The Pine Garden Biweekly review and planners are listed below:

Language Art/ Life Science/ Art and Craft
We are transitioning from the weather inquiry into the health inquiry. The class has been going into the details of the various body parts and their functions. There are a total of 33 parts that we have learned such as head/头, hair/头发, eyebrows/眉毛, eyelids/睫毛, tongue/舌头, teeth/牙齿, chin/下巴 and cheek/脸颊. We have been working on the project of building up our own robots which consist of all these body parts. The students were very creative, using different shapes and colors and varying the way connections and joints were made. The robots are now on the wall of the science center of our class, you are welcome to stop by and give your child a chance to share what they’ve learned with you.

Math
The class has been practicing measurement through various games. As students constructed objects from Legos and blocks, we measured these on our measuring sheet. Since some of the plants that we planted have sprouted, the students have been recording the height of the buds as well. In addition, the second graders have still been working on multiplication and applying the techniques to measurement practice.

Science
We have an instrument which is able to simulate a tornado. The students interaction is crucial to the experiment. They learned about the power of a tornado and how it is able to pull in anything around it. We are also investigating the ways in which water takes different forms according to reactions to its environment. These include observing ice turn into water or boiling water turning into vapor.

Music
We’ve learned a new song “Head, shoulders, knees and toes/头，肩膀，膝，脚趾.“
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The Pine Garden Biweekly review and planners are listed below:

Language Arts/ Science
The class has been learning how to read thermometers and to know there is difference between Fahrenheit/华氏温度 and Celsius/摄氏温度. We’ve also learned about tornado/龙卷风, storm/hurricane/暴风. The students are going to get further acquainted with these concepts through experiments in the classroom. The class is also expected to work on more about climate/气侯 for our weather inquiry. We are soon going to learn about climate of different natural habitats, such as the desert/沙漠气侯 or the Arctic region/极地气侯.

Math
The class has been learning about measurement the last two weeks. We have been working on measuring objects around the classroom and have also been combining the concept of measurement with subtraction.

Earth Science/ Life Science
Since the students are really interested in the parts of flowers, we have been talking about how flowers become fruits, and how insects help with pollinating.(授粉) During the trip to Blake Garden, the students also got a chance to see firsthand many rare flower species which helped them put their knowledge to practice. In addition, we learned from the trip how short the life span of flowers are compared to human and animals.

Music
We’ve learned a new song “One More Try/再试一下.

March 29- April 9, 2010
1st/2nd Grade Pine Garden
瑄瑄老师 Teacher Joyce joyce.chang@shureninternationalschool.com

Greeting Pine Garden families,
Spring is here! Our class has noticed there are sprouts and blossoms on the trees. And while we are observing the weather, the students are aware of the change in temperature. The class decided we want to plant flowers to welcome spring and hopefully bring them to our new campus site.
For our new inquiry, we learned how to read thermometers and to get to know the difference between Fahrenheit/华氏温度 and Celsius/摄氏温度. We are going to review all the elements of weather, for instance, the four seasons, variety of clouds, thunder, and lightening. We are also going to learn more about natural disasters caused by weather and water cycle.
Since we are also working on plants and habitats now, we are going to go deeper in to discover the parts of plants and their life cycle.

The Pine Garden Biweekly review and planners are listed below:

Language/ Geography/ Art
The class wrote two short essays telling stories about our family and friends to wrap up the Family and Friends inquiry.The students are expected to write 3-4 sentences to describe their family and friends. We also talked about our family members who moved from one country to another based on the homework we did interviewing our family.

For our weather inquiry, we had a chance to make our first webbing map in groups while we were discussing all the elements on weather (温度/temperature, 太阳/sun, 云/cloud, 风/wind, 雨/rain, 闪电/lightening, 雷/thunder. We placed all the works we had done on the wall in our science center. We welcome parents to stop by our class after school so that we can share what we’ve learned with you!

The first graders are going to focus on parts of plants and life cycles of insects in next two weeks, and for second graders, we are also going to figure out the three states (forms) of materials and water cycle, in addition to getting to know more about plants.

