National Education Learning Journey - 25 May 2010

Everyone was a little anxious in the early morning on the 25th May. It was the first time. All the students from Sec1 to 3 were to go on the National Education Learning Journey on that day. Each of them had been given a choice of venues. Each group consisted of the students from different classes and levels. 25 buses would come and go at the staggared timing. 50 adults - 25 teachers/staff and 25 parent volunteers - were required to accompany them.

But there were many happy faces at the end of the programme. The students seemed to be more attentive this year than the previous year when they went to the preselected venues. Many thanks to everyone involved, the parent volunteers in particular. School wouldn't have been able to proceed with many other matters of the day if 50 teachers and staff had had to go with the students.

Ms. Loretta Lee and Mrs. Kelly Tay were among them. They accompanied 80 students to Farmart Centre. Here's the report by Loretta with the photos by Kelly.

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Visiting the Farmart Centre on 25 May

The Farmart Centre actually has a total of forty-three shops selling goods or products related with farm or nature, like fishes and pets etc. During the TK Learning Journey, we only visited one shop: Uncle William’s shop located at #39-40.


The tour was organised by William, the owner of the Quail Farm. William brought the whole group (group three, thirty-five students & group four, twenty-eight students) to a big classroom and gave us a “bird lesson”. Uncle William gave us a very informative and humorous talk about the quail.

If you are given one quail, do you know how to tell whether is female of male? Looking at their butt? Actually, there is another other way to tell: if the chest feather is brown, it is a male; if there are black polka dots, then it is a female. Simple and easy, right? However, if the quail is all white in colour, what should we do? Left with no choice, we would then have to see their derrière : if the anus is an “o” shape, then it is a male; if it is like a horizontal line, then it is a female.

We also learnt that the life cycle of a quail from egg to adult quail is only forty-five days . The baby quail can start to walk, and even look for food two hours later. The adult quail can lay one egg every day after it turns forty-five days old. Thus this makes it a highly-productive farm business.
Uncle William also taught us how to say ‘quail’ and ‘quail egg’ in five different languages : English, Mandarin , Malay, Tamil & Japanese, and then I taught him in Cantonese!! Also, the quail belongs to the poultry family.

He used a “Phua Chu Kang” way of speaking to talk to the students, so it was humorous and at the same time easy to remember the information.







He also gave out prizes to students , teachers & parents who could answer his questions after the talk. Both Kelly & myself won 4 Guinea Fowl eggs. I shared 2 with Mdm Saedah, TK staff in charge of group three.
Uncle William had also asked the students to go for the questions hunt. They had tried their best to answer and about twelve students won the prize. Other than that, each student got four eggs as souvenir.
Overall, the trip was a fun & enjoyable .

Written by Loretta
Photos by Kelly

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