The Octopus

Thursday (31/03/2011) a) Octopus l I crumpled some pieces of newspaper into a big ball and pasted onto the whiteboard. The kids imagined that they were looking through a periscope. Then, they guessed what the big ball was all about. After a few guesses, they guessed correctly. It was a big octopus. l Questions were asked to see if the kids know much about octopus. Qian Joe: It has 100 mouths. Zhe Qing: It has 3 mouths. Xing Tong: It has 1 heart. Yun Xin: What happened f he arms were broken? Shawn: It will grow again. Rei: My father says it will squeeze black ink into the ocean as a protection. Xing Tong: A starfish can do wheel cart. Can an octopus do so? Jun Yu: What colour is the blood? Yee Xuan: How does it attack the prey? b) Information. l Oc means 8; thus octopus means an animal with 8 arms. It has 2 eyes and a sharp beak like a parrot. It has 3 hearts; thus it so very powerful as the blood supply gives it energy. The blood is blue. When the arm breaks off, it can grow again but slowly. It is a very smart animal. Kwong Yong said it can play football. “Haa….Paul the Octopus”. l It uses its arms to catch the prey and aqueeze it before using its beak to peck the prey. Then, it bites the prey slowly and injects its poisonous saliva into the prey, paralyzing it. Next, it can start biting its food. l Each arm has got 2 rows of suction cups. I got the kids to check the importance of the suction cups. To understand the importance of the hearts, the kids stod up and jumped around. They touched their before and after the jump. The heart beats the blood to all over the body. The heart beat is faster. Food gives us healthy blood supply. Teacher: If animals have heart, do they have blood? Kids: Yes! l That answer satisfied Jun Yu who was wondering of its blood colour which is blue. c) Hand-made Periscope. l It really takes a long time to complete our hand-made submarine because, we are doing it step by step with questions and opinions to take into account. l I showed the kids how to make a periscope. It requires 2 mirrors. First, Wee Hoing helped me to roll a cardboard into a cylinder shape. Then, Jun Yu and Zheng Yan helped me to paste some blue tack onto 2 pieces of small cardboard. I adjusted them to 45degree; that’s the rule. Xing Tong and Rei helped to paste the mirror sharpeners to the tack. Then, Qian Joe and Zhi Feng pasted the cardboards ono the cylinder. It worked! The kids took turn to look through it. d) Corner Playing. * Some kids preferred to play while some preferred to continue with the submarine craft. Rei, Tzen Yu, Yun Xin, Xing Tong Wee Hong, Jun Yu and Zheng Yuan voluntarily assisted to decorate and made the craft. The kids suggested the second submarine to be different. Thus, we decided to have different shapes of windows and doors.