The N2, K1 and K2 children of Ci Ai Education Incubator were involved in this year’s Start Small Dream Big Project. The Centre aims to create awareness to the children on how to protect and take care of the plants in the environment and at home and how to make use of recycled materialsat home. The Centre also wants to promote social connections with the community and therefore the children will be sharing their plants at the end of the project.
Before the start of the project, the teachers introduced the project to the children. The teachers taught the children the ways to protect and take care of the plants. In addition, the children were also taught how to plant the seeds into the recycled pots.
The children started the project by using recycled materials, such as bottles, milk powder tins and plastic containers to plant the chili seeds. They designed the bottles, tins and containers with their parents and classmates with markers, ribbons and papers.
After designing the bottles, tins and containers, the children started their planting process in school. They filled the recycled planting pots with soil and fertilizer and then they placed the seeds into the recycled pots. The children then brought home the recycled pots with the seeds in them to grow and to observe.
While the children were growing their plants at home, they observed the growing process of the plant and filled in the observation sheet accordingly. They also watered the plant daily, sang songs and placed it under the sunlight. The children enjoyed singing and playing their favourite songs to the plants! The teacher also invited the children to bring their plants back to school weekly and the children observed the plants closely in their classroom. It was a great learning point as during the sharing sessions, they were able to find out the reasons why their plants did not grow, for example not enough sunlight or did not water the plants consistently. The children had sharpened their observation skills through this planting process.
Next, the children moved on to creating posters on how to take good care of the plants. They would be sharing the posters with the residents in the neighbourhood too! They drew what the plants need in order to grow and wrote sentences to describe it.
Lastly, when they were done creating the poster, the children were ready to share their plants with the community. They would be sharing the plants with the posters to the residents in the neighbourhood at the end of October 2021.
Through this project, the children had learned how to take care of the plants and the effect on the ecosystems. They were also able to find out the reasons why the plants did not grow well or had grown well, after experimenting with them, thus understanding the effect of the ecosystems and climate change. It was a great learning opportunity for the children to learn from one another during the sharing sessions.
Then when the children shared their successful potted chili plants with the residents, both the children and the residents felt the value of growing our own plants to support the sustainability on preciousness of life. In this way, we learn to stay connected with the community, sharing the same clean and green environment.
With the success of this project, we hope our children will build up their long-term good habits of sustaining the use of recycle materials, planting edible plants for their family and sharing the harvest with the community.
