Newsletter #10

We started talking about thanksgiving this past week – we talked about the things, the places and the people we are thankful for. I also introduced the children to our sponsor friend this year – each year as a Kindergarten team we get to know a friend (from Grace Community Christian School) and through different ways help support him – prayers, jingle jog, valentine quarters. You will get a sheet with information of our sponsor friend Wayne when Jingle Jog comes up! We got to know him in class this week and talk about ways we can help people that aren’t as fortunate as we are.

We are progressing into a Mandarin Immersed classroom slowly. We are hearing much less English this week (from the children), and the children are starting to give their friends reminders when they hear English spoken in class. NEXT WEEK IS THE BIG WEEK, please keep our class in your prayers as we transition info a full Mandarin Immersed environment! I am confident that the children are ready to take on the next challenge – and they are excited as well! Please talk to the children about the switch and encourage them to try their best and not to be afraid to try speaking and communicating in Mandarin, it is when they try out the language that learning happens! You can help the children review the tools that can help them communicate as listed below.

Here are the tools that can help them communicate:

1) Words that we already know (describe it, tell me colors/shape/place/etc.) 2) Motions (use your hand: point at it, show it to me 3) Draw it out  4) Try anything BUT NOT speak in English. We have a Mandarin line at our doorway, and the children know – when they cross the line, it means Mandarin is what we should say/hear. Please also help me keep the Mandarin only environment – if you need to speak to me and/or the children in English, the hallway is a good place to go.

Thanksgiving Plan: In honor of Thanksgiving we will be trading (like the Pilgrims and Indians did) pictures on November 22nd. Please send in 10 individual pictures of your child to trade with their friends. This can be a 4X6 or a wallet photo. Li Laoshi is also going to prepare snack mixes to symbolize sharing and friendships as we celebrate how we are thankful for friendships (and the different gifts that each child bring) to our class. So you do not need to pack snack for November 22nd.

What did we learn and What will we learn?

Mandarin/Language Arts: We are working on looking and recognizing words, as well as saying the stroke out loud when writing characters to help us to see what different strokes make up the characters. We explored how to ask questions and worked hard on learning how to write our family members vocabularies this week. You can pull out the family members flashcard and have the children show you how to write it or use the paper with the list of family members that was just sent home on Friday.

Bible: We continue to talk about the story of Joseph, and we talked about how God is always with Joseph all through his challenges and that it is a part of God’s plan that Joseph faced those challenges – and he was reunited with his family at the end. It also ties into our bible Memory Verse for November, which is about trusting the Lord and lean not on our own understanding. We will start talking about Moses’ stories this coming week.

Memory Verse/Fruit of the Spirit:  We are practicing our November Bible Memory Verse, and started talking about our November Fruit of the Spirit – Peace. 5你要专心仰赖耶和华， 不可倚靠自己的聪明， 6在你一切所行的事上都 要认定他， 他必指引你 的路。 (箴言 3:5-6)

Math: We continue to explore addition and subtraction, and making sense of the concept. We talk about how adding gives us more, and subtraction is like taking things away. We started learning how to write number 6, and started counting up by 5s. We are learning to see numbers as 5 and then some more, for example 7 is 5 and 2 more.

Exploring God’s World (Sci/SocStu): We wrapped up our Social Studies unit talking about how big the world is yet God takes care of each and everyone of us! We are going to start a new unit of Science, which is on My Earth. This week – I gave the children a preview by discussing about our Earth (and comparing if there is more water or land) on this Earth.

Writing: We finished writing our classroom book and we will be writing about our family members (as the children continue to write their Grandparents Day story as well!) I hope the children was able to teach you some Mandarin with the classroom book.

Play: We talked about how we can tell our friends/teacher to look at the things we made in Mandarin, and we also learned phrases to say that is gentle when we want someone to stop something that they are doing. As the children play this week – I hear some of our friends say some Mandarin vocabularies that they know as they play, which is so exciting!

Featured Friend: 程浩宇 Easton was featured this week – we learned many things we don’t necessarily about Easton before and Easton’s mom came in to join him for lunch on Monday 

Things to Note:

Towel and Water Bottle: Towel and water bottle were sent home this week. Please clean them and send them back to school tomorrow!

Featured Friend: Just a reminder that I send home featured friend pages 2 weeks prior to the week your child is featured, as well as a 1 week reminder email. Please make sure their pages are turned in latest by Friday before the week that they are featured – so I can have time to translate things, because it is part of our Monday morning to go through the book together (It is an opportunity for the children to learn new Mandarin vocabularies that is personally related to their interests! – Please provide drawings for all the things so going through the pages in Mandarin will be easier!) Here is the page of Featured Friend: https://blogs.zcs.org/ssulayman/featured-friend-schedule/

Mandarin Homework&Flashcard: Homework this week consists the word wall words for U2W2, and flashcard is on high frequency words as well as some animals. As we step further into the framework, I wanted you to be aware that soon enough I am going to assess their producing and recognizing of the Word Wall Words and High Frequency Characters at the end of the week, and if they are not able to do it then we would need extra practices that will potentially take some recess time.

Parent Teacher Conferences: I look forward to sitting down with you and celebrate your child as well as talking about their progress  Please sign up for your time (15 minutes slot) if you have not already!

**Report Cards: Please note that Kindergarteners do not receive report cards until January. Please look for more information and instructions on viewing when that time comes.**

What’s Coming Up?

Specials: Monday – Spanish, Art, Tuesday – Music, Spanish, Wednesday – Library, PE, Thursday – Spanish.

Parent Teacher Conferences: November 21 and 22.

Thanksgiving Chapel: All ZCS students, parents, grandparents and friends are invited to give thanks to the Lord on November 21st, 10:30AM.

Thanksgiving Celebration: We will be eating snack together as a class that and picture trading on Nov 22nd AM!

NO PM busing and NO Hot Lunch: December 9

Featured Friend: Our featured friend this coming week is 安文廉 Will, and he will be featured on the week of November 14th!

Prayer Request:

Please continue to pray for adjustments toward the switch – motivation and patience towards learning in another language and attempting to speak it   The next couple of weeks can potentially be tough and exhausting, but hopefully soon we will get to see more “clicks” and connections make that the process will be easier 🙂 <For the children to understand it is a part of a learning process that things are challenging at first, and they will make mistakes – which is okay! But they have to try at least :)>

谢谢！

－ 黎老师