The Krause Early Elementary School

Chinese Your Kindergarten

Dear parents, I was glad to witness the growth of children after the Christmas holiday. Particularly, some boys in my morning class showed great improvement in their behaviors. I hope they can keep the momentum.

Listening: Tuesday, we watched a video of the origin of the twelve animal signs in China. I had to pause from time to time to explain the story with simplied languages. We continued to listen to stories on a daily basis. These stories included The Very Busy Spider and Have You Seen My Catby Eric Carle and a Chinese story in which some farm animals stand on top of each other to catch a kite hung on a tree for a girl. Speaking: With most kids able to say yesterday, morning, night, we started to put more emphasis on practice saying noon and today. Although we learnt thank you, you are welcome, I am sorry, no

problem a long time ago, our application of these languages have been limited to teacher-student communication. Starting from this week, I reinforced the necessity of saying these words among students as a way to practice the language,

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The Krause Early Elementary School

Chinese Your Kindergarten

but more importantly, to cultivate good manners. Also, we learned to say some animal names in Chinese with a focus on the animals in the twelve animal signs. With a lot of input from the songs, nursery rhymes and words we have learnt so far, kids already knew how to say words such as spider, owl, cat, dog, caterpillar, rabbit, frog, elephant, bird, etc. I also modied the lyrics of the song Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star to help kids remember the order of the animals in the Chinese Zodiac. Reading: A lot of the Chinese characters of animals derived from pictographs. Learning these characters, I believe, is benecial to the development of kids visual thinking ability. Take the character of (pig) for example, the left part means the paws of animal and it is also in (cat), (dog), monkey). In the right hand side, the upper part is and it means mud. The lower part represents the sun. When looking at the character, kids were told to think of an animal that likes to roll in the mud and bake in the sun. It is a pig. Easy! Therefore, I didnt hesitate to teach them the characters of all the twelve animal signs. We watched ashes of how animal pictures can be changed into characters and that helped children to remember. Math: Creating an ABC pattern was this weeks theme. With some practice, we were able to do it independently with penguin pictures in different gestures.
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Chinese culture: The culture of Chinese zodiac was introduced this week. To put it simple, it is a scheme that relates each year to an animal and its reputed attributes, according to a 12-year cycle. It is based on the lunar calendar, which is about one month later than the solar one. Materials: To nd audio of words we learnt on www.quizlet.com, please go to #20 Chinese zodiac under the subject of word. The song section of our website was also updated. There is some delay on making and updating some learning materials due to unexpected workload and I apologize for that. I will try my best to nish it quickly. Joint homework: Inclosed in the folder you may nd a chart of Chinese Zodiac with birth years and the corresponding animal signs. Please help your child to nd his or her sign as well as those of other members of your family. Next, please cut, glue and paste pictures on the book we made to the correct page. For example, if your child was born in 2005 (2006), his or her sign is rooster (dog). Put his or her picture on the page of rooster (dog). You may include your childs friends relatives if you choose to. We will learn to read the completed books next week. Have fun! This weekend looks warm and hope you enjoy the sunshine.