Plum Garden / 梅园书栈

梅园报晓 Plum Garden News—No.34
June 15 – June 18
Kindergarten / First grade

Important dates
6/18    Kid’s Carnival–Last Day of School
6/22    Summer Camp Starts

Ni hao Parents,

This is our last week of school. We are getting ready to wrap up and say good-bye to the 2008-2009 school year. The children and I had a terrific year together. I appreciate their hard work. It was my pleasure to teach them and watch them grow. I would like to thank you all of you parents for your support during the entire school year. I am appreciative that we learned and benefited from each other. Your child’s report card is ready for pick up on Wednesday, 6/17 at Ping’s office. If you have any questions and/or concerns about your child’s evaluation, I will be glad to answer your questions. If you wish to contact me regarding their report card, I will be available on Wednesday and Thursday between 3:00pm to 4:00pm.

Today, we have celebrated Ethan’s birthday. He will turn six on June 29th. Thank you Ethan’s family for sending the yummy birthday cake.

Do you have a plastic water pool, a water sprinkler, and/ or a water slide at home? May we borrow them just for a day? Thursday, June 18th will be the last day of school. We will be hosting a kid’s carnival on the schoolyard. We would like to set up some water activities for the students to play. We will provide some finger snacks and we will also have music and games for the children. Please let me know if you have any water activity supplies that we can borrow. Thanks!

Learning foreign languages require a lot of practice. I hope that your child can continue to maintain his/her ability speak, read, and write Chinese during the summer. Language is like a tool, the more you use it, and the more comfortable you are with it. Reading is a wonderful way to increase their vocabulary and writing skills; it keeps your child on their standards although you might not read Chinese. I strongly believe that Chinese reading is like English reading. Sometimes, you will be surprised by your child’s Chinese reading skills. Shown below are a few of the reading and book resources that you can explore during the summer time. Those on-line bookstores all have English translations. It helps you to find the right level of reading books for your children. Basically, you can look for 4-8 years old reading books for your child. The companies below sell both Traditional and simplified storybooks.
* China Sprout— http://www.chinasprout.com/shop/education/books/storybooks
* Language Lizard’s— http://www.languagelizard.com/
* Ni Hao books— http://www.nihaobooks.com/books/storybooks?p=2
* Asian Parent— www.AsianParent.com
If you need help to find a right level of books, you can send me a link and I will be glad to take a look at it. Also, the most of Berkeley and Oakland public libraries have offered very wonderful summer reading program. It is nice to encourage your child to participate it.

This week, we are wrapping up the inquiries that we have learned about transportation. We will also review all Chinese lessons from lesson1 to lesson 7. We will sing all of the songs that we have learned during the entire school year. The children will help to take down their work and pack them in their suitcases so that they can bring them home on the last day.

The Plum Garden weekly subject planners are listed below:

Language: We are reviewing all of the lessons from lesson one to lesson seven. There will be more sentence order exercises in the morning for the children. We will write a short note for Father’s Day. We are reviewing vocabularies from the transportation inquiries.

Math: We are reviewing the entire years’ math. Individual study time will be given to focus on addition problems within 30 and subtraction problems within 20.

Science and Life Science: We are reviewing our experiments.

Art: We are going to finish making our luggage. We will make a card for our Fathers on Father’s Day.

Social Studies and PSE: We will finish our summer journey plans. The children will take it home along with their vacation planners and they can bring it along with them on their trip. The children can continue to write down their vacation activities in their journals.

Singing: We are going to sing all of the songs that we have sung this year!

谢谢! Thank you very much and I hope you and your family have a wonderful summer! See you all in the fall.

Cheers,
Kai Laoshi ☺