Field Trip - Botanical Garden, Penang

Our school took a first ever field trip to Botanical Garden after learning about Insects. The children were transported by two cars. We departed from school at 9am. Here we all are...very hard to get the little ones to focus though, they were too excited to explore the plance. So Gabriel was left out in this photo... Gabriel Gabriel where are you ?...

We began with a walk from the entrance and helped our selves out at one of the shady spots near the river. While we were walking, I posed a few questions for the children to keep observing things around them. Can you spot a monkey ? Can you see a butterfly? What type of plant is this ? They had a blast with this!

A picnic mat provided a nice sit down moment for the children. We had sandwiches, children's fav drinks and fruit.
Do you want to play with me ? Let's go and catch some butterflies. I heard Ms. Estee said there are some dragonflies over there. Come on, let's go!

How many butterflies you caught ? Well...fun time has to end. It's time to go. The children helped packed the things and put in the picnic basket. They helped each other fold the mat.

This activity was a favourite for them. We truly experiencing fun time with each other and the children have chance get in touch with nature.

The day ended with a smile. We had a great day and perfect weather. We're already planning our next trip in Feb.

Jan News

Welcome back everyone to the start of the new term. We have certainly had a very busy month in Dec with holiday camp, cooking party and Christmas party too! We had lots of fun during the Christmas party. The children enjoyed decorating cookies and made party necklaces.

We are pleased to say that we have a total of 12 new children joining us this term. We hope that the children will settle in well soon and are looking forward to an exciting time with them. We will be spending most of our time getting the children know each other, daily routines and exploring the environment.

Our first theme is All About Me. We will be discussing about ourselves, our bodies and senses, favourite things, friends, families and also Chinese New Year festival that we will be celebrating end of this month. Some fun activities we have already planned for children include sharing information about their family as well as themselves. birthdays, making prints of body parts, culture table of Chinese New Year and lots of paint exploration.

We have a few children whose birthdays are around the corner and yes we encourage birthday celebration in our school. It’s a tradition in Montessori environment to celebrate children’s birthday by having a birthday walk. Here is how it goes..The birthday child will hold a globe and walk around a circle line. A candle will be lighted up and place on a model sun in the center of the circle. While the child is carrying the globe and walking on the circle line, his/her story (based on info given by parents) will be told. Every one complete walk around the sun represents the earth orbit around the sun one round and means one year is past. If the child is three years old, he will walk for three rounds. The child gets to blow the candle in the center at the end of his/her story. Then the birthday cake will be brought out and we’ll sing the birthday song together.

To let the children know more of the birthday child, photographs of the birthday child from each year of his/her life, a basket of his/her favourite book, toys or things will be shown to the class. These things will be displayed in the environment for a week and will be returned home after that. Parents are encouraged to inform the school early before the event.

Happy New Year

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and are enjoying the new year! I apologize that I have been absent from blogging as compared to my past presence. I have to get use to update my blog often as I know some of you out there are waiting for me to upload the photos that I've promised. Yes...i still remember and will do it soon... do appreciate your patience. I hope that I'll be here more in the near future as I've made some adjustments to the demands on my time at school because I have a bunch of dedicated teachers who help me a lot with school work and share their love of teaching with me. I really appreciate their hardwork.

Chinese Camp

The theme in Nov was Insects. I will post up our activities soon but I couldn't resist putting up two video clips from our Chinese Camp.

Christmas is coming to town

I can’t believe that it’s Dec already. We would like to welcome Niveyda, Gabriel, Shi Yang, Hannah, Amos, Aden, Madison, Zhi Ping and Nathaniel to LittleLand.

It has been a pleasure to know all of them and we look forward to working with them. I’m sure most of you have met Ms. Sri, our Toddlers Group teacher, pls give her your best support. We will continue to work together to give the best to your child.

We had a fabulous trip to the Botanical Garden and were very proud of the children as they were well behaved during the outing. Thanks to the many times of rehearsals before the picnic day. The weather was just a perfect day for taking a nature walk and picnic, playing with friends, finding bugs, chasing after the butterflies and dragonflies.

During our month of Insects, the children were busy learning about the life cycle of a butterfly, The children love the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and they could easily relate it when we shown them the real caterpillars that we got from the Butterfly Farm. In class, we guided the children through The Very Hungry Caterpillar book page by page, showing them how to turn pages carefully using the corner of the page and handle the book with care. We invited them to keep the book after reading it. We noticed that the children shown extra care for books now.

This month we’ll be talking about Christmas. We are really excited about what we have planned for the children in this holiday season. I think my favourite activities are when we do Christmas themed art and crafts. Pls take note that the last day of school will be 12th Dec and we’ll see you again on 2nd Jan 2009. Christmas party will be on last day of school and your child is invited to dress up on this day.

Language : Christmas related vocabulary – fetching objects
Math : Matching stockings, counting ornaments on Christmas tree, make and count the traditional red and green paper chains.



