Kid-spiration

Children are not just blank pieces of paper, but also painters: having the ability to learn & have plenty of ideas!

Creativity

In a school which I teach (Shall not mention which), I was required to write lesson plan for my arts & crafts lesson. I could not think of any objectives for my lesson. (Objectives have to start with "at the end of the lesson, children should be able to..." and the assessment has to be linked: "children are assessed on their ability to...") I was at a lost. My objective was to let them just explore and have fun! That's it!!

Then I was told, the objective of an arts and crafts lesson is to let children train their fine motor skills. Through pasting and painting. they train their fine motor skills. I agree that through arts and crafts, children develop their fine motor skills, but shouldn't the MAIN objective be focused on creativity? Do they need to be assessed on creativity?? Hello, children are waaaaaaay more creative than you, and it is these kind of highly structured close ended "ART" that we prepare that is squashing their creativity.

http://www.janetlansbury.com/2010/04/a-childs-creativity-how-i-learned-to-shut-up/

Learn to shut up, adults.

Just venting.

P/S: I have a huge stack of blank paper in class for children to JUST DRAW ANYTHING. They draw little lines and circles and can tell me what they've drawn. I label their artwork. And they love it! :)

A Bit More Settled

My boyfriend/fiance won't be happy to read this (jealous):

I've fallen in love with 16 lil people :-)

I've been so busy this past 2 months with training, lesson planning, observation reports, theme boards, preparation of materials... And now that I am a bit more settled at work, I am starting to plan my wedding! (I consider wedding planning my new hobby haha)

Proof of my busy-ness: I've only ready 1 book so far. ONE! UNO! (Last year I read more than 30 books) It was a great book: Bringing Up Bébé. It's about how French parenting differs from American parenting. 

I shall try to write about it when I have time, but for now, I've got some lessons to plan! 

Direct teaching? Or letting children explore?

MIT professor Laura Schulz, her graduate student Elizabeth Bonawitz, and their colleagues looked at how 4-year-olds learned about a new toy with four tubes. Each tube could do something interesting: If you pulled on one tube it squeaked, if you looked inside another tube you found a hidden mirror, and so on.

For one group of children, the experimenter said: "I just found this toy!" As she brought out the toy, she pulled the first tube, as if by accident, and it squeaked. She acted surprised ("Huh! Did you see that? Let me try to do that!") and pulled the tube again to make it squeak a second time.

With the other children, the experimenter acted more like a teacher. She said, "I'm going to show you how my toy works. Watch this!" and deliberately made the tube squeak. Then she left both groups of children alone to play with the toy.

All of the children pulled the first tube to make it squeak. The question was whether they would also learn about the other things the toy could do. The children from the first group played with the toy longer and discovered more of its "hidden" features than those in the second group. In other words, direct instruction made the children less curious and less likely to discover new information.

extracted from http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/03/why_preschool_shouldnt_be_like_school.html

Of leaving & goodbyes

It's my last week, and there are many students I won't be teaching anymore, so now is the time to take lots of pictures and say goodbye.

One of the child took goodbye pretty badly. He cried and said I don't want other teacher to teach me. I want you. He cried for about 40 minutes and kept repeating the same thing. My heart broke :(

Nevertheless I am anticipating my next journey as there will always be more children for me to love!

You are my child, I love you so
Just look in my eyes & you will know
You make me smile
You make me sing
I know, with love, you can do anything!

Book Sales - Big Bad Wolf + Scholastic Book Buffet

I have been spending too much on books. But the reason I buy books is because I really believe that reading is an excellent hobby to pick up. I buy all sorts of books: novels, memoirs, parenting books, children's books. Recently have been to a few book sales...hence overspending.

Of course there is the Big Bad Wolf sale. It has been getting lots of hype. I think this is the third time I am going. And I always drop by Book Xcess just to shop. In a nutshell, they can sell books cheap because they buy leftovers, thus the lack of popular titles.

I went after a long looong day of work and I was so tired though we were only there for about 2 hours. Bought 5 books for myself, and 20 children's books. For children's books, the prices were from about RM5 - RM10. Quite reasonable.

Another not as popular book sale is the book buffet by Scholastic. It was held in Midvalley Megakids and it costs RM49.90 for a bag (sized 25cm x 26cm). You can stuff as many books as you can. The bag was quite small but somehow, somehow, I managed to stuff these books inside:

Children's books

Books for my sister (11 years old)

I actually didn't really want some of the books, but the kiasu side of me just stuffed and stuffed the bag until it REALLY couldn't fit anymore. LOL

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” 

― Dr. Seuss

Kids Say the Funniest Things

(The conversation was carried out in Mandarin)
Child (6 years old): Teacher, where did you come from?
Me: (Blur) What do you mean?
Child: I mean, are you from Malaysia or what?
Me: Ya, of course I am from Malaysia.
Child: Then why you know English one? I thought you are from Russia.

Hahahahaha