Language: What are the parts of a car (family car)?
What kinds of cars do you see on the road everyday when you go out? We have discovered cars (汽车), dump trucks (砂石车), garbage trucks (垃圾车), fire engines (消防车), mail cars(邮件车), police cars (警察车), oil tankers (油车), (挖土机), taxis (出租车), and ambulances (救护车). What are these cars for? These cars all have their purposes. When do we need them? We are going to discover more about that.

The children tried to recall their family car. We also have been discussing and exploring the parts of car on the outside and inside. How do they work? Why do we have these parts on our car? We also did some webbing on different kinds of road signs and what they mean.

Math: (sort sort sort !)
We sorted different kinds of transportation counters with different colors (cars, boats, airplanes, helicopters, buses, and trains). For instance, If we had 2 blue cars, then we used a blue marker to circle 2 cars on our worksheet. We also played transportation BINGO.

Art: (Look! This is my transportation)
We use different art materials (play dough, paint rollers, 黏土, 滚轮) to create our own pictures of roads and cars.

Science:
What are the shapes of tires on the car? What if we used different shapes to make tires? We had a simple experiment to prove why we usually see round tires.

P.E.
Game: (red light, yellow light, green light)
We played “red light, yellow light, green light”. The children lined up and got ready to listen for directions. A child or teacher would say “green light” and the children would start walking, “yellow light” meant slow down and “red light” meant stop. The children had a great time playing the game several times.

Thanks,
Meng-Pei Chen, 陈孟贝
May 14, 2010

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.“
.

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!

Dear Panda Bear Families:

Language: (What is made from trees?)
How important is a tree to us, to our earth? We had an open discussion about what is made from trees. By looking around the classroom, children tried to share what they thought were made from trees in the classroom. The children came up with a desk, chair, table, floor, shelves, paper, door, toys, etc. The teachers also brought some objects to share with the whole class such as a violin, drum, paper of different textures and colors, basket, pencils, letter sorter made of wood. After sharing the ideas, we wondered how people make paper.

Math: (Playing with beans)
Sorting by size: We had a sorting project where we counted the beans (different sizes) in a number of beans. After counting, the children needed to work on a worksheet and color the circle with the number of beans.

Music:
Who needs tree? We need trees. What about animals? What animals live in the trees? 小蚂蚁绕圈圈，小毛虫荡秋秋千，小松鼠跳树尖，小麻维在树间，咻，冲上天。

Art/Science: Make my own flower paper
Why do we try to recycle paper? Where does the paper go? What is recycled paper?
We used old newspapers to make new paper. The steps are listed below:
1. Children tore newspaper into small pieces and soaked them in the water for 2 days.
2. Children crushed flower petals
3. We used a blender to whip the newspaper into a pulp.
4. We filtered the pulp with a strainer so that extra water was disposed.
5. Children each received a ball of new paper and pressed it on a wire. They made whatever shaped paper they liked.
6. We are now waiting for the paper to dry.

For the past two weeks, we continued our inquiry on “Trees.”

Language: Vocabulary
We reinforced vocabulary that was taught throughout this inquiry. We also spent some time webbing and brainstorming with the children about what can be made from trees. The children listed tables, chairs, toys, baskets, and paper. The teachers introduced other items such as a violin, wooden utensils, a paper sorter, chopsticks, etc.

Reading: Stories
We continued to share stories that children bring from home. We also read a few books on how paper is made and what items are made from trees.

Art: Earth Day
For Earth Day, we went out and picked up trash to make our planet a better place. We also made coffee filter planets. The children used markers to draw on a coffee filter and then sprayed the filter with water and watched the colors spread and mix together.

Math: Bean Sorting
For math, we sorted beans of different color and sizes.

Science: Observational Drawing/ Paper Making
The children were introduced to observational drawing, where you draw exactly what you see as a form of documentation. We used our green bean experiment to have the children draw what the plants looked like under the three growing situations (under the sun, under artificial light, and in a box). We also started making our own recycled paper. The children saw that already used paper can be remade into new paper.

