Vegetables

StartSmart Pilot School : HKSPC Cheung Sha Wan Nursery School

《Vegetables Are My Friend》
Three weeks of topical study on vegetables

Stage 1: Introduction

To act in line with the StartSmart@school.hk Pilot Project, the HKSPC Cheung Sha Wan Nursery School designed a three-week topical study on vegetables. The topical study aimed at covering each and every part of learning. Children learnt more about vegetables through different aspects including music, physical education, art and life experience. In the classroom, there were language, art and science corners to introduce children to vegetable-related knowledge, such as planting and growing of vegetables, and also their sources, types, structures and nutritional values.

Through storytelling, research, visit, performance sharing, discussion, vegetable painting and art work creation and so on, children’s language, art and communication skills were strengthened. More importantly, children could establish a good eating habit of more vegetables and less meat afterward.

Stage 2: Start Smart!

Live: Be a Farmer

Objective: To help children gain deeper understanding of vegetables, including different types and characteristics of vegetables, their use, growth process and planting methods. They will also understand the duties of a farmer.

Materials: Pictures, brushes, sketch paper, claves, a tambourine, pictures of labouring farmers, pictures of vegetables, egg shells, art & craft tools, bean bags and hula hoops.

Let’s GO!

Section one:

1. The teacher tells the story ‘The Growth of Little Bean’ to the children. They learn about the favourable conditions of vegetable growth.
   
   
2. The teacher then discusses with children the favourable seasons and conditions for vegetable growth.
   
   
3. The children draw the vegetables.
   
   
4. The children play claves along the ‘vegetable song’.
   
   
5. Children follow the rhythm produced by the tambourine and move along as if they were farmers ploughing the land and sowing the seeds.

Section two:

1. The teacher shows different vegetables and asks if they are grown by the children.
   
   
2. The teacher refers to the online game at the website of the Vegetable Marketing Organisation (VMO). He/she helps children learn the duties of a farmer.
   
   
3. Children learn the duties of a farmer from different pictures such as ploughing, sowing, irrigating, fertilising and harvesting.
   
   
4. Children imitate farmers’ act of harvesting.
   
   
5. Putonghua activity: Children select some picture cards of vegetables and read out the words in Putonghua.
   
   
6. Art activity: Children paste the egg shells on vegetable pictures to form ‘vegetable collage’.
   
   
7. Music activity: play the song ‘Spring’. Children listen to the song and pretending themselves to be farmers and animals.
   
   
8. Physical activity: Children deliver the vegetables together to the hula hoop at the destination. They pretend to be farmers by placing the vegetables inside the bean bags.