The Krause Early Elementary School

Chinese Your Kindergarten

Dear parents, This weeks learning is adjusted to t the schedule of the research conducted by my teacher. Listening: I am making an effort to speak more incidental Chinese in my class because a solid foundation of Chinese input is very helpful for children to produce output in Chinese. For example, when I tell them to write their names in Chinese, I write English words on the white board and say dont write them and only write Chinese. Usually, one child in class guesses what I mean when I say something children never hear. When the guess is not correct, another child volunteers to guess. After a few rounds of negotiation of meaning, children are most probably able to get it.
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Speaking: As part of the research conducted by my teacher, we spend 25-30 minutes every day to learn the revised version of a story called The little red hen in Chinese. The morning class learns it by singing a song and the afternoon class by reading the words. The story contains vocabularies such as

The Krause Early Elementary School

Chinese Your Kindergarten

hen, dog, cat, mouse, cutting wheat, grinding wheat, planting seeds, etc. and new sentence patterns. Therefore, I dont include other content in my class so that children are not overwhelmed. Writing: We learn to write children's names. To be frank, it is not an easy task. Some names have more than 10 or even 20 strokes. Again, I use the animations to demonstrate the writing process. The pity is that I dont have the animation of writing each and every childs name. After the initial practice on their own, they are asked to compare the difference between their own writings and standard ones. They actually do an excellent job in nding all the differences. Some differences they nd are not even brought to my attention. It takes time for children to practice writing in a correct and beautiful way and some of them are already making progress during the past few days. In addition, we learn to write dates. For example, October 20th in Chinese is like In this context, means the month and means the date. Numbers are put before them to indicate which month or date. Math: The majority of children can count from 1 to 100. Some children still need help and I will work individually with them during our center time. This week, we learn to tell time by hours. Being able to count, children nd it easy to do. The only exception is two oclock cause two is pronounced in a different way. Besides, we learn to say the months of a year in Chinese. Again, it is easy because January starts with one, February starts with two and the patterns continues to December. When you ask your child to say the month names in Chinese, you may hear another character, It originally means the moon. Chinese culture: When learning the time, we play a game called old wolf. One child plays the role of an old wolf and stands with his or her back to the rest of the class. Old wolf, old wold, what time is it? Children ask. When the old wolf answers it is 12 oclock, s/he suddenly turns around and throws a soft ball at the children. Materials: To listen to the math words we have learnt this week, please go to quizlet and click #7 and #9 under math. You may also hear the game audio at #4 under the subject of game. The character animations for month and date are also uploaded to our website. The story materials will be published two weeks later so that students cannot practice at home, a requirement of the research. Halloween: On the day of parade, some activities will be held in my classroom. Since China doesnt celebrate the Halloween, we dont have a party. The parade for PM class is next Fri, Oct 28. The AM class attend the school parade on Mon, Oct 31. Have fun with your child at weekend and be sure to congratulate on his/her progress so far in Chinese class!
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