The Krause Early Elementary School

Chinese Your Kindergarten

Dear parents, At the end of the second trimester, I would like to say congratulations to all the children in my class. During the past few months, they have made big progress in their academic, social and emotional development, in a Chinese environment. How they did it sometimes is still a mystery to me.

Listening/Speaking: We kept practicing the kitchen dialogues this week. The children were paired up in a way that they could nish the dialogues by helping each other out without my interruption. Indeed, I enjoyed being the audience. LOL. In addition, we learnt to say school supplies in Chinese. The words included pencil, crayon, caddy, eraser, glue, scissors, ash card, etc. A new song of A Careless Drawer was also taught. After following the video to do morning exercise for several times, we chose to learn one of the eight sections which seemed most interesting to kids (It seemed unrealistic to learn all of them). In this section, a little frog

cannot nd his mom and his friends helped him out. While doing the movements, we also learnt to say the words. In our story time, we listened to stories about an elephant and a piggie by Mo Willems. Several books in this series for beginning readers t very well into our class (In my graduate study, all of my classmates face one

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The Krause Early Elementary School

Chinese Your Kindergarten

critical challenge in their Chinese teaching, to nd appropriate reading materials). How I wish these books have Chinese characters so that kids can practice their reading skills. By talking about the book covers and stopping in the middle of the stories, we kept strengthening our predicting muscles. Reading: So far, we have learnt to read around 65 Chinese characters, excluding numbers from 1 to 30. With this foundation, we learnt to distinguish between a character and a word or phrase (made of two or more characters). The meaning of some words can be determined by combining the meanings of characters. For example, is made of (not) and (good) and means not good. But other words work in a different way due to the multiple meanings of characters. We tried to read 20 words and 13 sentences without picture clues. Unfortunately, there is not a commonly agreed high frequency character list for learners of Chinese as a foreign language. I combined the list for adult native speakers and adapted it to young learners interests. Writing: I worked with each individual child to improve the quality of their name writing. The kids were asked to compare the difference between good and less satisfactory handwriting. Math: We talked about which two numbers make 5 and learned to read and write the addition sentences. Chinese brush painting: In Chinese, it is called . means water, means ink and means painting. Obviously, water and ink are used in the painting. Later, colored paint was added. Some paintings of Han Meilin were selected for kids to appreciate. He is the designer of the mascot for Beijing Olympics, my favorite painter when I was little. We also take a look at selected paintings of Chinese kids aging from ve to ten years old. Finally, we tried ourselves. I am still looking for appropriate cords to make Chinese knots. Materials: To nd school supply words, please go to list #5 in the subject of word on www.quizlet.com. On www.chinese4kids.weebly.com, songs and pictures (of Chinese paintings) in resource section have been updated. Over the weekend, I will upload the presentation for this weeks show and tell. Homework: Enclosed in the folder you may nd a worksheet for writing your childs name in Chinese. After practicing on the worksheet, children need to write their names on the door hanger we made to the best of their ability. Next week, we are going to take a look at everyones name writing on the door hanger and vote for the best writers. Presents will be given to the winners. Spirit day: Next Tuesday is the Dress like a book character day. Parent-teacher conference: Parent-teacher conference is not required for Chinese class. You are welcome to contact me if you have any questions or concerns. Kleenex needed: We are running out of kleenex. If you could make some donations, I would appreciate it. I will also buy some for next week. Reminder: Some kids are getting sick these days. In Chinese, a saying goes like Put on more clothes in spring and less clothes in autumn. Please keep your child warm in the early spring time. Enjoy the weekend!

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