Biweekly Planner October 5-16

Greeting Pine Garden families,

Welcome to the first Newsletter for Grade 1 and 2 Class at Shu Ren International School. I plan to use this biweekly Newsletter to share our curriculum information and class related activities with you. In each issue, I plan to review classroom activities in the past two weeks and give you a preview of what is coming up in the next two weeks.

The Pine Garden biweekly review and planners are listed below:

Language/ Science/ Art
We have been learning colors for our first theme and been extending our knowledge of mixing colors. Since all the 2nd graders already learned basic and primary colors from last year, our class has expanded the names for colors to 26 different shades of colors by experimenting with multiple colors from a filter lens and by mixing colors. For instance, we learned about 水蓝色/aquamarine, 紫红色/magenta, 草绿色/chartreuse, 蓝紫色/violet, etc. We will continue to discuss how to appreciate one another’s art work and to talk about how colors affect our feelings. Also, we had learned how to read and write 上/up, 下/down, 大/big, 左/left, 右/right, 手/hand, from a rhyme ” 拍拍手/Clap Your Hands.” We learned our first Chinese poem, “A Tiny Tree / 小树,” to write new vocabularies characters and understand the meaning of the characters. For example: “小,” “树,” “种”。It takes time for the children to understand how to relate one character to another and to create meaningful phrases. In this section, the children will learn how to build phrases through games, such as the character game, and the Bingo game.

Math
In our first chapter, we will focus on 形状/shapes. This chapter will also include: number- counting to 50 for 1st graders (and 1 to 100 for 2nd graders), addition and subtraction within 30 for 1st graders (2nd graders will extend to 100), binary concept, statistics, and estimate. This week, we will continue to learn how to compare numbers, such as big and small and more and less. We will play games to help students to identify, count, and write numbers. We will also learn how to count backwards from 60.

Social Studies/ PES/ Art
We are finishing our first theme ” 缤纷的世界/ A Colorful World”. In past few weeks, we have been learning how to express our feelings through painting, drawing and craft works with different media, such as water paint, colored pencils or paper clay. The students are sharing their experiences about holidays and family with each other and are learning to appreciate one another’s art works though colors and subjects. Since we have been sharing so many works and been having lots of discussion during the past weeks, the students finally decided that they want to see other people’s art works outside of our class. When we were talking about where we can find a place to see lots of art, some of them mentioned SFMOMA and the ASIAN ART MUSEUM, and decided that we are going to ASIAN ART MUSEUM next Friday 10/23, since they thought we are learning Chinese and expected ASIAN ART MUSEUM would have more exhibition of paintings for our class to appreciate and compare.

P.E./ STATISTICS
During past weeks, we learned how to do hula hoop exercises and how to use jump rope. The students who did not know how to do these exercises are now able to do both and are trying to beat their own records. The students have been keeping track of their records and trace their own improvement.

Music
We’d learned ” 颜色歌/The Colors,” “数字歌/ The Numbers,” ” 好朋友/ Good Friends,” “当我们同在一起/ When We Are All Together” and “王老先生有块地/ Old McDonald has a farm.” We are going to learn ” 郊游/Let’s go picnic!”

Thanks! 谢谢！
Teacher Joyce 瑄瑄老师