Plum Garden / 梅园书栈

梅园报晓 Plum Garden News—No.17
February 2 – February 6
Kindergarten / First grade

Important dates
2/7                 Solano Lunar New Year Parade. The parade starts at 11:00AM.
2/16              President’s day. School Closed.
2/17-2/20   Winter Camp. Extended day care provided. Sign-up to the Camp is needed at the Administrative   Office.

Dear Parents,

What a great show it was! Our Lunar New Year Celebration started with a Dragon dance, which led onto a lion dance, and songs. I’d like to thank all of the Shu Ren’s students’ for bringing us such a wonderful performance. Thanks parents for bringing your families and friends to celebrate the Lunar New Year with Shu Ren. Thank you Oscar’s parents, Katherine and Nathan. Katherine helped the Pre-K teacher, Meng Pei Laoshi, to make the dragon for the Pre-K performance and Nathan brought the yummy Dim Sum treat to everybody after the performance. Thank you for all of your support.

I’d like to remind you that we have one more Lunar New Year Celebration event coming up next Saturday. The children are encouraged to wear Chinese outfits.

Saturday, Feb 7 – Solano Avenue Lunar New Year Celebration.
The parade starts at 11am. We will need to get ready for the parade from 10:30 – 10:45am on Solano Avenue. The school will post more details about the schedule and location.

Our inquiries for this week are “庆祝中国农历年 / Celebrating Chinese Lunar New year” and “如何保暖我们的身体 / How do we keep our bodies warm?”
We will inquire about:
• Lantern Festival
• How do we keep our bodies warm?

The Plum Garden weekly subject planners are listed below.

Language: The children will continue to learn how to use Chinese classification words (Quantifiers) in sentences. Such as 个, 朵, 片, 棵, 张, 条, and 只. The children will learn new vocabularies from our weekly inquiries: Lantern festival, and how do we keep our bodies warm? The students will practice sentence exercises to prepare for their Wednesday homework. We will start to learn Tang poems (游子吟 and 风) to prepare for the 5th Chinese Language Bridge Cup Contests.

Math: We will learn “排顺序, 比多少 / Number order and compare the numbers”. In this chapter, the children will learn fancy ways of counting. We will learn how to count different number orders through the games. We will learn how to count backwards, skip two numbers (even and odd numbers), and we will count by fives and tens. We will play “Fill the spoon” and “Grass-Hopper.” We will continue to do our math listening exercises. In each exercise, I will design a paragraph with math vocabularies. The children will learn how to listen carefully to draw a picture to answer or match the question. This exercise will improve their math vocabularies and develop their math concept with different thinking skills in Chinese.

Science and Life Science: During this week, our science subject is focusing on natural sciences and life sciences. We will continue to observe daily temperatures. We will learn how the weather affects our human bodies and animal bodies. We will learn how people and animals keep their bodies warm. We will discover why different places have different weathers and different seasons. We will interview our parents: the place where they were born or grew up to compare the weather and season differences.

Lunar New Year Celebration-给王小二拜年

Art: We will learn how to make Chinese lanterns. We will also make mittens.

Social Studies and PSE: We will continue to explore “庆祝中国农历年 / Celebrating Chinese Lunar New year” and “如何保暖我们的身体 / How do we keep our bodies warm?”
The children will learn about:

• Lantern Festival
- Where does the Lantern Festival come from?
- Why do we eat rice balls to celebrate the Lantern festival?
- How do people in Taiwan, China, Honk Kong, and Chinatown celebrate it?
• How do we keep our bodies warm?
- Winter clothes and summer clothes.
- How do people and animals keep their bodies warm in the winter?

Singing: We will learn “读唐诗 / Read Tang Poem.” We will continue to sing “Happy New Year! Wang Xiaoer / 给王小二拜年.”

谢谢! Thanks!
Kai