Next week, we will finish making our own recycled paper and go on our trip to Strawberry Creek Park. We will be finishing our unit on “Trees” and moving to our final unit of study, “Transportation.” We will be focusing on the three major modes of transportation: air, land, and water. We would like to know if any families are especially well-versed in a form of transportation and would like to come and share their knowledge with the children.

Best,
Katherine
5/3/10

In the next two weeks, we will continue to inquire about the growth process of plants and learn how plant and human lifestyles are interdependent. Here are my questions for the children to reflect upon: How do flowers pollinate? What do you know about edible plants?

Language: We will continue to learn the new lesson—Lesson 5, 悄悄话 / Whispering. We will continue to write our fourth poem “我想 I want” The children and I will start brainstorming a story topic. We have made a group storybook called “A Happy Bean.” I will record the children reading it. I will email each family with the audio file and book attachments. The children will also learn new vocabulary from our weekly inquiries: “How do flowers pollinate? And, What do you know about edible plants?

Math: We will introduce how to count money, counting by 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s to 100. The children will understand the purpose of money and how it is used. They will learn how to identify coins and other values. They will learn how to count small amounts of coins and how to compare numbers. Therefore, the children can practice their coin counting for when they sell their plants.

Science and Life Science: We have discussed the right foods for our worms and what they cannot eat. The children will continue to learn more about worm composting. We will continue to learn about chlorophyll (叶绿素) and how a plant goes through the process of photosynthesis (行光合作用). We will be discovering different flowers and taking a very close up look within the insides of them. We will explore the parts of a flower, such as the stamen / 雄蕊, pistil / 雌蕊, ovary / 子房, pollen / 花粉, and calyx / 花萼. The children will learn about the different functions that each part of a flower has. The children will discover the Campsis Radicans Trumpet Creeper Vine flowers that have bloomed so beautifully in our schoolyard. They will be a “plant doctor” and take a very close-up look at the inside of various flowers, fruits, and seeds. We will explore different kinds of fruits and vegetables. The children will learn how to identify which parts of the fruits and vegetables we eat, such as: a carrot is the root part, a broccoli is the flower part, a head of lettuce is the leaf part, an eggplant is the fruit part, a pea is the seed part, and a celery is the stem part, and etc. We will also taste them. We will discover different kinds of seeds and how a tiny sunflower seed can grow into a very tall flower. We will learn about where fruits and seeds come from and how they develop.

Art: We will use colorful tissue paper to make a spring scenery collage. We will make paper flowers and cards for Mother’s day. We will also make a Chinese styled flower fan. The children will learn how to use watercolors to paint flowers on rice paper.

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’, humans’, and animals’ lives are closely related to each other.

Singing: We will continue to learn and sing, “Knowing the parts of a plant/认识植物的身体.” We will also learn another new song “Planting a seed/种种子.”

We will continue to inquire about the growth process of plants and learn that plant and human lifestyles are interdependent. Here are my questions for the children to reflect upon: What is worm composting? How does the body of a red wiggler worm work? Why do plants need soil, water, and the sun in order to survive? Why do we need plants? How do plants grow? Why are native plants important to their communities? How do we properly take care of plants? What do you know about edible plants?

Language: We will continue to learn the new lesson—Lesson 5, 悄悄话 / Whispering. The children will learn new words, 子 (child), 也 (also, and, too), 雨 (rain), 悄 (quiet, sad, silent), 里 (inside), 话 (word, language, saying, speech), and 说 (said). We will continue to write our third poem “我会…也会… I can…also can…” The children and I will start brainstorming a story topic. We would like to make a group story. This group story project will continue on until the end of the semester. Each child will make her/his story sentences and they will include picture drawings as well. The story will be based on the child’s oral skills and I will take notes for them and type and put the story together. We will have a topic discussion soon. This is a very good exercise for the children to learn imaginative thinking and reading skills. The children will also learn new vocabulary from our weekly inquiries: “Why do plants need soil, water, and the sun in order to survive?” and “Why do we need plants?”

