Painting Our Tower Bridge

Monday (17/08/2009)

a) Malaysia vs. UK
We are a multi-racial country with many races. We have 27 million Malaysians. However, UK is the country with the most variety of races. They have about 60 million English or British people. The kids tried guessing the reason but couldn’t. The reason was because UK used to be a very strong country which monopolised many countries in the past. As these countries gained independence, some resided in UK and thus, practised their culture there. Example: the Scottish in UK wears their tradition costume of skirts when performing their bagpipes. Eugene said, it looked like “sarung” which we agreed.
Therefore, Malaysia is famous for Nasi Lemak, Roti Canai, Sates etc. UK is popular for Fish and Chips, Sandwiches, Spaghetti ( as they have British Italians) and bread and soup. Thus, we voted what we wanted to cook for the upcoming activity. Majority go for Mushroom soup. Hmm….delicious! Over there, the meal is quite hearty. They have appetiser (eg. Mushroom soup / salad), main course (Fish and Chips / pasta) and also dessert (ice-cream / cake / jelly).

b) Team work
The kids chose the tasks they wanted to do. Then, they went to their attributed groups. Surprisingly, they waited rather patiently for me to show each group on mixing the paints.

c) Painting our Tower Bridge
Loud voices were everywhere……calling friends for help, telling friends the proper way to paint, advising friends not to mix too much water and reminding friends to obey the class rules…..some just felt excited wearing the apron……..wow! I just felt that these kids were in a painting zone with passerbys watching their amazing work. Some just enjoyed watching the strokes of paint, some enjoyed looking at friends’ work while some enjoyed seeing paints getting on friends’ faces. Well, honestly; I would probably be like them especially being with good friends and doing things we enjoy!
We used brown, blue and red. These were the original colours of Tower Bridge London and the kids wanted the exact ones! We learnt: red + black = brown. We had to mix a a lot as we didn’t have brown paint. Altogether, we coloured 2 big towers and 2 smaller ones. We also coloured 3 carriageways and 1 walkway. Not forgetting the straws which are the fences. The kids were reminded to use the paint wisely as not to waste the resources. We should practise what we think, “Saving The Earth”.
Some even went around lending hands to the unfinished ones. Some used too much water. Thus, the layer was watery. Then, they painted it the second time which was nicer.

d) Let’s clean together.
They cleaned the classroom together! Some washed the palates, brushes, wiped the tables, clear away the newspapers, some stacked the chairs. Some even enjoyed mopping the floor.
Then, we sprinkled some glittering onto the cone roof while the paint is still wet, as we could save glue. Well, we should be able to construct the cables tomorrow and run some cars on them.