Thank you to all parents for all you volunteer and donate and do for your kids and their education.  It is simply wonderful to see how involved you all are. Seeing them happy and learning (and well fed at snack time :) at school makes me so happy! You all deserve a big 

谢谢！

The book sent home this week has a few place names (places where the little dog is hiding) that your child cannot read. This is ok. We'll be working on learning these places this and the following week. If you are helping them read, mainly focus on the parts on the white sign, the repeated phrase asking if they have seen the dog.

You can help them practice the possessive form by asking them whose things are whose. They should answer with a name followed by the 的 "de" (which is pronounced like "duh")

If your child likes playing on the computers, the Confucius Institute Online has some fun games and stories to help them practice and play with Chinese.

http://kid.chinese.cn/en/

 for example, here's a fun  and quick little Character recognition game.

 http://kid.chinese.cn/article/2009-08/27/content_51509.htm

Monday

Good monday.

And now some business.

Update on the books: If any of you have papers signed and ready to turn in, please send them as soon as possible so we can get this all going. As soon as I know how many are purchasing a set, I will let you know about who to write checks to.

And as far as egg cartons for the dragon craft, we'll need them by Thursday Feb 4th. 

For some reason the lingt classroom website is no longer recognizing the microphone built into my computer, and hence the book is not yet up.  Sorry. I'll try to get this figured out as soon as possible.

Our great wall of China

Today we made our own bricks from which a great wall of China will shortly be constructed in the hall outside our room. 

Thank you to those who sent back the form about the Step by Step readers. Those of you who sent back that you would like to borrow a complete set for the year, they will be sent home next week. I will be in contact with Susan Gong this week about how she wants us to pay and will send home a note about it next week as well.

Because each set comes with a CD, where the books are read twice through--once by a native child, and then once more by a native adult--- I won't be recording them on lingt site every week. But the vocabulary and phrases for practice will still be available for listening and recording.

If you still need a form, please let me know.

Remember to mark February 11th on your calendars for the Chinese New Years party.

成功

What an ideal day. Laughter, work, Chinese; the definition of a good education in my opinion:)

Everyone did very well today, writing characters, adding three numerals, reading, and taking the pre test for math Acuity benchmark tests. We had an unprecedented amount of students get 100%, and all had very impressive scores. So all your support and work along with the math instruction in Chinese is indeed succeeding in helping these students progress in that area. Which makes me very happy.

We also worked a bit more on the New Year's song, so you can request performances now from you children and they should be starting to feel more comfortable with the words.

wednesday

Hopefully you all got the note home about sending home a complete set of books. I need a signed note back from everyone, and the sooner I get them in the sooner I can send you home the sets of readers. So try to get those back by Friday. And I can send home another note if you are reading this and wondering what I am talking about.

And now a few math things you can practice with your child:

 - finding numbers one less and one more than any given number

- finding numbers ten more and ten less than any given number (helping them see just the tens column changes up or down by one)

- order of months. Quiz them on things like "What month comes before April." "What is the next month after July" etc etc. They know this in Chinese, but the English could use some reinforcement

-telling apart the coins

We talked about how to ask and answer what school they go to and what grade they're in. It's still pretty fresh so they might not remember it completely tonight, but it would help them to review it.

To ask what school they go to, you say "Ni shang na ge xuexiao?" 

你上哪个学校？

They answer with  "wo shang Calvin Smith xiaoxue" 

我上Calvin Smith小学。

To ask what grade they're in, they can say "ni shang ji nian ji?" 

你上几年级？

And respond with "Wo shang yi nian ji"

我上一年级。

Also for parents trying to learn Chinese, lingt has a new sight specially for Chinese learners that you might find helpful. Click on the link to the right if you are interested.

Here's the vocabulary list for the week....

English        yingwen 英文

Chinese      zhong wen  中文

Which?          na ge 哪个

And you?       ni ne  你呢？

First grade       Yi nian ji  一年级

De  的 add after a noun to show possession

Example: wode 我的 means mine, nide 你的 means yours

Thursday

A happy weekend to all.