Math: We will continue to work on the “Introduction to addition”. We will learn addition with manipulative numbers, number lines, math sentences, and math signs (plus signs, equal signs, etc.), story problems, adding groups of 10, ordinal numbers, recognizing and counting with and writing numbers from 1-30, months of the year, and counting by 10’s and 5’s, and 2’s respectively. We will continue to learn how to draw a picture to demonstrate a story problem and to use dice to experiment with addition problems within 10. We also will be making a two-sided counter beans book to find the combinations of the sums of 8.

Science and Life Science: The children have learned about worm composting and the anatomy of red wiggler worms and how to prepare the bedding for the worms, what they eat, and what worm casting (vermicasting) is before spring break. They also made their drawing of the worm bin diagrams. We are observing the worm bin everyday. In our classroom, we have a science observe area for children to explore the plants, seeds, roots, tree barks, leaves, bulbs, water, soil, and air. Regarding the Mung bean experiment, the children tasted the Mung bean popsicles before the spring break. Now it’s time for us to check the Mung bean plants. We will make a conclusion of three different ways of Mung bean growth. We also will compare to Pre-K’s Mung bean growing processes to our Mung bean growing processes. The purpose of these Mung bean experiments are for children to find out how the factors of the water, sunlight, and soil can decide the plants’ growths. This year, we have a very unusual result of one of the Mung bean’s growth. We will learn about chlorophyll (叶绿素) and how a plant goes through the process of photosynthesis (行光合作用). Also as result, the no light source contacts of Mung beans have shown us there is no chlorophyll in leaves.

Art: We used two different tools, 6B pencils and Chinese brushes to draw and paint the Campsis Radicans Trumpet Creeper Vine flowers (from our school yard). We will be using recycled magazine paper to make the Campsis Radicans Trumpet Creeper Vine flowers collage. We will make a book about seeds and draw an anatomy of the Campsis Radicans Trumpet Creeper Vine flowers.

Social Studies and PSE: Thursday, 4/22 is the earth day. We will be celebrating this meaningful event by picking up trash in our schoolyard and in the streets outside. The children will see how green they can be and they will be introduced to the 4R’s concept (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Raw). We will learn how to classify different articles of trash. We will also discover the native plants that we can see in our communities in Berkeley, such as the California Poppy (加州罂粟), Coulter’s Lupine (羽扇豆也叫鲁冰花), and California Blue-Eyed Grass (加州蓝睛草). We will learn about how these native plants are vital to our environment and to animals’ habitats.

Singing: We will continue to learn and sing, “Knowing the parts of a plant/认识植物的身体.” We will also learn another new song “Planting a seed/种种子.”

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:
After picking up seeds from the park, we discussed the many different kinds. From the docent, Miss Shu of Tilden Botanical Garden, we realized that leaves have a lot of different shapes. We had objects that we can compare such as “针叶(pine needles)” which are long and brown and grow mostly in cold areas, “阔叶”which are wild and grow mostly in warm areas. We also explored several different trees so that children really see the different shapes. In addition, children were great investigators and raised many educational questions about trees.

Math:
We had a game where we sorted the seeds we collected at the park by colors and shapes.

Art:
We are finishing our four season trees. We also made a big thank you card for Miss Shu to show our appreciation for the knowledge she shared.

Science:
We discussed what a seed needs in order to sprout and grow. The children came up with dirt, sun, and water. After the discussion, each child decorated a Styrofoam cup and planted some basil seeds. They put it in front of the window and have been watering their own plant each morning. After the basil started to sprout, each child was given their plant to take home. Please feel free to re-pot and use the basil for any of your cooking needs.

Music & body movement & social study:
(If I were a tree?)
Close your eyes and think about whatever seed you want to be. Think about how “you” would grow up, how your branches look like, how your leaves, fruit, flowers grow, and think about how you feel if people break your branches.

Activities:
We had story time with Chris Lin. The children had so much fun with “Pandy” and telling the stories together. We also had fun hunting eggs with our friends.