Bamboo Garden News, March 9-13, 2009

Important Date:
March 17th: St. Patrick’s Day celebration, please dress in GREEN.

Dear Parents,
Thanks to all the children for participating a lot and getting positive rewards (stars), and thanks to all the children for cleaning up after playing. I believe children are willing to perform better and better by getting positive rewards. From now on, you will see a red star if your child napped, or a blue star if your child tried to help and clean up, on our white board each day.

Our third theme, How We Express Ourselves: My Feelings, started from this week. Our first weekly theme of My Feelings will explore different sounds. By exploring different sounds, we try to learn how to express properly if we like or dislike the sound.

This week’s theme: They sound different!!

During our last weekly theme of “My family”, we talked about earthquakes. By showing pictures of what happened after an earthquake such as collapsed bridges and collapsed buildings, we imagined the sound and sounded it out when we saw the different pictures. And PeiPei played the piano as we made our sounds.

Language: The sound of High (高) and Low (低)- 高高低低的声音 Story: 你喜欢…(You like…)?, St. Patrick’s Day
We discovered what the high (高) and low (低) sounds are. When do we hear high and low sounds? Do you prefer high sound or low sound? How do you express if you like or dislike high sounds (我喜欢高/我不喜欢高)? How do you express if you like or dislike low sounds (我喜欢低/我不喜欢低)? Moreover, we discussed what animals fly high in the sky (birds, bees..) and what animals (dogs, snakes…) walk low on the ground.

Science: I am making different sounds.
We had two, 7CM glass bottles and two paint colors (red and blue). We filled water into one bottle until it reached 4CM and added blue paint, and then filled water into the other bottle up to 2CM, and added red paint. We tried to play with the two bottles with different heights of water. They made different sounds: The 4CM bottle sounds higher than the 2CM bottle. We had two more bottles the next day and all of us played different music.

Music and body movement: I create my own song.
我喜欢-wo xi huan，不喜欢-bu xi huan，高高低低的声音-gao gao di di di sheng yin，呼呼高-hu hu gao，拉拉低-la la di，高高低低高低高-gao gao di di gao di gao。
Pei Pei erased the words 高 and 低 and had all kids fill in the blank spaces by saying “我喜欢高(低)/ 我不喜欢高(低)”. We had body movement imagining the animals we discussed flying high in the sky and walking low on the ground.

Math:
Looking at the four different bottles, we realized the different amounts of water were high and low. The bottle with 4CM water was higher than the bottle with 2CM water.

Art: My Shamrock!
As St. Patrick’s Day is coming, we started sharing the story and having fun art projects. On the first day, we stamped our paper with all different shapes of sponges. On the second day, we had our shamrock which consisted of three green hearts glued on the paper that we decorated first day.

P.S. Please check our “Bamboo Garden Daily Activities” link, which will permanently be at the top of this page, if you would like to see our daily schedule.

Thank you! 谢谢