The Peacock and the Coucal

Date: 4 Nov 2006
Class Attendance: 6/9
Volunteers: 2/2

The children have all finished their examinations and we see more of the children back at kidsREAD this session. Six (YX, R, YZ, J, LM, C) of them turned up made up of three boys and three girls matched equally of 1 male and 1 female volunteer (myself and K).

I continued with the Judy Ling series of big books and today I did a story with the children on a Peacock who mocked the Coucal. It turns out from Wikipedia that the Coucal is a type of cuckoo bird and it was interesting that all the children thought the peacock was a male bird! Perhaps due to the fact that with all its beautiful tail feathers, the children associated the peacock with female characteristics i.e. beauty = female.

The children said that liked the story after I had gone through it with them. This book teaches us about not being proud just because we have some talent/attribute such as beauty. In the book, the peacock mocked the coucal and made him feel small because the coucal had the colour of mud, tree trunk and the forest floor - brown while the peacock's tail feathers were as beautfiul as the rainbow. However, the peacock gets him comeuppance when a hunter shoots the peacock's tail feathers while the Coucal survived because he was able to camouflage himself and blend in with the forest without being spotted.

After learning the moral of the peacock story, we divided into two groups with K taking the girls when I led the boys in group reading. The boys were back to their boisterous and active ways moving from chair to table and back to the chair during the group reading. I sometimes get tired just looking at them..haha.. R has musical inclinations as he sang out the book "Joseph and the Jacket".

Next week we will be having a character development workshop led by one of the enthusiastic volunteers (YQ). Can get to take a break from our reading and do something different for a change.