Plum Garden / 梅园书栈

梅园报晓 Plum Garden News—No.19
February 23 – February 27
Kindergarten / First grade

Greeting Parents,

Welcome back to school. I hope everyone had a very restful mid-winter break.

This week, we are reviewing from animal hibernation to animals’ houses and will slowly blend into human houses. We will discover the differences between animal and human shelters. ‘Why do we need a shelter?’ will be one of our inquiries. We will get into our next theme, 我美丽的家/ My beautiful family.

Our new theme is about 我美丽的家 / My beautiful family. Five and half weeks from 2/23-4/8 are the total learning weeks. The subject will focus on language, social studies, personal social education (PSE), math, science, and the arts. The central idea is to express every family member has an important role and how to shares the relationship with family members.

The inquiries are:
* Different houses are built from different materials.
* The members in my family/what are their occupations?
* What is the interior appearance of my bedroom and dream room?
* Happy hour—when we are together.

In our first inquiry, we would like to introduce our family members to the class. We will have a family picture album project—The week of family. Starting this Friday, I will send home with one child a bag of materials for this project. Inside the bag includes a poster paper, a puppet animal, and a sheet of family recipes menu. This is a family weekend activity. The project will be due on the following Monday. The week of family’s child needs to bring the project and return puppet animal back to school on Monday morning. Therefore, we will be able to introduce your family to everyone and use it as part of our inquiry reference.
•    The poster paper so you can glue on your family pictures. Please work together with your child and enjoy your creation.
•    Bai Bai, the puppet animal, is Plum Gardens’ classroom pet. Whoever has the week of family project on Friday can spend his/her weekend with Bai Bai.
•    Family recipes menu is for sharing homemade cooking. I would like to start to collect your families’ favorite dishes that are special from your cultures, grandparents’ specialties, and mom/dads’ homemade recipes etc… We will be making a Plum Garden cookbook. I am thinking about selling it to our school families for fundraising our Plum Garden’s book wish lists. I would also like to form a Shu Ren family’s recipes blog, but I need parent volunteers to help me organize it. Is anybody interesting in helping to do this project? Please feel free to give me your comments and suggestions and do contact me if you’d like to help out.

Here is a list for the family projects:
•    Oscar—The project will be sent home with Oscar on Friday, 2/27 and it will be due on Monday, 3/2.
•    Julian—The project will be sent home with Julian on Friday, 3/6 and it will be due on Monday, 3/9.
•    Maya—The project will be sent home with Maya on Friday, 3/13 and it will be due on Monday, 3/16.
•    Ethan—The project will be sent home with Ethan on Friday, 3/20 and it will be due on Monday, 3/23.

The Plum Garden weekly subject planners are listed below.

Language: Building sentences will continue for morning warm up exercises. We will explore more on different phrase usages in different sentences. Children will continue to learn how to stretch a sentence and add more words into their sentences, such as classification words, conjunctions, and adjectives. The children will learn new vocabularies from our weekly inquiry: “不同的材料盖不同的家/ Different houses are built from different materials.”

Making animal hibernation book

Math: We will continue to learn “排顺序, 比多少 / Number order and compare the numbers.” We have learned how to skip two numbers (even and odd numbers) through the exercises. We have played the “Grass-Hopper” game to build addition concept. We have practiced the game with add 2 and add 3 additions. We will move on to add 4 and 5.

Science and Life Science: We will introduce how animals build their shelters for passing their winter and will learn different animals build different homes.

Art: We will have a painting project—Where do I live? This art project is dividing into three parts. The children will learn how to draw their own home, garden, and neighborhood. They will learn how to combine their three paintings into one complete painting.

Social Studies and PSE: We will discover where we live and what different houses are built in different places—some people live by the ocean, some people live in the mountains, and some people live in flat lands or cities. What do their houses look like? We will inquire why different places of houses are built from different materials. We will compare the differences.

Singing: We will sing 家 / Home.

谢谢! Thank you!
Kai