Science : Eating Healthy – which food are healthy, which food are bad.
Sensorial : Stuff Christmas stockings with objects for the children to guess what’s inside.
Snack : Rudolph sandwiches
Arts and Crafts : Hands and footprint Reindeer, Lolly stick snowman, Santa Claus collage, Christmas quilt.
Dramatic Play : Gift wrapping, Decorating Christmas tree and Christmas Party on last day of school 12th Dec.
Songs : Where Is Santa, You Are My Snowman and Santa Verse and of course

Our theme in Nov

Do you want to know what we have been learning in Nov? We learned that it has six legs, wings, antennaes, head, thorax and abdomen? Yes! Insects! There are millions of insects in this earth but we chose butterfly as our topic. Children love them because they are colourful. We began our butterfly topic by reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle which the children love very much. It illustrates the life cycle of a butterfly.

We prepared a butterfly nursery and raised the caterpillars. Children observed and noted the progress from caterpillar to butterfly every day. Unfortunately only 1 out 3 formed into a butterfly. Today we set the butterfly free. The children kept asking why we let the butterfly go. We explained to them that the butterfly needs to continue its life cycle from egg to adult buttefly again. We had fun as we learned other insects too. This is such a fun theme, as there is a lot of exploring and discussing.

Activities done -

Language – The Very Hungry Caterpillar story sequencing cards, learned the name of body parts – head, thorax and abdomen.
Math – We used different colours of craft pom poms (our pretend fuzzy bugs) and sorted them into different sized containers.
Science – Observed the life cycle of a butterfly - You could easily get these caterpillars from Penang Butterfly Farm.
Snack – We ate caterpillars!! We used bananas for the caterpillar body.
Arts and Crafts – We made caterpillars from egg cartons. We add wiggle eyes and pipe cleaner pieces for the antennae and legs.
Dramatic Play – We went to Botanical Garden on 14th Nov for a picnic.
Songs – The Fuzzy Caterpillar and I’m a Butterfly

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Hi I really didn't think posting up photos would take this much time to finish. I kept telling to myself that the photos must be up before this year. Don't forget almost everyday we do happily snapping photos of our children in action. So they do add up to the album.

This morning when we reached school, first thing we noticed was a black beautiful creature flying in our butterfly nursery. When we looked closer, it was a butterfly. We couldn't be any happier. It's like we watch the butterfly slowly changing from caterpillar and now to a beautiful butterfly. It's like raising your own child. It's totally amazing.

The children were all very excited. Not only the children, I was excited too as this was the first time I have seen real life cycle of a butterfly. One of our children invited her dad to come inside and take a look at our pride of joy. It was really great to see that the children have a love for living things. Another parent even told me that she'll try to raise her own caterpillar this way too!

Yeah! Finally, our hungry caterpillar has changed to a butterfly!



School Holiday Pirate Camp. We had treasure hunt in the garden on that day.



We were revising the sound of Bouncy Ben. We also made butterfly to go with the sound of b.

Well, that's all I have to share for right now.

More photos

As promised, i am posting some photos again today. Wish I had chance to sit down and do it all in one go.


We build a maze using Long Rods on green mat. We concentrated very hard and did a very good job. We walked in and out again and again.

We learned the sound of the letter d. We started by singing the Dippy Duck song, made a door knob hanger craft and finished off with a worksheet.



To go along with the sound of Dippy Duck, we learned the difference between salted duck's egg and a chicken's egg. We experimenting with the eggs and had fun cracking them. We were amazed that the duck's egg was actually white after we washed off the damp black charcoal.

Photos taken in July

Can't believe that Dec is coming up so fast. There are tons of photos waiting for me to post them up here. I better do so before year 2008 is gone as I'm really really late in posting these photos. It's going to take days or even weeks to post them up so pls bear with me. Hmm...now..where do I start with??

She enjoyed blowing and chasing after the bubbles. She was excited to see all the bubbles around her. I asked her to pop all the big bubbles. Since then, she has been asking for bubbles everytime we go out to the garden.

They were asking me how deep was the sandbox. I told them that they could try to bury their feet in there and they will find out the answer.

What was happening in Oct...

In Oct, we were busy working on our miniature little town, we have cars ready, painted houses and buildings. The children had lots of fun learning when should cars stop and go at traffic lights. They also learned things they need to fly in an aeroplane. Children took turns to be pilot, flight attendant and passengers. We had our Halloween party with costumes, cookies decorating, treats, jack-o-lantern toss the bean bags and parading around the environment. What children most excited about was the trick or treating part.

Reminder to parents: Please say a sweet but short goodbye to your child before you leave in the morning. It may seem easier for you to “sneak” away, but it can be very confusing for your child. Separation has been harder for some, but children are settling in to the routines and the environment comfortably once they are engage in activities.

In a Montessori environment, children are given freedom to work with any materials and to move around. If they stray from expectations, they are quickly and firmly redirected. It’s not advisable for two or more children to work with the same material together. One thing that children need practice right now is “order”. To work with a piece of material, first, they need to lay out a mat on the floor/ table, choose a material, work with the chosen material and return it to its place. I’m very proud that my two year-olds can follow this practice.