My Preschool Diary

The IB learning approach view parents as part of the learning community. So at the start of each inquiry, I like to update parents on the central idea and lines of inquiry as well as give suggested home activities. This is to help children link learning between home and school. Home activities also help to develop in children what the IB programme calls ''Approaches to Learning''. Two such skills are research and communication; because children will share their findings during Show & Tell. As a teacher, it is wonderful to see students (with the help of parents) taking interest in the central idea and providing their points of view. Suggested Home Activities: A. Collect food label(s) of your favourite food and list three main ingredients and any food preservatives. Discuss with your child what preservatives are. B. Explore preserved foods. Visit the supermarket and find out what is preserved foods. Record 3 types and state the method used (i.e dried, canned, food, s...

Hello again! I want to share with you about our current inquiry for term 1. My kindergarten uses the inquiry approach which is the IB-International Baccalaureate. What is IB? To sum it up, it encourages children to be learners who take a proactive role; teachers no longer spoon-feed them information but rather encourage them to ask questions and take the initiative to find out answers to share in class. This curricular aims to develop its learners to be knowledgeable, caring and have a balanced world view. Central idea: Knowing the ingredients in food and food preparation methods help us to make informed choices. Lines of inquiry: Sources of food and how they are produced; Food labels help us understand what go into our bodies; Consequences of food choices; Different ways of preserving food; Different ways of preserving and cooking food An inquiry usually lasts for one term (i.e 10 weeks). I like to use the Kath Murdoch inquiry cycle, which begins with Tuning In & Findin...

The December holidays are here! So today's post is about making a Terrarium. You see before the term ended in November, one of my students gave me a Fittonia plant as a gift. I was never a plant person but this was the beginning of my love affair with urban gardening. Plus, the last central idea with my class of 5-year-olds also sparked a sense of appreciation for plants. I believe that plants have a calming effect on humans, especially in cities like Singapore where it is like a concrete jungle. Thankfully, it was our founding father Mr Lee Kuan Yew who shaped Singapore into a verdant and green landscape and literally made it a garden city that it is today. He once said, "We need greenery to lift our spirits.” Now, who would disagree with that? So today, my kids and I headed down to the nearest Terrarium shop @ Clementi Mall, Fittonia Mania. The objective was to give our Fittonia plant a make-over. So here's our Terrarium making experience: Materials Needed Glass globe T...

My kindergarten uses the inquiry approach to teach children. This means that we have a transdisciplinary theme which is currently "Sharing the planet". More specifically, an inquiry into the rights and responsibilities in the struggle to share finite resources with other people and other living things. The subtheme to this is our Central Idea (CI) which is "Plants sustain life and play an important role in our lives". We also have Lines Of Inquiry (LOI) which acts as a guide as to where our inquiry should head toward. 1. Plant parts and their function 2. The importance of plants to humans and the environment 3. Our responsibility toward our environment We used Kath Murdoch's inquiry cycle approach that has six stages. 1. Tuning in: At this stage, we do a provocation to find out what prior knowledge do the children (my class of 5 yo) have about this topic on plants. Provocation can be in the form of using related newspaper articles, storybooks, videos whatever yo...

  CENTRAL IDEA: "Plants sustain life and play an important role in our lives" LINES OF INQUIRY: Parts of a plant What do plants need to grow The importance of plants TUNING IN: We started this inquiry with the help of parents and urging them to do one or more of the following home activity with their child. This was to help children gain prior knowledge for the inquiry. One boy brought in this book "Kitchen Scraps" by local author, Nur'afifah Binte Mohd Hussain. It helped set the direction for our inquiry. We grew some growing kitchen scraps like carrot tops, onions and garlic. Through this activity, children learned that plants are an important food source. FINDING OUT: It is important that children are agents of their learning. Instead of spoon-feeding them information, children are encouraged to bring in their findings on plants. Here are some of the items they brought in for Show & Tell. SORTING OUT &GOING FURTHER: Children (as well as adults) are h...

Now that your child has learned to recognise and sound the letters, the next step towards learning to read is blending Consonant Vowel Consonant (CVC) words. Here's an activity that can help do that! USING THE CARD GAMES These CVC Game Cards consist of 23 short vowel word pairs + 1 old maid card: /a/: hat, sat, jam, ham /e/: hen, den, web, net, nest /i/: bit, hit, pig, wig, rip /o/: hop, pop, frog, fox /u/: mug, rug, bun, bus, hug You can print out the cards on thicker paper, cut them out. Alternatively, you can laminate the cards to make them last longer. Another benefit to printing on thicker paper is that the image will not be seen on the reverse side when the card is faced downward. I also like using these foam sheets as backing for the playing cards so that it is easier for the children to turn the cards over when playing them on the table. HOW TO PLAY MEMORY GAME The object of the game is to collect the most number of matching pairs. Lay the cards in a grid layout. Pick a pl...

Here is a printable that you can use to help your preschooler practise reading the time on the clock face. It covers time by the hour and half-past. Simply print the pages on art paper, or laminate it to reduce wear and tear. The objective of the activity is to match the correct digital time to the clock face. In the process, children can learn counting the minutes using skip counting by 5. Click here for Telling Time Full Printable TEACHING IN THE CLASSROOM I am teaching my preschoolers about telling the time on the clock face. I use a big clockface for lessons so that the children could see the hour and minute hands of the clock. A big clockface also helps them see clearly. I start by teaching them time by the hour. I explain that most clocks have two hands: the short hour hand and the long minute hand. The shorthand would point to the numbers on the clock face from numbers 1 to 12. Therefore, time by the hour could be 1 o'clock, 5 o'clock, 12 o'clock. PAPER PLATE CLOCK T...