10/26 and 11/2 Classes Review

Here are the new characters we've learned in the past two weeks:  王、老、师、没、秋、地、手、起。 These are pretty complicated words! I'm really impressed that most of the kids were able to write them well at our review sessions. Thank you for all the parents who spent their time facilitating their children's Chinese character writing skills at home! As a parent myself, I understand what a commitment that takes! 多谢大家课后花时间练习、复习我们在课堂上学过的内容，特别是生字。

( BTW, please feel free to let me know if you prefer to reading my posts in Chinese. Or, if you have trouble reading Chinese....I started writing this in English only because I was not sure if everyone can read Chinese here. But I guess I should have asked...  If you all are fine with both languages, I'll simply keep it as-is. )

10_26 生字

11_2生字

生字课堂练习

On Oct 26th, we played a word game and learned how to say many Halloween-related words in Chinese, such as 南瓜灯、黑猫、蝙蝠、鬼、鬼屋、巫婆、蜘蛛、骨头、面具、糖果、猫头鹰、化妆舞会、给糖或捣蛋！Students made vocabulary cards and played in teams, to try to remember/recognize/read the new words they just learned. Before the end-of-class bell rang, we only finished one run of the whole game. Many kids shorted:"Again, again!" So we knew that they enjoyed the game. :-)  

On Nov 2nd, to continue this game, I changed it a bit and used it for our review session. Students, in two teams again, took turns coming up to the white board to write the four Chinese characters we learned last week. The ones who finish fast and write well (depending on how many "good" ones) win! The kids named themselves as “南瓜队” and "苹果队". I bet they still remember the game we played last week! After the game, we learned our new characters for this week. 秋 and 起 are fairly new to all. 

If you check the textbook, you will notice the change of our new characters for lesson 8, as well as the rhyme.  In our textbook, it's a rhyme about Spring. Since we are in deep fall now, we decided to change it to a fall song. Here went the lyrics:

秋天秋天真美丽

云儿在天叶在地

小朋友们手拉手

大家一起做游戏／坐下来／站起来

( * And the tune I used is the Chinese nursery song "我爱我的幼儿园". )

To learn and feel this song, we had a small outdoor play activity in the middle of our second class. I'm glad all the kids participated in it. Thanks for our TAs, Annie and Hana, who helped out throughout the class so our fun activities are possible! 

小朋友们手拉手，大家一起做游戏

After the outdoor play, we came back in and enjoyed reading a Chinese book about Dinosaurs 《恐龙》, that held all the students' attention for the rest of today's class.