Lighting Up The Rainbow City

Where Term 2 is about Literature and the Arts, Term 3 is Project Term on the kindy school calendar.

This is usually my favourite term as it is fascinating to see what the children come up with, with the help of their creative teachers. The topic of study is usually selected by the kids in tandem with their teachers (both English and Chinese) by the end of Term 2. Parents would be roped in to help at various points and it usually culminates in Project Presentation Day when parents are invited down to watch their presentation and view their work. Needless to say, Project Presentation Day is the highlight of the term for me too!

This year, Mei’s class decided to embark on a building project where they attempted to build a city out of recycled materials. They discussed the different things they could build in a city — homes, police station, hospital, zoo, church, supermarket, airport, military base, etc. — and the materials they could use. They did research into architecture and experimented with building structures to see what would work and what would not. They brought books and talked about their favourite places during show and tell.

Soon it was time to start building and the teachers appealed to everyone to contribute boxes, toilet rolls and various other materials for building. Parents were also welcome to help so I popped down one morning to lend a hand as well as take a peek at what Mei was doing.

Mei was in the “house” group so their assignment was to build a house, which evolved into HDB flats! After an hour of working, this is what we came up with:

Mei feeling very satisfied with the morning’s work!

Flats with surrounding a pond-garden. As always, I came away from the session with great respect for kindy teachers for being able to get things do amid the chaos!

My involvement was at a very early stage in the construction process so I wasn’t very sure what the children were going to do in the remaining weeks and almost waited with baited breath for the final presentation day to arrive. In the meantime, Mei came home with tales of having painted their buildings, of piecing the different buildings together, of making roads, putting in lights and and adding in cars and trains.

On Project Presentation Day, the whole family turned up in full force to see what they had created.

The event was, unusually, organised in the evening so it started with a little ceremony to “light up” their town, which was strung with fairy lights and looked very pretty. Then the children gave a little presentation in song about their Rainbow City.

我是一个小小建筑师！