Is The Earth Sick?

15/04/08 (Monday)

(i) Colouring and Corner Playing
After running, they hid in the classroom. Then, they drank their water. They chose some toys for their Corner Playing. ZY, JH and JS chose to play with the toy animals. Meanwhile, the girls preferred colouring. I gave them a picture on garden. They liked the picture which showed a girl and a boy planting and watering the plants. Meanwhile, ZJ, EG and WY helped me with The Star Books. They inserted the thread into the hole while I hung them on the wall.
(M/I: Spatial, Body-Kinesthetic, Interpersonal skills)

(ii) Discussion: Why Earth is hotter?
I asked, “Is the Earth getting colder or hotter?” Almost all said “hotter”. Then I asked them what are the signs? They were quiet. When I switched off the fan, they said it was hot! Then, I compared the situation with twenty years ago whereby the weather is not so hot! I drew a sad fisherman and they guessed the reason for his sadness. Zyg said the crocodile bit him. YZ said the sun was too hot for him. Then, I drew the number of fish. They guessed that he caught little fish and I asked why? They said the fish were hungry. Then, I related to the hot weather that made the fish uncomfortable and also sick. JH asked why one dead fish would cause many more fish to die. I explained about the contagious bacteria. They know that “hot sun” will melt the ice. Then, I asked them what will happen to the ice at the North Pole; the Polar Bear’s home? They said that it will melt. However, I added that this was one of the reasons of flooded place.
(M/I: Linguistic, Interpersonal, Logical-Mathematical, Naturalist skills)

(iii) Experiment
After tea break, we did a recap on “A Good Word”. My objective was to encourage to speak good words truthfully rather than the bad words. We recapped on the song, “You Are My Sunshine”. Back to our earlier discussion, “Why The Earth is hotter?” YZ said because they are less trees. I added on about products. I asked them how trees are processed into paper? How is a tree changed into paper and furniture? How do we produce products. They have no idea. When I mentioned “factories”, they showed some signs of recognition. The process gives out a lot of smoke. Thus, to prove my statement, we did an experiment. Prepared 2 cups. Cup A as “The Healthy Earth” while Cup B as “The Sick Earth”. Filled the cups with half portion of water. Cup A with drinking water while Cup B with hot water. We added some ice into the two cups. The ice represented the North Pole. They discovered that the ice melted very fast in Cup B. The water level arose horribly! Then, we added someore ice. Cup A’s ice melted very slowly while Cup B’s ice melted very fast! From the experiment, we related to flood. M said that it would be nice to swim in the flood while the others giggled at him. Then, we proceeded with another question, “What can we do?”
YP said that we could recycle because we should reduce the factories activities. JN said that we could give to the poor ones. Wow……they didn’t know that these ideas are actually 3Rs. What we have discussed today was just a small portion. The discussion will be continued tomorrow.
(M/I: Linguistic, Interpersonal, Logical-Mathematical, Naturalist skills)