Math
We have been practicing two-digit subtraction together, and are going to get more practice on carry-over addition.
The second graders are going to practice more with multiplication.
We are also learning how to measure the sprout of the flower we planted, and engaging in knowing the sense of 比较大/bigger than, 比较小/smaller than, 比较长/longer than, 比较短/shorter than.

Earth Science/Art
The class decided to plant flowers while we were talking about weather and noticed that Spring is coming. We discussed how to make the flowers we planted grow well and healthily, and later on webbed all the elements planting would need– 阳光／sun shine, 空气／air, 水／water, 种子／seeds, 昆虫／insects, bugs etc..
The students are really interested in the parts of flowers, so we are going to go deeper in to getting to know more about flowers and fruits, and how insects help with pollination.(授粉)

Music
We’ve learned a new song 快乐地向前走／happy go go go!

March 15- March 26, 2010
1st/2nd Grade Pine Garden

Greeting Pine Garden families,

The Pine Garden Biweekly review and planners are listed below:

Language/ Geography/ Art
While discussing the story about an immigrant family, the students were all being very insightful and provided some in-depth viewpoints, such as ” Look! the father seems not be able to speak their language so he looks stressed-out.” and ” He doesn’t know how to eat those food because they look different from the food in his country.” or ” I guess there is a war happening in his old country so there are no people on the street.” The class ended up having a discussion talking about their own family and wanted to go home and figure out how many people in their family had actually moved from one country to another.

During the discussion, we learned and reviewed some countries and the seven continents and the students mentioned where their family and relatives are staying or are from. We have been putting a globe in our main center and discussing about the directions and location: 北美洲／North America, 南美洲／South America, 欧洲／Europe, 亚洲／Asia, 非洲／Africa, 南极洲／Antarctica, 大洋洲／Oceania, and 东/ East, 西/ West, 南/ South, 北/ North.

Also, we have been practicing writing journals everyday, and have started with 今天的天气是…/ The weather today is…. and 我今天觉得…../ I feel…. today.

Math
We are learning how to make a certain amount of money in various ways by playing games and pair- practicing to get more ideas. In the meantime, we are still practicing two- digit subtraction and addition in class.

Social Studies/Art
The students will bring home an empty sheet which is assigned to interview their family or relatives who have had the experience of moving from one country to another. They are expected to write only the person’s name, what is their relationship with them and which country they moved from. We are going to talk about this next week in the class, and figure out how to create a sentence to describe it.

We will have a chance to participate in a book launch– story-telling time by the author next Thursday, April 8th. Here is the website of the author: www.mandyandpandy.com

Music
We’ve been practicing the song helps us to memorize the seven continents and learned 回家／go back home!

Thanks! 谢谢！
Teacher Joyce 瑄瑄老师

Language/ History/ Art
During the past two weeks, we quickly went through all the main members and relatives on both mother and father sides: dad and mom/爸爸妈妈, granddad and grandma on both sides/爷爷奶奶, siblings/兄弟姐妹, aunt and uncle on both sides/叔叔，伯伯，姑姑，舅舅，舅妈, cousins/表兄，表弟，表姐，表妹, and discussed about relationships among one another.
Also, we’ve shared our feelings and emotions about our family members with the class, and have learned how to express ourselves through using happy, great, pleasant, joyful/快乐，高兴，开心, sad, bad/难过，伤心, to describe how we feel. And more about feelings such as miss someone/想，想念, like or dislike/喜欢，不喜欢, love/爱.

We’ve learned how to make sentences by using adjectives– a happy frog/快乐的青蛙, a beautiful butterfly/美丽的蝴蝶.

Last week, we started a long story about an immigrant father who left his own country and family, and then struggled to reestablish a new life in a different land, wishing to bring his wife and daughter to the new world. Since this story simply contains only pictures, it leaves great imaginary space for the students to really think and feel what it is about. We had a chance to interview a visiting teacher, Chen Jun, who talked about her story and introduced her family to us. Because of this, we are going to discuss about why people are willing to move to an unfamiliar place, and how do we feel when our family is far away? What do we think we can do to deal with our feelings?

