Bamboo Garden News, March 16-20, 2009

Dear Parents,
You have already received an announcement from the head of school, but I also want to welcome our new teacher, Feng Laoshi. I am very happy to have Feng Laoshi here every morning to be with all of us.

There are a few things I would like to announce:

1. Thanks to all the children who tried to share their toys with others over the past few weeks. However, I have already discussed with all children and we have agreed not to bring any toys such as trains, buses, cars and so on. Children can bring ONE of their doll friends. They will put the doll in their cubby after they arrive at Shu Ren and they will “ONLY” have their doll with them when they nap. Thanks to all children for trying to understand the reasons why their own toys are supposed to play at home not in the school.

2. [Only for full-day children] We have a new schedule for bringing a book to share with others: Please remind your child to bring a book on the day he/she is supposed to bring one (English or Chinese is fine; we will still read it in Chinese. Thanks.) Parents can recommend children bring a book related to the coming holiday, Easter OR if your child has any books related to our theme, How we express our feelings. We are now talking about “sounds” and how different sounds signal different actions.

Monday: Luca, Jaden
Tuesday: Kai, Kieran
Wednesday: Evelyn, Charles
Thursday: Deja, Mia
Friday: PeiPei, Miles

This week’s theme: Any kind of sound means something.

(St. Patrick’s Day- We had a great time on St. Patrick’s Day. We had green grapes and green apple. We also had a fun game looking for gold in the classroom in order to fill up a bamboo pot of gold. If they found gold, they would get a reward. We made a rainbow with colored cereal as well.)

Language: Story: 听觉- Hearing.
We discovered different sounds (high and low (高，低)) with different amount of water in the glass bottles and knew how to express “Like-喜欢 and Dislike-不喜欢”. We tried to play a song we usually sing. This week, after we read a story “hearing”, we realized that “sound is a signal and sound can also express your feelings”. We had four basic emotions of anger (生气), crying (哭泣), happiness (开心), and sadness(伤心). Using different sounds to express different feelings was very interesting. In addition, we used three different sounds to indicate three different signals. (When Pei-Pei plays glass bottles, it’s cleaning time; when Pei-Pei plays the tambourine, we go to the playground and come back to the bamboo garden classroom; when Pei-Pei plays woodblock, we are quiet.)

Music and Body movement: I play my music!!
We have 7 glass bottles with different amounts of water. We also have 4 plastic bottles with different materials. The different materials make different sounds. We tried to play own music and express the different emotions by making different sounds. We continued practicing our songs of 高高低低 and a new song 讯息-signals. (答答碰答碰碰答-da da peng da peng peng da，声音有高也有低-sheng yin you gao ye you di，听听这是什么声音-ting ting zhe shi she ma sheng yin ，xx- 收舍sho she，xx- 嘘xu, xx- 去游戏场回竹园 qu you xi chang hui zhu yuan。)

Math: Wow, different amounts of water!!
(From the last bamboo news, I mentioned we had two glass bottle with 4CM and 2CM. However, it was my mistakes. They were 4 inches and 2 inches.)
We had 7 glasses bottles with 1 to 7 inches of colored water. The different amount of water makes different sounds. The lower amount of water we had, the lower sound we heard. The higher amount of water we had, the higher sound we heard.

Science: It does make different sounds!
We had 4 plastic bottles with rice, beans, colored cereal, and water. We tried to fill all different materials to the green line on the bottles. We tried to shake it and hear the difference.

Art: My own bottle!
After we had different experiments with different kinds of bottles, we also had our own plastic bottle and tried to decorate it. We will put whatever we want inside to make my own sound to express different feelings.

Next week, we will have 4 more different materials with plastic bottles. We will try to get used to hearing our signals from Pei-Pei. We will continue singing our new song.

PS. I also want to thank all parents for bringing us different clothes to enhance our theme of My Family. Please let me know if you want them back OR if not, I’m sure children are happy to have them in their dramatic play area when they are playing dress-up.

Thanks,
PeiPei
March 22, 2009