My Preschool Diary

Reading. An important skill to develop in early learners. Some children pick it up faster, while others may take a longer time or even struggle to read. If you want your child to have a head start at reading, it is important to instil the love of books and stories from the start. Read to your child and cultivate the love of books at a young age. I cannot stress this enough (that even a baby is not too young to read). A baby learning to read? Well, not literally. But when he hears your voice, a lot of things are taking place. The baby learns to decipher the tones in your voice. They also piece the words they hear and the pictures together thereby acquiring vocabulary used in speech as they grow. Introducing books to your child from the beginning helps him develop Print Awareness. Print Awareness 1. It is the knowledge of how to handle a book. For example, text is read from left to right and top to bottom. 2. To identify the front and back cover as well as the spine of the book. 3. To id...

The IB approach also uses the transdisciplinary method of teaching and learning. This means that it incorporates other subjects like Math and Language as part of the inquiry. This is different from teaching these subjects as a standalone. Let me elaborate. If you have read my previous posts, my homeroom is learning about food and ingredients. Thus, I could teach the children about the names of ingredients used in different dishes. I could make an activity to help them read and identify words of different ingredients. In doing so, the children are developing language skills within the inquiry. This is the Food Ingredients activity: Objectives: -To learn about ingredients in a meal -To learn to read different ingredient names Steps: 1. Print out the activity pages. 2. Cut out the food ingredients (the circular pieces). 3. You may want to print this activity on thicker paper or laminate it so that it is more durable. 4. Child selects a picture mat of a specific dish and tries to find the ...

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...