Math
We started learning the concept of money and figuring out that we can make counting money easier by using the method of skipping numbers– counting by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s. And the class is still practicing addition, subtraction, and multiplication since we all noticed we need those skills to play our math games– selling and pricing things we want to sell. The students are expected to make changes.

Social Studies/Art
The chance we had talking to Teacher Chen, discussing about why she came to the States and how she misses her family in China, was inspiring to the class and became a good start to the immigrant story. If the discussion and project continues to go well, we will need to interview our parents or grandparents to be able to understand more about our family history.

P.E.
Our P.E. teacher, Teacher Novio, taught us how to play group jump-rope while reading a Chinese children’s rhyme– “xiao3 xong2, xiao3 xong2, ni3 zhuang4 ge quan! xiao3 xong2, xiao3 xong2, ni3 peng4 yi xia4 de4! xiao3 xong2, xiao3 xong2, ni3 gun3 chu qu4!” (little bear, little bear, please make a turn! little bear, little bear, touch the ground! little bear, little bear, please get out of the way!) And even on the rainy day, we stayed in our class doing stretches through games Teacher Novio taught us, and had lots of fun!

Music
We’ve learned Sweet Family/甜蜜家庭 and a song that helps us to memorize the seven continents.

Thanks! 谢谢！
Teacher Joyce 瑄瑄老师

Language/ History/ Art
While we were discussing the cultural practices of Chinese New Year, we’ve read many stories about this holiday– Monster of Year, New Year’s Eve, Celebrating Chinese New Year, 12 Zodiac Sings, Kitchen God, Gathering. We compare some Asian holidays with Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Kwanza, etc.. And the students held a puppet show called “12 Signs” which is based on a story we told in the class about the order and origin of Chinese Zodiac. We really enjoyed the show, so together we thought it might be a good idea to share this story to everyone in our school at CNY party.

We were trying to figure out the differences among cultures, and why or how people want to get together with family and friends on holidays. The class came up an idea about making a book to tell everybody why people celebrate holidays– the purpose of celebrating holidays. After Mr. Lee visited the class to talk about Lion/Dragon Dance and cultural perspective, we learned lots of concepts and techniques of this cultural practice and decided we want to add Dragon dance in our Chinese Zodiac play.

To prepare our play for the celebration, we reviewed all the colors we’ve learned from the past inquiry and all the animals and body parts we’ve known to figure out how or what we want our costume and masks look like.

Math
In the past two weeks, we’ve still practicing 2-digit subtraction and 1 to 10 multiplication. And we also talked about the numbers 1 to 100 to be prepared for our 100-Day celebration. We reviewed counting by 2’s, 5’s, 10’s, and more like 20’s, 50’s, counting back and forwards.
We also played gmes filling numbers in squares, very similiar to Bingo game.

Social Studies/Art
We had a great chance to look at lots of pictures to get some ideas helping us to make the masks for our play. The class wanted to make draft masks for rehearsing and showed Michele how we’d like our masks to look. And we also made a questionnaire for Mr. Lee to let him know what we are interested in and share with him how much we knew about this cultural practice.

P.E.
Since we’ve learned the most ball skills, we started separating into two teams to actually play basketball. The students are still trying to get used to all the rules and getting more practice.

Music
We learned some holiday related joyful songs– “贺年/ wishing a happy new year” “恭喜恭喜/congratulations”

Thanks! 谢谢！
Teacher Joyce 瑄瑄老师

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Language/ History/ Art

These two weeks, we reviewed all the rhymes that we’ve learned from our text book and have been learning a new one 红睡莲
/red lotus. We’ve learn twelve new words form 门牙掉了/teething, such as 门牙／front teeth， 香，我／me／I，她／she／her，人／people／human，敢／dare，生气／angry，明，朋，怕，拍. We are learning to make sentences with the words 明 and 朋, and learned how to distinguish the two characters from different radicals 日，月. And we are also learning how to express our feelings by using adjectives to describe our emotions, such as 生气／angry, 高兴／ happy／ glad.

