Plum Garden / 梅园书栈

梅园报晓 Plum Garden News—No.29
May 11 – May 15
Kindergarten / First grade

Up coming events and important dates
5/12    Berkeley Fire Department visit and Demonstration at Shu Ren.
5/14    Julia Morgan Center, The Seasons Ballet Performance Field Trip.
5/19    PTA Meeting.
5/25        Memorial Day. School Closed.
**May is National Senior Citizen Month**

Greeting Parents,

Tomorrow, May 12 Berkeley Fire Department will be visiting Shu Ren at 10:30A.M. The fire fighters will be showing the children their rescue equipment and also giving the children a fire emergency escape demonstration. After the demonstration, the children will have a chance to see the inside of a fire engine.

On Thursday, May 14 we will have a trip to the Julia Morgan Center to see a ballet performance, Tchaikovsky’s “The Seasons.” It is conducted by the Berkeley Ballet Theater. I think that this is a wonderful experience for the children to watch how humans use their body movements to express things; in this case, the seasons. We have learned about how artists use their paintbrushes to capture the seasonal colors and we have learned about how musicians present the seasons through different instruments to create different feelings. From different art forms, canvas to the music to the body movement, I hope these can inspire the children a little bit. The performance will start at 10:00 A.M. Pre-K and we will divide into two groups: Group A and Group B. We will be group A and will be leaving school at 9:05 A.M. and will be taking the 51 AC Transit bus to the Julia Morgan Center. Please arrive to school no later than 8:45 A.M.
Group A chaperons: Kai Laoshi, Teacher Lisa Jean, Tony Moore
Group A students: Miles, Mia, and Desmond (Pre-K)
Maya, Ethan, Julian, and Oscar (K/1st)

We had a good time hiked in the botanical garden on last Tuesday even though it was raining. During the trip, the children were very excited about counting bridges that we have passed and they identified many of the plants that we have learned in class. We are also very lucky to have a very nice docent gave us a wonderful tour and also, to have Teacher Lisa Jean to accompany us on our field trip. Teacher Lisa Jean is very knowledgeable in California native plants. The children made a beautiful book for the docent and a banner for the Plum garden. Please come to see their botanical garden field trip pictures.

Summer is not far away—in fact, it’s right around the bend! We are about to finish up our last plant inquiries, “Fruits and seeds / 果实和种子.” Starting next Wednesday; we will have a completely new theme, “Transportation.” It will be the last theme for our 2008-2009 school year. We will learn everything about vehicles.

For this weeks’ inquiries, we will continue to learn about “Flower / 花” and “Fruits and seeds / 果实和种子.”

The Plum Garden weekly subject planners are listed below:

Language: We will still continue to learn lesson 6: Playing games / 游戏 and we will be having more word order exercises. The children are also making flash cards for themselves so that they can study. Each morning, the children will take turns making a couple of phrases to share with their classmates. The flash cards will be sent home with the children before the summer so that they can use it to review their Chinese vocabularies at home during the summer break. We will also continue to learn radicals. We will have more exercises radical words. The children will also learn new vocabularies from our weekly inquiries: “Flower / 花” and “Fruits and seeds / 果实和种子.”

Math: We will continue to learn Geometry section “方盒，圆罐和球形 / Cube, cylindrical, and ball shape” We will learn how to look a shape object from different perspectives. I will be showing the children some of the three-dimensional perspective pictures that I have. We will continue to use the Chinese traditional puzzle tool called Tangram to learn the most common shapes and how to use it to shape objects. It is a very challenging tool and it needs a lot of patience. Through Tangrams, the children can learn how to be flexible in their thinking. Thank you Teacher Jadin for letting us to use her Tangrams. We will play games to match shapes.

Science and Life Science: The children will discover the flowers that have opened in our schoolyard. They will be a “plant doctor” and take a very close-up look at the inside of the flowers, fruits and seeds. We will explore different kinds of fruits and vegetables. The children will learn how to identify which part of fruits and vegetables that we eat, such as: carrots are the root parts, broccoli are the flower parts, lettuce is the leaf part, eggplant is the fruit part, pea is the seed part, and celery is the stem part. We will also taste them. We will discover different kinds of seeds and how a tiny sunflower seed can grow very tall. We will learn where the fruits and seeds come from and how they develop.

Art: We will pick flowers from our garden and learn flower arrangement. We will make a Chinese styled flower fan. The children will learn how to use watercolors to paint flowers on rice paper. We will make a dried, pressed flower bookmark.

Social Studies and PSE: We will learn why animals need vegetation to survive and how plant seeds are carried by animals, insects, and the wind (also know as pollination). The children will understand that plants and human and animals’ lives are closely related to each other.

Singing: We will continue to sing “Knowing the parts of the plant/ 认识植物的身体.”

谢谢! Thank you! ☺
Kai Laoshi