Butterfly to cocoon

06/10/2008 (Monday)

a) Corner playing
the kids chosed their favourite toys and played with them. Meanwhile, kids were called for unfinished homework or incomplete work. Then, I did individual phonics Assessment.
Le Xin brought some tiny kites which we didn’t get to play in the afternoon as it was drizzling. However, some kids read her books on birds and butterfly.

b) A Poem: Shoo, fly!
* We recited the poem. Then, we did the body movement. They had fun. Someone pretended to be the fly. Then, we talked a little about the fly. Kids said it likes dirty place. Imagining, it stops by the toilet to collect some bacteria and then transfer it to unclosed food……yuks!!....It’s dangerous.
Shoo, fly! Don’t bother me!
Shoo, fly! Don’t bother me!
Shoo, fly! Don’t bother me!
Go away to somebody else!

c) Recap on last Friday’s caterpillar’s
* There were 19 caterpillars and mostly were active and huge. The kids even drew the picture after observation.
* I showed them everyone’s drawing. They were happy to see those.
* We looked at a poster of caterpillar. They learnt that a caterpillar has 3 pairs of active legs to help holding the leaves. The other 5 pairs of legs are just to help it to move.
* It has 6 pairs of simple eyes to see.
* It has little hair around its body which enables it to feel its surrounding. Thus, noisy children would only scare them.

d) Storybook: The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
* A little egg hatched into a small caterpillar. It ate non-stop. It ate fruits from Monday to Friday. It became very fat.
* However, on Saturday; it had stomachache. The children guessed correctly because it ate unhealthy food such as ice-cream, lots of sweets, cakes and even jellies.
* Then, one day it stopped moving. Yes…it’s making its coccon. After 2 weeks, it made a small hole. It pushed itself out to be a beautiful butterfly.

e) Fourth day observation.
* The kids saw that 5 caterpillars were not moving. They were hanging themselves from the cage. Yes……..Max said those were cocoons or pupas!
* Meanwgile the others were not moving. The kids discussed the possibilities. Jin Shan said they were sleeping. Some said they were tired. One of them said, the bigger one bit the smaller one. Actually, the weekends had left insufficient food for those caterpillars. Thus, they probably would have died.
* The kids drew their observation.
* Back in the class, we recorded the observation together on a piece of words. We wrote in a table format. This is called “recording”……as Scientists do.