About the theme of Chinese New Year, we are discussing how people celebrate this holiday both in China and here in the States.
We learned about the origin of this holiday through the resource book I got from Berkeley Public Library, called Celebrate Chinese New Year by Carolyn Otto ; consultant, Haiwang Yuan Washington, D.C. : National Geographic, c2009, and some other story tales about Chinese New Year. We have been talking about the differences between books and what we have seen here. And that’s why we are planning to head to Oakland Chinatown to feel the holiday in person.

Also, since we are learning and practicing the Chinese Zodiac, 鼠／rat, 牛／ox, 虎／tiger, 兔／rabbit, 龙／dragon, 蛇／snake, 马／horse, 羊／goat, 猴／monkey, 鸡／rooster,狗／dog, 猪／pig, we are going to have a project doing a survey about the signs of all the people we know. Moreover, we’ve extended some more knowledge of animals, such as 大象／elephant, 企鹅／penguin, 无尾熊／koala, and the vocabulary is extending.

Math
Our 1st graders have been learning and practicing 2-digit subtraction during these two weeks. While the practice was progressing, we came up with a problem of f borrowing a 10 from the ten’s in order to subtract a greater number. So, we returned to practicing the concept of what two numbers make 10, and have been playing games related to it. For 2nd graders, we’ve learned how to use different methods to solve problems about various groups of numbers, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, till 7, and how do we relate this concept to our daily life.

Social Studies/Art
While we are creating the plot for our play, the students decided we wanted to make hats to show people the roles we play instead of making masks, because they thought masks might cover our mouths and then people can’t really tell what we are saying. We have made the draft hats to put on while we are rehearsing, we’re excited that we’re going to make the real ones this Wednesday.

Our class is very interested in the symbols of the Chinese celebration– Lion/Dragon Dance. We’ve been sharing the experiences of what we have seen or heard, in person or from family and friends. Finally we got information from Michele and had a chance to get to know a Lion Dance Teacher, Jeff Lee, who is also a cultural educator, coming to our class as a visiting presenter to share his experiences and talk about cultural perspectives on Wednesday. Here is the website of the association: http://www.ofcourselionsource.com/. The students are expecting to come up with some more ideas or questions of the symbolic cultural practice.

P.E.
We are practicing ball skills this week, such as padding, catching,and throwing. But due to the unpredictable weather condition, we could only have our PE class once this period.
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Music
We’ve learned 小小羊儿要回家／little sheep going home, and 牧场／the farm. They are all related to animals.

Thanks! 谢谢！
Teacher Joyce 瑄瑄老师

The Pine Garden biweekly review and planners are listed below:

Language/ Geography/ History/ Art
After Thanksgiving, we were discussing how our families celebrate this holiday, and how different families have their own way to spend time with people who are important to them. We learned how to greet people by Thanksgiving holiday. (感恩节快乐／Happy Thanksgiving) And we got to know most of Thanksgiving food we had through discussion, such as 火鸡／turkey, 南瓜派／pumpkin pie, 薯泥／mashed potato, 豆子／green beans, 面包／bread, 玉米／corn, 火锅／hot pot. For the writing class, we learn how to write 感恩节/Thanksgiving, and 雨/the rain, 不(bu4)/no/negative, 长(zhang3)/grow 做/to be/ do/make, 乐/ happy/joyful, from both our inquiry and the rhythm that we have been reading. Also, for 2nd graders, the students have to know how to write about all the Thanksgiving food.

Math
While we were improving our practical skills of addition and subtraction, the students seemed to need to be more familiar with how to divide 10 into two numbers, such as 3+7, 6+4, 2+8 etc.. So, we kept practicing the skill through drawings, games and magic tricks. We will bring home the game to share with family next week.

During these couple of weeks, our 2nd graders have been learning the formula for multiplication, and we were practicing 3’s by playing snow flakes.

