Bamboo Garden News, Dec. 1st-5th, 2008

Dear parents,

Thanks for viewing our blog every week. Thank you also for providing family pictures. We will return the pictures at the end of Unit. Please note that we will have the following school activities next week:

Dec, 16^th, 2008: Theater trip to Julia Morgan “Nutcracker” at 10am.

Dec, 17^th, 2008: We will have Rice Ball汤圆to celebrate the winter solstice at 9:30am.

Thank you very much for reminding your full time child to bring a book from home. From Dec, 8^th, 2008, we will have a new schedule：

Monday: Luca

Tuesday: Kai

Wednesday: Jaden

Thursday: Evelyn

Friday: Pei-Pei

Children have been appreciating other children who bring books to share with everyone.

Last week: We had Thanksgiving activities with all children. We thank all parents who brought us food for the Thanksgiving potluck.

This week: Our second Unit of Inquiry: My Family

Music: 甜蜜的家 (a sweet house)

Rhythm: xx的家有几个人，让我们来数一数，爸爸妈妈…..，1、2、3、4、….，xx的家有..个人。(how many people in xx’s family, let’s count, father, mother…, one、two…, there are x people in xx’s family)

Body movement (PE): 健康操, 甜蜜的家

Activities: 我的家有谁? Who is in my family?

Dec, 1^st: (Language) A pig couldn’t find its house and everyone helped it to find its house. A long long time ago, the original meaning of 家 (home) was a place for a pig to live. We started a short story to introduce our new house. We also made sandwiches today.

Dec, 2^nd: (Social studies, art) We asked children to introduce their family to all of us. We made frames for our pictures.

Dec, 3^rd: (Language, math) We introduced every title of all family members (father, mother, grandparents of father side and mother side, and siblings: older bother, younger brother, older sister, younger sister) We counted how many family members do the children have?

Dec, 4^th: (Language, math)We continued learning the titles for family members. Children tried to put together a jigsaw puzzle of 家 (4 piece puzzle) and will try 8 pieces later on。The puzzle is in our new house; everyone can always challenge themselves with it or get help from others.

Dec, 5^th: (PE) We had an activity about who is in my family. Everyone pretended to be a family member. We made a circle with blocks. Children ran around the circle with music. When the music stopped, Pei Pei said who should be in the house and the child pretending to be that person came into the circle.

Next week: We will introduce the Christmas holiday and make our bamboo family member picture album.

*Please discuss with your child what he/ she wants to bring to decorate his/ her shelf in our new house and please bring it by Dec, 9^th. Thank you.