|Project Due| Friday, May 15, 2015

Your child's next project is Chinese Character Hunt. Your mission is to take your child to a Chinese or Asian supermarket and have her pick out as many Chinese characters they can find. Take pictures and make a collage via any collage app and email it to me. Please don't ask me which app, there are so many to choose from, be constructive! :) We will share these during Morning Message, at centers, and I will make them into Class Books.

Why? Your child will be so exited to point them out, trust me, it's worth the time, energy, and drive. Your child may hear other people speak Mandarin...equally exciting for them. You may want to try some new snacks, so at check out, have him talk to the cashier. Very rewarding!

Chinese supermarket search result on Yelp. (Whole Foods came up, my honest advise is don't waste your time there!)

I know a project that comes this late in the year is quite annoying, but I want to hear all the awesome stories you all have to share amongst yourselves and with the new parents. Your child has been blossoming in the last few months, I want them to explore outside the classroom and be proud of how much they can read, listen, and speak!! It is just not enough for you to hear how awesome your baby is from their teacher.

The idea came into light when we visited the Great Wall Supermarket last Saturday, and my kindergartener was giggly how many words she recognized. She even said a few words to the cashier unprompted.

This could be a fun playdate if your child would be more comfortable going with another friend from the class. Be creative and make it exciting!

Week of April 20-24, 2015

I seriously cannot believe we are reaching the end of April 2015! In just a month, our kindergarteners will officially be graduating from K! Looking back, I remember those tears vividly and those uncertainties ( from both parents and students!). Amazing growth is seen everywhere from students' social behaviors to academics. Oh hey! Learning a new language and being able to own those survival phrases is pretty practical to me. And THAT is why I believe GLOBE stands out from the rest of the nation.

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the National Chinese Language Conference in downtown Atlanta. There were few students from Minnesota who have been part of the Mandarin Immersion program for six to eight years. Not only they were conversing in fluent Mandarin, but they are also very global minded. Dual language immersion students set themselves apart from traditional students. Language is just one part of the components that makes up the well balanced, open minded, and risk-taking citizen.

In the month of May, we will be reviewing addition, subtraction, flat and solid shapes, place value, as well as counting. In language, we will be wrapping up with our final project, stay tuned.

Below are examples of centers as well as a Math activity.

 
Math Story Problems
The students came up with the story problems verbally in both English and Mandarin, illustrated, and wrote out the number sentence.

|Listen| What do you like to drink? 你喜欢喝什么？

Weeks of March 23-30, 2015

  The students matching words to their radicals

 

                              
                                               
                                                      

In these two weeks, the students have been practicing composing and decomposing teen numbers along with Place Value. Students are learning to show a teen number using Base Ten Blocks, tally marks, addition (13=10+3), Tens Frame, and Chinese Character. Why Chinese Character? You ask. When naming a teen number in Chinese, you are writing exactly how you say it. For example, 13 is actually TEN THREE (Shi San). It's an efficient way to learn Place Value through Chinese numbers.

In Mandarin, we have been learning to say our favorite foods as well as identifying the words. In centers, they enjoy separating words by their radicals, building words using play-doh, reading sentence strips, re-telling the Very Hungry Caterpillar book while role play, Memory Game through words or phrases learned, and many more. I hope your child has been sharing their positive learning experience with you and teaching you a thing or two. :)

 

Place Value Scavenger Hunt