More food?

This time the food isn’t about what I ate, but stayed tuned for that because I went on a food tour around Ho Chi Minh last week.  Instead all of my lessons last week included food! 

My level three students first learned about the motion of the earth, moon, and sun.  After I explained the difference between revolution and rotation- I asked for volunteers to come up and play the parts of earth, moon, and sun.  They were supposed to rotate and revolve in the correct manner so that everyone got a visual.  As you can see by the videos below this didn’t exactly happen, but the students had a lot of fun and I think they ended up learning the concept.  I told them that if they earth, moon, and sun really moved like they did we would all be dead!

After we learned about the movement, I taught them the phases of the moon.  To reinforce this concept we made the phases of the moon out of oreo cookies.  I split the class into three groups and they had to work together to create the different phases by taking off the correct amount of cream and then labeling the phase.  This activity was a big hit- but it was very hard to keep the students from eating the cookies!

Later in the week the level three students learned about the phases of matter.  We did a quick introduction to the three phases and how the atoms move in each phase.  Then to demonstrate movement from one phase to another we made ice cream!  To make ice cream you put milk, sugar, and flavoring in a small plastic bag (we used flavored milk juice boxes to make it a little easier).  You add ice and rock salt to a bigger plastic bag, put the small bag into the big bag and shake for about five minutes.  The students loved making the ice cream (even though they complained about the bag being cold while they were shaking) and enjoying their creation after.  Many students asked me for the recipe so they can make it at home!    The ice cream was a big hit with everyone but the cleaning lady- the room was a mess.  Water was everywhere but the kids had fun while learning that’s what important-right?!

My level ones and twos learned about food.  The learned about the different food groups and how much of each group you are supposed to eat in a day.  They were shocked to find out that sweets get the smallest part of the pyramid.  I challenged them to go an entire day without eating sweets and report back to me- so far no one has told me they succeeded.  While I was explaining that you should really try and limit your sweets one student raised his hand and said, “But teacha what about bitter chocolate?”  I said, “Oh you mean dark chocolate- dark chocolate is better for you but should still only have a few pieces.”  The student was very happy with this because “bitter chocolate is my favorite.”  After listening to my explanation and naming all of the foods of each food group they could think of I handed out plates and had the students draw their favorite of each food group.  The students were really enthusiastic about this activity but some were bummed because they didn’t know how to draw their favorite foods.  After the activity we enjoyed a healthy snack of crackers and a banana (everytime I wrote banana on the board throughout this lesson I need helped from Gwen Stephanie B-A-N-A-N-A-S).  When I anounced that we will be having bananas one of my level one students screamed out, “BANANAS, I LOVE BANANAS, I’M LIKE MONKEY- I LOVE BANANAS!”  I couldn’t even yell at him for screaming out I thought it was the cutest thing!