Green Living - Water Conservation
Learning more about our natural resources and how children can conserve these limited resources. Our goals are to make our children who will inherit our world, to become more ...
PCF Bishan North Blk 441 has received the Outstanding Kindergarten Innovation Award for two consecutive years now and seems set for more similar awards in the coming years! They won the award for their innovative project: Nurturing a Green Cradle – Seeds of life. The children are happily engaged in learning how to grow plants in various ways, including finding new ways to help the plants grow.
Young Creative Science Investigator
The centre’s niche programme is the Young Creative Science Investigator (Young CSI) where children from the Nursery to Kindergarten levels are encouraged to come up with research questions. They will then work with their teachers over the next 2 weeks on finding the answers to these questions. This Science Enquiry-based programme encourages curiosity and children’s involvement in finding answers to their questions. For example, children may ask a question on what makes bread rise and teachers would work with their children in defining the ingredients in bread, making the bread and identifying with the children the ingredient that makes the bread rise.
Over the last few months, the children have been exploring how plants grow under this programme. The nursery children planted green beans on cotton wool and watched them grow while the K1 children grew plants using soil and UV lights and the K2 children explored growing kang kong the hydroponic way. The children’s work were documented carefully in posters and displayed in the centre.
Collaborations
A vendor is engaged to provide Chinese Speech and Drama programme for the centre’s children after school hours. Another vendor comes in during curriculum hours to provide gym classes for all the children in the centre. The gym is equipped with colourful and varied material to help children develop their motor skills.
This centre also collaborates with NPark under the Green Wave programme by adopting a tree near the school and engaging the children in looking after the tree. Staff from PUB taught the children about water conservation and provided resources for their 2011 award-winning innovative project: Earth Science – Water for life.
Awards
The centre was given the Health Promotion Board Grant, PINK Grant and PERK Grant and has also received the Best Practice Award for one of its teachers for the last 3 years. In 2012, the centre also received a Team Award under the Best Practice Award. The Principal believes that children’s curiosity for learning should be encouraged and the curriculum should provide the children with appropriate learning materials to meet their learning needs and engage them in meaningful learning.
Parents’ comments
Parents have been giving their thumbs-up to the centre’s programme:
“We are grateful that the school has put in so much effort to have all these extra programmes done for our children. It really is amazing.”
“Working on this (Green Cradle) project, my child has learnt to be more responsible towards herself and others. Besides working on her own plant from school, she has nurtured an interest in nature…..In addition, she is able to remember what was taught in school and able to tell us about parts of the plant and what the seeds of sunflower do.”
“My son has enjoyed the programme very much. He has learnt valuable lessons from the field trips as well as the various activities in the classroom.”