Here is a video of the new year's song we started learning. It's the first song on the video (the video's a collection of new year's songs).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiAk8n6IhCw

Gongxi gongxi !

News for the day....

We started work with a New Year's song, read a book about where animals live, practiced listening to books we've read before, counted by two's, played addition games, did DIBELs testing, character practice, and had inside recess due to air quality (or lack of it).

At the conference I attended yesterday we talked about where the students should be this time of year language wise, and all the Chinese immersion teachers shared what their kids were doing. From this point in the year on, we are going to be focusing on helping the kids get as much practice using the language that is now inside their heads. Doing so helps them move toward automaticity in language production, rather than having to search for the words they want, think about how to say them, and then try to pronounce them right.

Reminder that tomorrow is a short day. We will be having a quiz, but it won't effect their grade. It is just for me to see how they are doing with recognizing the characters. If your child isn't getting all the characters, don't be worried. They are primarily developing their oral language (which almost all students are doing very well with) and these quizes and reading are to help them start to move toward literacy.

A monster is coming!!

That is the title of the book that we'll be working on this week. Because it's a short week, the book is pretty much a review of last week's but using the verbs with a monster coming instead of talking about what two birds like doing. Repetition in different and meaningful contexts is the key to them remembering these words, and they are doing very well with them already.

The afternoon class's homework folders didn't get passed out, so they will get them tomorrow.

Today we started work in centers with a new concept of comparative subtraction. That  is, comparing two sets of numbers and finding the difference between them. This is slightly different than the subtraction we generally think of where we have one set and just take some away. You can help your child work with this by having them play with any number of small objects. Ask them to split the objects into two groups, then line the two groups up side by side. Now compare the two and see how many more/less one group had than the other. Have them say aloud "The difference between five and eight is three." Verbalizing it while moving the objects and seeing it visually will help them internalize the concept.

I will be attending a conference tomorrow, so Patty will be the substitute.

Thursday (星期四）

Good day.

Worked with subtraction, reading comprehension, and a new book, as well as took our Acuity benchmark test in math. They are right on and mostly above target for their grade level 

in math. I'm so proud of them!

They should have brought home a paper plate clock today. Please use this to help them practice telling time in English and Chinese to the half hour. 

Time

Just so you are all aware, we're not having a vocabulary test this Friday. I'm trying something new and we'll see how it works.  If you want to help your child at home with words, it would be the words on the back page of the book "You and I" as well as time words.

To say the time (on the hour) in Chinese, you simply say the number like you would in English, and instead of o' clock, you say "dian" third tone.

Example 7 o'clock is "七点” qi dian.

To ask what time it is, use the character for asking how many of something ---- you might remember it from asking someone's age.  Instead of Ni ji sui?  (How old are you?), you say Ji dian?

Or if you want to emphasize the what time is it right now  add the "right now" (xian zai) characters in front, making the complete sentence "Xian zai ji dian?"

This is on the lingt site if you'd like to practice.

We made clocks today and practiced telling time in Chinese to the hour and half hour. We read a book called "Old Wolf", which uses many different times throughout, and each child had to move their clock hands to the appropriate time, hold them up, and say aloud in Chinese the correct phrase in response to the time we just read. Most seem to have it down, so you can practice with them at home.

And we're back!!

It was great to see everyone again after the long break. Friends reunited, rules reviewed, and Chinese surprisingly well remembered.

This week we'll be working with the book "You and I" which should either already be at your home (from the Friday before the break) or you should have seen it today in the homework folder. The new words are all action words, like run, dance, swim etc.

We're also soon to begin preparations for the Chinese New year celebrations. I am thinking about doing a little program, and wondering if any of you parents have a past involving choreography? I have a great upbeat Chinese song that would be really fun to have the class dance to. If you would like to help out with that, let me know asap and I can send you the song.