Teaching life cycles now. So happened that my Bruno Munari Uniqlo tee proudly features two of the seven animals the kids are to learn intimately, so I happily wore it to school so that I could answer questions like:
“How many animal categories can you see?”
“How many stages are there in the life cycle of a butterfly?”
“How many stages are there in the life cycle of a frog?”
But it was when I took the Son home and showered him that I found my best student.
When the Son stood up, he excitedly grabbed the part of my tee that featured the butterflies and wildly gesticulated. He had never shown such exuberant interest in my tees before.
I think he recognises the butterfly from his exposure to “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”! (also known as the only book in which all English, Chinese and Japanese versions are regularly known to him)
My two takeaways from this incident:
- if I do something different, I may yield a different result.
- if I keep up the reading of Sci-related books, he may be so good at Science that I never will have to pay for tuition, haha
If you are interested to read on, let me share with you how I teach my students to remember the main points in Life Cycles.
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Chant while writing BBCCFGM (butterfly, beetle, chicken, cockroach, frog, grasshopper, mosquito)
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Circle BBM (first two letters and last letter). Butterfly, beetle and mosquito = 4-stage life cycle
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Place a tick on CCG. The young of chickens, cockroaches and grasshoppers resemble/look like the adult.
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Place a cross on F. The young of a frog does not resemble the adult.
I get my students to do this every lesson until I am confident that they can reproduce this memory aid on auto-pilot. Hope this helps you!
#lifeofaparentteacher #pslescience #everydayisdifferent1