＊＊＊ Parent Leader Request ＊＊＊

Dear Parents of C1A class,

I have a favor to ask here.... The school requests one parent leader for each classroom. My understanding is that since we are a big community at the Chinese school, it would be nice to have someone who can help out with organizing our class events, assigning yard duties, communicating between the school board, the classroom teacher, and the parents cohort, etc. We really appreciate your precious time and warm support to this community, which, in turn, benefits all the people involved, including your lovely children!

If you are interested in volunteering, or merely learning more details about this position, I appreciate if you could leave a comment underneath or drop me an email to let me know your interest!

非常感谢！Thank you very much! ; )

Che Lao-shi

10/19 Class Review and Reminder for Next Week

Reviewing

After reviewing the four characters we learned last week, today we learned the following new characters: 这、不、你、子. Take a look at the phrases/words our students were able to come up with for each of the characters:

New Characters

We noticed that there are many words in Chinese that made up by a noun plus the character "子". This is actually an interesting grammar phenomenon, where a single-character noun changes into a double-character word with 子 at the end but remain its original meaning. We won't go deeper to explain this linguistic rule to kids at the young age. But it would be fun if you could challenge your child(ren) to find out as many Zi-words as possible. For example, you can play the game "词语接龙", where family members take turns saying a word that ends by 子. (Another similar character is 儿.)

Besides the new characters, we also learned how to ask questions by adding the character "吗" at the end of a statement, such as 这是XX吗？Last week, we practiced another kind of questions: 这／那是什么？Now, we've learned to write the whole sentence: “这是什么？”

In the second half of today's class, we were introduced to some daily manners by a rhyme. The lyrics goes like this:

《礼貌歌》 

谢谢你，别客气。

对不起，没关系。

老师，老师，谢谢你！

别客气，别客气，别客气。

 老师，老师，对不起。

没关系，没关系，没关系。

老师，老师，谢谢你。 请你不要太客气。

Learning Li-Mao-Ge in Groups

All kids had fun playing the game "城门城门几丈高" after learning the above rhyme. I can't say enough how much I loved this game personally. It involves body moments, rhyme, and most importantly, it is a great tool we can use to introduce new words and phrases in our Chinese learning in the future. We'll definitely play it again! 

老师："对不起。"
夏天：“没关系！”

This is Fun!

We spent the last ten minutes or so trying to finish our "Caterpillar" story. It is obvious that the kids loved this 好饿的毛毛虫! Along the way, we expanded our Chinese vocabulary on food and practiced our translation skills. Hopefully we'll get a chance to finish the last two pages next week.  

“谁来翻译刚才这句？”

Reminders:

1) Homework: workbook 1 B (练习册B) lesson 6, page 7-9. 

2) Important Note: Please check your class folder and the Chinese character cards. Please bring all the character cards you have collected so far to the class next Sunday. (I gave each student a zipper bag to hold all their cards but maybe some of the cards were already missing from that bag. Please let me know if you believe you need extra copies of those cards. I can email you the pdf file so that you can print out yours and get them ready before the next class meeting.) Thank you very much for your attention and cooperation! (We need those cards for class activities in the future if everyone have their cards with them.)

10/12 Class Review and Homework Reminder

Great work on memorizing and writing characters, everyone! The first time ever "听写 (Dictation Exercise)" was done smoothly, with over 80% correct rate for the whole class. It is actually not required for kids as young as five years old to be able to do this, even in mainland China! So it was amazing for me to see some of our younger students were capable enough to remember how to write all the new words we've been practicing.  With that said though, for those of you who are still struggling in writing, please do take it easy. More practice, in the class and back home, will make a difference. But first of all, all practice needs to be done in a pleasant matter. It would be a shame if anyone in this class felt pushed/punished in learning Chinese, especially when they are still building up their writing skills due to the young age.

听写1

We learned four new characters this week: 是、什、么、书. We practiced how to ask "What is this (这是什么)?" "What is that（那是什么）?" and "Whose is it (它是谁的)?" It was fun to hear students answering those simple questions, sometimes in unexpected ways. I brought in a "mysterious bag" to play a game, where we learned how to name stationery items in Chinese, such as: 铅笔、蜡笔、水彩笔、油画棒、橡皮、尺子、卷笔刀、放大镜、胶带纸、回形针、印章⋯⋯That was fun, too!

When introducing the word: 书，we read a book in circle:《我喜欢书》. It turned out that, as a group, our favorite books are.... guess what? ... scary/frightening books! Oh my! Happy Halloween! :P

  

For homework, please follow the lesson number in your workbook1. It will be all in 练习册A, lesson 5. At this level, it would be better if one adult can assist the child when she or he does the homework for the whole time. There are some read-alound exercises that need an audience, at least.

Thank you for your precious time spent assisting your child's Chinese learning!

谢谢！下周见！

10/5 Class Review and What to do for Homework

Today was our first "Unit Review" session, after four continuos lessons in a row.  It was an opportunity for me to observe how the students were doing in the past four lessons and plan for the future lessons accordingly.

We reviewed all the 15 "new" characters and their Pinyin by playing different games. I was amazed to see that almost all the kids who attended this class regularly (especially those who never missed a lesson) had no problem recognizing these characters at all. I guess some of them were learning Chinese characters somewhere else at the same time or in the past. But still, that was a little surprise to me. And based on this finding, I now am more confident to introduce at least four new characters per week and challenge them with writing tasks. 

One of the games we played today was "找朋友 (looking for a friend)." For those of you who are not familiar with this song,   here's an online flash video@ 

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzIwNTM2NTgw.html    It would be great if you child(ren) could learn to sing this song. We may play this game again in the future, with different content/rules/criteria for what kind of "friend" the students should look for.  

We started the story book "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" at the end of today's session but didn't have enough time to finish. I challenged the kids to translate each sentence into Chinese after I read it aloud in English. And that was hard for most of them. For example, the "egg" in the first sentence was named by one child "鸡蛋," while the others kept silent. That was hilarious. We'll keep doing this exercise whenever we have time, since the kids seem enjoying it so far. I'm pretty sure it's a good way to improve their Chinese expression skills, as well as having fun with stories.  

Next Sunday, we may try "听写（dictation exercise）" for the first ten minutes or so of our class. Since we don't have required homework for this week, you may help your child(ren) to be prepared for this activity at home when time allows. Basically, you just need to say one word aloud at a time and let your child write it down without looking at any references. Of course, the best way to do it is to "play" with those words, in a relaxing and playful manner, rather than telling them anxiously to "sit down, now let's learn Chinese!" To keep it short, and have fun!  

(Here's the list of the words we'll dictate in next class:  大、小、白、云、中、文、再、见、上、下、天、气、鸟、儿、太)

  

上学歌 video link

We've been learning this song in the past two classes. If you feel comfortable playing online videos to your child, please check it out!

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzAxNzc0Nzc2.html

Please let me know if you have trouble opening the link.

Happy Weekend!