Teaching using songs and videos

I've been thinking of updating this blog for a long time but just couldnt find the right

topic or title.

Then I thought would just write down whatever came to my mind.

Hmm.. let me see, whats a typical day like for me?

I reach my school at around 8:30 and I start preparing the material I am going to use on that day.

9 hours in school is a very long time and I am constantly thinking of how to keep children occupied. The less occupied they are the more trouble they make.

So for the past few weeks, on one day of the week, I show the kids some videos. 5-6 minute videos.

Started with a video of a jelly fish in water as I wanted a follow-up for a news paper article I read to them. They were very excited to see the jelly fish and asked for watching it again and again.

Then I knew this is surely a nice way of capturing their interest. The theme for our school curriculum this month is solar system and since its a very abstract concept, I feel videos are a good way to show them what happens in our universe.

One of the topics I needed to teach them was phases of the moon. Now thats surely a complex topic for 5-6 year olds. Then I found a video on youtube which was a song with lyrics and pictures of the phases of the moon. Its really amazing, coz it was easier for me also to memorize the phases when it was in a song form. For those of you interested do check out songsofhigherlearning.com.

The next week I need to teach them about eclipses and I decided to do an experiment with a torch and earth and moon models to show it. Will update you on how it went!