Teacher’s comment :
Practical Life
Classroom skills were the focus this quarter. This is to help the younger children
to understand the needs of the classroom environment and to be independent.
We did tracing, cutting and the sharpening of pencils. With the Montessori
materials we revisited the cycle of activities; the children worked on Opening and
Closing of assorted Bottles and boxes. This is to provide experiences in order
and concentration.
Art and Craft activities also helped to reinforce the completion of the work cycle.
Different kinds of art materials were made available such that children were able
to explore their limitations and how much they can stretch their use. Children
enjoyed painting, colouring and cutting to produce Blot Painting, Paper Bag
Elephant, Paper Role Butterfly, Paper Chain Caterpillar and Paper Plate Bumble
Bee.
Cooking helped reinforce independence and further develop language and math.
Children weighted, counted, identified, stirred, mixed and poured when they took
time to cook Chocolate Porridge and Macaroni Soup. They had great fun cooking
and eating them.
Sensorial
Vincent worked on the Large Hexagon Box, Mystery Bag and Smell Bottles in this
area. The Large Hexagon Box provides experiences in Geometry and helps him
concretely visualise the attributes of different kinds of triangles. The Mystery
Bag and Smell Bottles help with the tactile and olfactory senses.
Language
Vincent is currently working with the Pink Series. We have been working on
blend and he has shown that he is able to read the words when we work on the
picture and word cards. Show and tell provides Vincent with the opportunity to
express his ideas on a particular object in front of a group.
In the Afternoons, Vincent works in a group on Personal Pronouns,
Demonstrative Pronouns, Question Words, Verbs to Be, Adjective and Adverb.
Worksheets accounts for the individual work.
Mathematics
Vincent has completed the hundreds board. This material reinforces the counting
and recognition of symbols from one to one hundred. At times, children are
required to write this exercise into their books. Vincent will move on to work
with the Golden Beads on the decimal system.
We reinforced Ordinal Numbers, Mass and Time. For time, we progressed to
read the time by hour and half hour. Work on the white board and worksheets
were given to help reinforce the concepts.
Cultural
Famous artist was the theme of April and the children were introduced to various
artists over the centuries and the works they created. It seemed such a great
feat and wonderful experience for the children as they named and matched the
different works to their owners. We did work on Vincent Van Gogh,
Michelangelo, Pablo Picasso and Leonardo de Vinci.
To reinforce the possibilities of creating art pieces we visited the Singapore Art
Museum. It was a definitely great to tour the museum and viewed the works of
local and Asian artists. The children saw the use of different forms of materials
to create paintings, 3-D paintings and sculptures. Through questions they tried
to see what the artist was trying to communicate through his work. This tour
included an opportunity to create their masterpieces and to bring it back into the
classroom.
We introduced the classification of animals in May when we did “Animals” as a
theme. We touched on the “Cat” family. This warranted a visit to the Zoo as the
children walked through the “The Cat Country”. The children saw different way
in which each “cat” moved and took into account their appearances. Other
attractions were the otters and monkeys. The children definitely had fun for this
outing.
Both children and parents looked forward to the month of June as it is the month
of the night camp and our theme for this year was “insects”. For mummies and
daddies it is a night out or to give more attention to the other sibling; for the
children it can be a night of apprehensions and excitement. This year we have
two excursions with activities in between. As it drizzled and threatened to pour,
we detoured to ‘Hort Park’ in the morning. The main highlight of this outing was
seeing so many millipedes crawling around. They were found on and in the soil
under trees and crawling across walkways. Though not insects they were
fascinating to watch. We did, however, managed to see some fruit flies.
We visited The Raffles Museum for the second half of the day. There, the
facilitators did a great job talking about animals and insects. They came down to
the level of the children and provided much vocabulary in the process. After this
interesting and informative visit we headed to Jurong Hill top for games, dinner
and to view the sun set. Many of the children were disappointed as they missed
the sun setting when we had dinner at the restaurant while the games provided
good experiences in language, math and creativity.
As it was a full day, the children did not take long to fall asleep. The knowledge
and excitement that mummy and daddy were coming in for breakfast the next
morning did nothing to keep them awake. Though it was a tiring experience for
all the teachers, we do hope that parents had a good time on Saturday morning.
The night camp provided opportunities for the children to gain independence and
confidence in routine and care of self.
Throughout the month, the children worked on the life cycle of the butterfly, the
bees and named the different parts of the insect. We also touched on the
importance of having these little creatures in our environment.
