Reptiles

13/03/08 (Thursday)

(i) Corner Playing
As it is the school holidays week, many kids came late today. Today, my kids went into the classroom earlier because the hot burning sun deterred them from playing at the playground.
JN, JS, LX and JW came early followed by the others. ZY, JS, ZY, JW, JH played with the train, while LX and JN preferred the toy animals. SYu and SJ chose to draw and colour. Meanwhile, I called some kids individually to assist in their writing skills, using their Pre-school Workbook. They were JH, LX, ZJ, JS, SYu and ZY.
(MI: Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Body-Kinesthetic, Spatial and Linguistic skills)

(ii) Rhymes: Higglety, Pigglety, Pop!
Next, I drew three animal pictures for the kids to guess. They were smiling away. A dog was biting a mop which scared away a pig; that mistakenly thought it was a snake. The scary pig bumped into a cat which was sleeping. YW who came earlier today asked me what was the cat doing? The others guessed it was eating or maybe sleeping. ZY guessed that the pig must be enjoying a lot of food. ZYg sad the pig might be enjoying ice-cream while YZ said, "roti canai". Haa.....very funny! Then, we formed a circle and tried imagining how the pig oinked, then run hurriedly and how the cat screamed.
(MI: Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Linguistic skills)

(iii) Phonics lesson "ed"
Then, we had a session of phonics on "ed". They learnt about "red, bed, wed" and the song of "I have a red bed". Next, they sang along with the music. They also learnt the sound of letters. Example: "b" "e" "d" for bed.
(MI: Linguistic, Intrapersonal, Musical skills)

(iv) Tea break
At tea break, the kids tend to speak Mandarin. Example, today they had orange juice. ZY said, "Wah.....hen tian-ah". I highlighted his sentence, "It's very sweet". JS said, "lao shi, wo hai yao". I prompted him, "Teacher, can I have one more?" I kept reminding the kids to speak English often; example: "Teacher" and not "lao shi". It's even alright to have a mixture of Mandarin and English at this stage. Then, ZY said; "LX, say teacher! ......not lao shi".
(MI: Linguistic, Intrapersonal, Interpersonal skills)

(v) Discussion on Safari
Currently, the class is doing their finger puppets to practise on a puppet show later. I asked them what their intentions were? ZY and JN said they wanted to have a Safari world in the class.......phew! Hmm....as a new thematic teacher, I'm excited of this flow yet anxious at times! I asked, "So, are you inviting anyone?" There was a vote. 11 kids voted to invite their parents rather than other classes' friends. Then, a vote again. Majority wanted to use real money except M. M said, "If my mum uses her money, she will have lesser money to use later". Hmmm.....good answer. Then, they wanted to create big animal moulds namely a crocodile and a peacock. I told them that we would try our best to include those as our next week's project.
(MI: Linguistic, Intrapersonal, Intrapersonal, Logical-Mathematical skills)

(vi) Reptiles
Next, I drew a crocodile and we learnt some words included, "scales, legs, tail, teeth, snout". They were excited with the big crocodile. Nobody knew what scales were. I told them about the fish scales and they had some idea. Then, I took out a CD-pocket with scaly surface for them to touch. Then, they named other animals such as tortoises, snakes, lizards as reptiles. Other features included cold-blood and lay eggs. WY asked why a porcupine isn't a reptile which they then realised it hasn't any scales but spines. Then, we used colour paper to make our crocodile puppet. We practised drawing. The dependent kids were guided to use shapes to draw including triangles and rectangles. YZ, ZY, ZYg, JN were independent. JH, JS, LX, YW performed better after some guidances. The puppet is to be continued tomorrow.
(MI: Linguistic, Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, Logical-Mathematical, Spatial skills)