical, Body-Kinesthetic, Musical skills)

(iii) Porcupine Craft
JS asked, "Why are we making a porcupine?" ZYg said, "Because its spines will shoot the Giant Anaconda". We learnt its vocabulary. (a) spines, (b) body, (c) head. I asked them to recall how a porcupine protects itself. M said it will shoot its spines towards the enemy. JN added that they are poisonous. Next, I chose half of the class to cut the paper plates into half. Then, they drew the face and eyes. Next, they cut a thick cardboard into fine rectangles; so as to paste to its body. Those are the spines. LX has shown improvement because her cuttings are more of equal size. ZYg needed a lot of encouragement to even start cutting. Them, he picked up fast. ZJ, WY, JHg, SJ, XR, YW and YZ needed more guidance. Our new friend, YP; SYu, M, JS, JN, JW, SC were independent. In fact, ZY was creative to make the spines really short and spine. I realised that YW and WY found that "gluing" could be quite disgusting which slowed them down on the craft.
(M/I: Interpersonal, Linguistic, Naturalist, Logical-Mathematical, Body-Kinesthetic, Spatial skills)