Homework

I have had a very bad cold this week, and was gone yesterday and half the day Monday. Hence, some of you are just getting homework folders today. I apologize for the delay.

We are getting ready and excited for the Chinese New Year, and will be having our own classroom party to celebrate. Both classes will have their party on Friday, February 11th. If you would like to help with either class party please let me know. My a.m. class party will be from 9:00- 9:45, and my p.m. class party will be from 12:20- 1:05.

We will be building a dragon out of recycled egg cartons for one of the activities at the party, so if you have any old egg cartons, can you please send them to school with your child and we will start a collection. Thanks!

Food for the Chinese New Year

More explanation of one of the most important parts of chinese new year: the food.

a little bit about Chinese New year

First day a success!

Our first day of all Chinese went very well! Most are very excited about meeting the goal, and as a result I heard more Chinese today from the mouths of each student than I usually do in a week! I am so excited for how much and how fast this will help them progress. Your children are amazing!

This week we will be working with the concept of where we live

你住在哪里？

ni zhu zai na li

literally : You live where or "Where do you live?"

我住在_________. I live at/in___________.

We are also working with a hard concept in math of comparing two amounts and using subtraction to find the answer.

Example: If June has three apples and Kyler has seven, how many more apples does Kyler have than June.

The tendency is for them to try to add the two numbers. So if you have time this week, help your child by making two rows of some object, one with a few more than the other. Show them how one row is longer, because it has more. Help them to see how to set up a subtraction sentence to find out the difference between the two rows.

Also, there is a performing group from China here to start celebrations of the new year. If you are interested in their presentation this Saturday, please click here for more information.

All Chinese classroom

Our goal is to have an all Chinese classroom beginning Tuesday, January 18th. We will be practicing having a few shorter periods of time with no english in preparation. Please encourage your child and ask them how it is going each day.

They now have quite a bit of language to use and when they must use the new language to communicate and be involved, they will quickly find they can say much more than they even thought they knew. They will be using more of their brain, and the language they are absorbing and using to create meaning will become very meaningful and motivating.

Also, there is a new lingt assignment on clothing and seasons.

community

January in our chinese language and literacy we will be focused on communities and cultures, looking at what our community at school is made up of and what our role in it is, then moving onto neighborhood, state, country, and world.

We will be learning a lot about chinese culture and customs in preparation for celebrating Chinese new year on February 3rd. The school-wide celebration of Chinese New Year will be the evening of February 10th. The chinese classes will be doing a performance that night, so be sure to mark your calendars.

As part of the discussion on community, we will be talking a lot about doing our jobs well, being polite, and contributing. So if you have time, it would be great to talk with your child about the jobs they have, the people they effect, and about the people in their community that help them. Also about traditions they may have and not be aware of, since we will be learning about many Chinese traditions and traditions from other cultures that differ from their own.

Clothing

We have been working on names of clothing as well as seasons, talking about what kind of clothes we wear in what seasons.

In math we are working with telling time, multiple ways to add up to the same number, counting by 2's, 5's, and 10's and adding and taking away ten from any two digit number.

Here's the words we've been doing this week

帽子 mao zi hat

裤子 ku zi pants

t恤 t xu t-shirt

袜子 wa zi socks

裙子 qun zi skirt

游泳衣 you yong yi swimsuit

外套 wai tao coat

Seasons

冬天 dong tian winter

春天 chun tian spring

夏天 xia tian summer

秋天 qiu tain fall/autumn