A hand-made Rocket

23/06/2008 (Monday)

a) Flash cards session
i) At Corner playing today, SJ pretended to be a puppy. SY and SYu tied a loose cloth around her neck and they walked slowly.
ii) Meanwhile, I did flash cards with the kids, individually. The 5 words were: clock, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Most kids could recognized “clock, sun and Saturn”. JH, LX and XR needed more guidance.

b) Poem: A Rocket Flight.
i) Some were reading as I wrote the poem on the board. Then, they listened to my reciting. Please
take a look:
“ I am in a rocket,
I am zooming to the moon,
And I won’t be back,
Till late afternoon”.
ii) The kids recited by reading the words. Then we included some actions. Everyone stood up and recited with movements. Next, we tried using our bottles as the rockets. So, we recited two more times using the water bottle as a rocket model. They were very excited.

c) Theory: Wings and Torpedo shape
i) After tea break, I drew an incomplete “aeroplane” on the white board. “What is wrong with the picture?”, I asked. ZYg answered that there were no wings. At this point, excited EG was talking to his friends about aeroplane but ZYg asked him to keep quiet as he was really interested on the topic, “rocket”. Everyone became attentive.
ii) I introduced the “torpedo” shape or rather the “sharp pointed cone”. The torpedo shape is the
reason why an aeroplane or a fish can move fast. Thus, combining the wings and the torpedo shape, we are going to create a rocket.

d) A hand-made Rocket craft
i) Unfortunately, none of the kids brought any water bottles except for myself. So, I demonstrated to them how to go about with the steps. Firstly, they fold a rectangle paper into half. The creased line is the middle point. Then, the kids used a pencil to link the top middle point to the right corner end as well as to the left corner end. Some required assistance.
ii) Then, they cut along the drawn lines. Now they have a triangle. They decorated the triangle on both sides. This triangle will be inserted into the water bottle at a later stage.
iii) Meanwhile, I called the kids individually to form a cone. They learnt to press the paper and paste them with cellophane tape. JN was so excited with the cone that she pretended to drink water from the cone….ha ha ha!
Vocabulary learnt: rocket, wings, cone, afternoon