Filtering
Tuesday (30/03/2010)

a) Filtering
The kids gathered to watch filtering. A few kids were chosen to filter the pencil lead solution. One was the normal, the other colour pencils lead. YUn Wen, Zhe Qing, Chun Kit and Xing Tong were among the kids. The others observed as the solution dripped from the funnels. One was grey while the colour leads were rather colourful. Then, they smelled the solution and observed the substance.
Xing Tong: There’s powder!
Wei Jeen: It’s smelly!
Shi Jie: There are still some short leads.
Teacher: So, what do you think of leads? Can they be recycled?
Class: No, it’s smelly. It has poison.
l Leads are not poisonous but the chemicals added in pencil manufacturing such as for colours, were the reason why it is unsafe for children to bite their pencils.
l They are quite difficult to dissolve therefore pencil lead cannot be recycled but some other graphites can be recycled. Thus, I asked the kids to think of other ways to recycle the pencil leads as craft.

b) Sketching
Then, we watched a video clip on how the artist sketched pictures with just a pencil. Foo Soon immediately said he has an 8B pencil, suitable for sketching. They saw how Michael Jackson was sketched. Back in the class, the kids chose either pencils or colour pencils to shade their traced picture. Most of them, traced the sides as frames.