Social Studies/ PES/ Art
In the week of end of November, we finally figured out what kind of food we had for Thanksgiving and tried to draw them, and then discussed this with the class. We learned how to say and write most of the Thanksgiving food names through playing a game called 记忆游戏/ memory game (very similar to UNO game). We found out all the dishes through discussion and recognized we all had very different food for Thanksgiving under cultural perspectives. And we talked about how to look after people who don’t have family or food to celebrate holidays. Since we brought food to donate to the food bank of Alameda, we talked about where the food would go to the family who needs it. Also, this year, the Hanukkah holiday was in between November and December, our class learned about how Jewish people would celebrate this eight-day-long fest. Luckily, Teacher Lisa Jean is an expert in this holiday, so we’ve learned lots cultural practice, customs, and music from her. We learned how to say and write 光明节/ Hanukkah, 烛台/ Hanukkiah/menorah, 陀螺/ dreidels. In this week, we are learning the holiday celebrated by African American people called 宽扎节/ Kwanzaa.

P.E./ Statistics
Our class had been practicing jump rope for three PE class. According to our record, all of the students are now able to use jump rope well. We started to learn and practice some ball skills, such as padding, catching,and throwing.
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Music
We’ve learned and been practicing ” 问候/ Greeting song,” and we are sing a new song ” 哈哈笑/ laughing out loud.”

1st/2nd Grade Pine Garden

Greeting Pine Garden families,

Winter is coming, and we are turning to a new page of the inquiry, which is ” Let’s Celebrate! Holiday Season.” Since our class had the Halloween party together before the break, most of the students still remember what we have learned about Halloween, and it becomes easier for us to refresh memories of holidays.

After Halloween, our class raised questions about how and why people celebrate holidays, we started the discussion of the origin of holidays from books we have in our reading corner. Since we have only limited Mandarin books talking about Thanksgiving specifically, we are trying to find out how holidays relate to family, friends and food through experiences. On Wednesday, we experienced that making food is hard work and also is a great way to share our care and love of family and friends. We will bring the Tarragon vinegar we made home next Wednesday to share for Thanksgiving!

The Pine Garden biweekly review and planners are listed below:

Language/ Geography/ History/ Art

Our class started sharing some holiday experiences after the Halloween break. Some students felt interested in why people celebrate Halloween, while some 2nd graders knew that this tradition was originally from Europe. We will start discussing about why and how people celebrate holidays in different countries. The students will learn how to say and wish people happy Thanksgiving at first, and then learn some vocabulary about this holiday, such as 火鸡/ turkey, 团聚/ reunion, 节日/ holiday, 庆祝/ celebrate. Also, we are learning most holidays in Mandarin, for instance, 万圣节/ Halloween, 感恩节/ Thanksgiving, 圣诞节/ Christmas. For the coming Thanksgiving, the students are expected to talk about all food we will have on the table for our family to celebrate. We will bring back a sheet to either draw or write down what we have for Thanksgiving dinner. And then we are going to find out what other countries celebrate Thanksgiving as we do in the U.S.

Math/ Art

As our ability of adding units has improved, we’ve learned how to add digits in tens and have continued practicing. At the same time, we are learning the subject of time. We learned 长针/ long hand, 短针/ short hand, ” 几点几分/ what time is it?” and also, we learned how to count the minutes by 5’s and try to make our own clocks to figure out everything on the surface of clock. Then, we are going to learn how to do subtraction in units and tens and keep exploring more secrets about time!

Social Studies/ PES/ Art

While we were discussing why people celebrate holidays, the students were trying to find out the origin of Halloween and Thanksgiving. We found there are answers for our questions in some of the books in our reading corner. Since the students are still curious about some holidays origin other than Thanksgiving, we decided to make our own books to show people why we celebrate holidays. We are collecting more information from books and through experiences, hopefully as all the holidays go by, we will have more ideas ready to help us make the book about holidays.

P.E./ STATISTICS

We are still working on how to improve our jump rope skills and are recording the results every time we do jump rope. The students are still keeping track of their own records and tracking their improvement. After we break our own record, we will start to learn some basic ball skills, such as bouncing, catching and throwing.

Music

We’ve been learning ” 郊游/Let’s go picnic!” “火车快飞/Here comes the train!” “茉莉花/Jasmine flower,” and we’re going to learn ” Greeting song.”

Thanks! 谢谢！

Teacher Joyce 瑄瑄老师