First Week of School 2015-16!

We have had a very exciting, busy, teary (yes!), funny, loving, curious, scary (yes!), and wonderful week. This is not a typical first week of school in the U.S., our children are entering a classroom where teachers do not speak English to them. I have been reminded just how important my two limbs are pointing at every single directions at objects just to help the kids understand what I am trying to say. It can be frustrating, yes, but we made it!

Students have been introduced to routine words and phrases such as - Go to the Bathroom, Wash Hands, Eat Snack, Eat Lunch, Recess, Line-up, Sit down, Stand up, Make a circle...etc. Several can now ask to go to the bathroom in Mandarin while most comprehend perfectly when asked to push in chairs or to stand-up and sit down.

We have also learned a few sight words, ten to be exact. We wrote the words with body movements, we made the words out of sticks in our outdoor classroom, we made the words on the geo boards, we trace the words with chopsticks and pom poms, and we even wrote them in our morning work!

Color words and fruit words have all been introduced through games and songs. I highly recommend you to download the album here - https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/xing-fu-de-hai-zi-ai-chang-ge/id589293548 (Finger Exercise Song + The Fruity Song both are relevant to what the students are learning now as they touch heavily on color words as well as numbers.)

Next week we will be introducing a Mandarin Journal which will include many of the poems and songs that we have taught in class. The journal will go home daily and the students will read them during independent reading during center. In Math, we have begun to count to 14 but will continue to practice counting to 20 as well as working on one-to-one correspondence skills during center. In Science, we will be exploring the outdoors and make observations. The students will also be introduced to science materials and how we handle them.