Vegetables

StartSmart Pilot School : Deborah Anglo-Chinese Kindergarten (Whampoa Garden)

《Harvest your Life》
Learn to treasure the vegetables on your plate

Stage 1: Introduction

Music and fitness are the two major elements for the school to organise a variety of activities for children. Through these real-life sensory experiences, their children manage to build a sustainable healthy lifestyle.

In designing the activities, teachers bring real vegetables to classes. Children learn the names, characteristics, structures and tastes of different vegetables. They become more interested in eating vegetables. Pictures and vocabulary cards are also used as teaching aids to increase their knowledge of vocabulary. Through such an integrated approach of education, children understand the significance of vegetables and are able to identify healthy food items. They even bring the health message back home.

As a pilot school, Deborah Anglo-Chinese Kindergarten (Whampoa Garden) emphasises both cognitive and physical development of their students. Various activities simulating real-life experience are organised, like simulating as farmers and role-playing the purchase of vegetables in the market, to enhance children’s knowledge of different vegetables.

Stage 2: Start Smart!

Live: Eat the Greens, Know the Greens

Objective: To teach children the Chinese characters for ‘gourd’, ‘leafy vegetable’ and ‘legume’ and their pronunciation, and to deliver the message of the importance of eating vegetables.

Time: 30 minutes

Materials: Real samples of gourds, leafy vegetables and legumes, three bags, vocabulary cards and picture cards of vegetables, a music CD, a CD player, insulating tape, four baskets, toy food of different shapes, and a magnifying glass.

Let’s GO!

Cognitive development

1. Children imagine that they are right in a plantation and that they see a vast vegetable field.
   
   
2. Everybody sits in a circle. The teacher shows the vegetable samples and asks the children if they have tried any of them before.
   
   
3. The teacher introduces the vegetables. He/she invites the children to observe the vegetables with a magnifying glass and feel the shapes.
   
   
4. The teacher puts each vegetable into a different bag. Children will have to put their hands inside and guess what kind of vegetable is.
   
   
5. The teacher shows the vocabulary cards and let the children read the characters.
   
   
6. The teacher explains the vegetables and their benefits, such as preventing constipation and certain diseases.
   
   
7. Divide the class into two groups. Place the picture cards on the ground randomly.
   
   
8. The teacher plays the music and says, ‘Kids, let’s buy vegetables together!’ The children move around, pretending to be strolling in a market.
   
   
9. When the music stops, the teacher says, ‘I want to buy xxx (name of a vegetable).’ Then the children pick up the correct picture cards and yell: ‘I have just bought xxx.’

Physical activity: Be the healthiest!

1. Mark the starting point and the destination on the floor with insulating tape. Place three baskets beyond the destination.
   
   
2. Divide the class into two groups. Give each group a basket of toy food.
   
   
3. The children take turns to pick healthy food items out of their given basket. Then they have to bypass the paper bricks and deliver the toy food to the basket at the destination. Afterwards, they run back to the starting point.

Cool-down exercise

Children have to imagine themselves as farmers who have worked hard in the field for the whole day. They are exhausted and now sauntering back home.