Bamboo Garden News, Dec. 8th-12th, 2008

Dear Parents:

Thank you for viewing our newsletter every week.

Important dates:
Dec. 19^th: In order to celebrate the winter solstice together with the Kindergarteners, we will reschedule the date for cooking rice balls (red bean) to Dec. 19^th, at 9 am.
Dec. 16^th: Theater trip to Julia Morgan Theater’s “Nutcracker” at 10am. (Two parents will chaperone with the teachers.) We will still have our regular daily schedule. If your children don’t usually come on Tuesdays, please arrive at school by 9:15 at the latest so we can catch a 9:24 bus.
Dec. 22^nd-23^rd: Christmas holiday camp. Extended day care provided.
Dec. 24^th –Jan. 01^st: Christmas & New Year holiday. School closed.
Jan. 2^nd : New Year Holiday camp. Extended day care provided.

Thank you for reminding all your full time children to bring a book to share with all of us. Here is a reminder of the schedule:
Monday: Luca
Tuesday: Kai
Wednesday: Jaden
Thursday: Evelyn
Friday: Pei-Pei

Last week: We introduced each student’s family members and learned the titles of father, mother, older sister, younger sister, older brother, younger brother, and grandparents on both father’s and mother’s side.

This week: Major things: introduce family tree (我的家庭树), introduce the Christmas holiday, and decorate our Christmas tree.

Music: 甜蜜的家, 圣诞老公公(Santa Claus )

Body movement (PE): 甜蜜的家, 圣诞老公公, 健康操

Rhythm: 我的家有几个人? (How many people are there in my family?)

Story: Ssh…….

Dec. 8th: (Language, art): We introduced that Dec. 25^th is Christmas (圣诞节), and talked about Santa Claus (圣诞老公公), and Christmas trees (圣诞树)。We decorated their Christmas trees for their own shelves.

Dec. 9^th: (Language, art): We read a story called, Ssh!!. In the story, we introduce “snowman” 雪人). Children made their own snowman to decorate their shelves.

Dec. 10^th: (Social, Language): From the story of Ssh, we learned that on Christmas holiday in winter, we can see sometimes the snow on the mountains. We used popcorn to make pretend snow and worked together to make it snow behind our Christmas tree.

Dec. 11^th: (art): We made our own candy canes for the Christmas tree.

[(math, language, social): Two children worked together to try to figure out if they were a family, who would be in their family, and how many family members would be in their house?]

Dec. 12^th: (art, Science): Since we have been growing beans, we are testing thirsty celery to show children how plants drink water through their stalks and where the water goes. We added red food coloring to a glass of water. We will observe over the next few days how the celery will change after being put in the red water. We decorated paper gingerbread men.

Next week: We will introduce “the Nutcracker” and the music, and the winter solstice.