Restaurant by the children for the children

Playing restaurant is something that you don't have to help them to plan out.

You can see here that they have divided the roles among themselves and the scene created below are like a real fast food restaurant.


Chi Ern taking order from a customer (Jayden) while Yvonne prepare food the customer.

Jolin is another customer, waiting in line for her turn to order food.







Jayden taking his order to get a place to enjoy his food.









Jayden and Jolin enjoying their yummy food while the restaurant "Tau-keh-soh" checking whether the customers are happy with the food or not.

Making cookies 1

These are the cookies that the children made during the first term school holiday. Although, I've sent my elder son to be in-charge of taking photographs while the children make the cookies.

This is the only photo that I have. He said he was too busy making the cookies too that he forgot.

The children each took one cookie home for mummy to try their 'sau-sai'. Unfortunately, most came back and said "I ate the cookie. I only show mummy the cookie"

Phase 3 - Saloon Project

After visiting the saloon, the children included more representation of equipments into their saloon play.

Now, we have mirrors and books provided for the customer to read. We have area for washing hair.










The children took turns to be customer and hairdresser.









We even made a steamer. Yvonne realized missing part of the steamer and asked "there is no container for the water. Where can we put water?" I told her that we will pretend to put water into the long pole - which she agreed.

Link to Phase 1
Link to Phase 2

Goodbye butterflies

After 2 weeks of watching the caterpillar turning into chrysalis then into butterfly. Finally, it is time to say goodbye to the butterflies.










Can you see the two buttleflies in the container?

Fun with play dough

Who says children can't concentrate for long. This play dough activities took them more than two hours of work. They were having so much fun that they insisted on working with the play dough after the snack time.

Look, how busy each child was ...with the play dough.










From this simple play dough activity, I observed that the children:
1. do have long attention span as long as the activity interest them
2. can work independently and cooperatively at the same time
3. can create their own thing on their own and each creation from the dough is unique
4. are using a lot of their fine motor skill
5. are careful (when handling their creation)
6. are patient to wait for their turn to share any limited resources

BTW, just to share with you the recipe I used to make the play dough
.............................................................................................................
Cooked Play Dough
9 cups of flour
3 cups of salt
10 tsps of cream of tartar
9 cups of water
9 tbsps of oil
food colouring (red, blue, yellow)

1. Mix flour, salt and cream of tartar into a wok
2. Blend water and oil together in a bowl
3. Add the mixture of water & oil slowly into the wok and cook over medium fire heat. Stir constantly.
4. When its thicken, it is ready.
I split the cooked dough into 3 portions so that I can use the three primary colours. With the three primary colours; the children will get to experience the change in colour if they mix two different colour doughs together.
4. Add several drops of food colouring and knead the dough. Add more coloring until you get the right colour as you knead the dough.

This play dough is very soft, smooth and nice to use. It is not sticky and can be cleaned up easily. Keep the dough in air tight container and store them in the fridge. It will last for quite some time.

Make letters with cones

Look at the children observing what Yvonne is doing. (Sampai Jayden scratched his head :) ).

Yvonne said "Teacher, see this is T."

The other children started to join her to form other letters with the cones.

Isn't that creative? So wonderful to see the children coming out with ideas to work on with available materials.

So creative ler, aren't they?

Creativity is something that most parents would love their children to have. However, many adults overlook our actions that may hamper the children's creativity.

The following message about 'Creative Killers' may interest you for you to help our children's creativity flows freely. This short article is from ChildCareExchange.com

Creativity Killers
In The Creative Spirit (Plume, 1993), a book based on a PBS series on creativity, authors Daniel Goleman, Paul Kaufman, and Michael Ray point out these common ways adults discourage creativity in children:

1. Surveillance — Hovering over kids, making them feel that they're constantly being watched while they are working . . . under constant observation, the risk-taking, creative urge goes underground and hides.

2. Evaluation — When we constantly make kids worry about how they are doing, they ignore satisfaction with their accomplishments.

3. Rewards — The excessive use of prizes . . . deprives a child of the in trinsic pleasure of creative activity.

4. Competition — Putting kids in a win-lose situation, where only one person can come out on top . . . negates the process [that] children progress at their own rates.

5. Over-control — Constantly telling kid how to do things . . . often leaves children feeling like their originality is a mistake and any exploration a waste of time.

6. Restricting choice — Telling children which activities they should engage in instead of letting them follow where their curiosity and passion lead . . . again restricts active exploration and experimentation that might lead to creative discovery and production.

7. Pressure — Establishing grandiose expectations for a child's performance . . . often ends up instilling aversion for a subject or activity. . . . Unreasonably high expectations often pressure children to perform and conform within strictly prescribed guidelines, and, again, deter experimentation, exploration, and innovation. Grandiose expectations are often beyond children's developmental capabilities.

See, I have long hair in the picnic

"Teacher, see ... I have long hair" said Chi Ern.

In a child's play, everything is possible. You can have long hair during a picnic play. I like to play long hair and you like to play picnic but we want to play together. So this is the result...playing together harmoniously. Although both play topics are not the same, but who cares...as long as they enjoyed themselves.

So creative and interesting; isn't it?

Phase 2 - Saloon Project

A visit to the saloon

This is the way you wash the hair, wash the hair, wash the hair
This is the way you perm the hair, perm the hair, perm the hair
Everyday in saloon.











The hairdresser explained "the hair dryer can blow hot air and cool air. The hot air is use to dry the hair faster and the cool air is to cool the hair after drying."

The children feel the hot air and the cool air from the hair dryer.



Data Collection
Jolin drawing a hair curler.


"Why is the boy crying?" they wondered.





"This is a steamer. We put water at the back and let it boil for a while. Then we will get steam coming out" explained the hairdresser. The children feeling the steam with their hands and they also experienced the steamer over their head (see the inset photos).


Finally everyone has a free hair trim to experience hair cut in a saloon.

Link to Phase 1
Link to Phase 3