Newsletter #13
It was good to get back to school this week 🙂 I heard stories of what happened during thanksgiving, where the children went or some of the things they ate (as well as starting the christmas tree shopping/decorations)! It is exciting for me to see the children getting more and more confident communicating in Mandarin, and hearing more of it throughout the day!
We enjoyed watching and hearing, as well as joining in the music program that the 5th graders have prepared for us this Thursday, it was about love and showing love to others, and it is closely related to our school’s theme this year which is Colossians 3:17 – Selfless. It was also so good to be able to kick of the magical month of December with K-5th singing worship together this Friday. December is always such a special month and I love being able to share the great news with the children as we talk about Jesus Christ and God’s love for us.
*Each child needs a big shoe box to put up their nativity scene and bring it home at the end of the story – You may start sending in the shoe box (labeled with name) this coming week – please send in a shoe box for your child’s nativity scene latest by Wednesday, December 14th*
Our Nativity Scene is about this big just for reference.
What did we learn and What will we learn?
Mandarin/Language Arts: We are working intentionally to not only try to say the characters as we write them so we remember better, but also trying to understand the meaning through visuals, actions and/or making sentences. We continue to explore our weekly framework (poetry, word wall words, high frequency words, grammar, read aloud/shared reading, culture). We are starting to work intentionally on asking and answering questions with full sentences instead of just vocabularies. I am encouraging the children a lot to practice speaking/chatting with each other – we have a quieter group in general and I am encouraging the children to speak more 🙂 I am starting to have the children be much more intentional in reading and recognizing different characters, as well as trying to recall what the characters might be by looking at pictures, or thinking if we have seen or learned the specific characters before.
Bible: We learned the story of the Ten Plagues, Moses parted the Red Sea and we talked about how the Ten Commandments are rules we must follow. We will wrap up Ten Commandments and we are going to pause on Moses’ stories for now because we are going to be focusing on Jesus’ birth story for the month of December. Next week, we will start with the angel coming to Zechariah and Elizabeth, as well as coming to Mary (and later Joseph). We have a craft that goes along with our Nativity Scene – and thank you to parent volunteers who has helped me do the prior cutting of the art! 🙂
Memory Verse/Fruit of the Spirit: I have assessed the children on their November Bible Memory Verse. We are starting to practice our December Bible Memory Verse, and our December Fruit of the Spirit: Patience.
6 他们在那里的时候， 马利亚的产期到了，7 就生了头胎的儿子， 用布包起来， 放在马槽里， 因为客店里没有地方。 (路加福音 2:6-7)
We will learn to sing Silent Night in Mandarin 🙂
Math: We continue to explore addition and subtraction, and making sense of the concept. We are learning to tell simple stories that tells us if we add/subtract (practicing our Mandarin as well!) Feel free to practice telling addition/subtraction stories when you are setting the dinner table at home, other opportunities to help them get familiar with the concept of addition and subtraction. We practiced writing number 8, and started practicing and talking about the +1 pattern (1+1=2, 2+1=3, 3+1=4…) as well as the -1 pattern (10-1=9, 9-1=8, 8-1=7…). We will be teaching writing 9 next week and focus on looking at 10s and 1s. (11 is 10 and 1 more, 12 is 10 and 2 more).
Exploring God’s World (Sci/SocStu): We discuss and compare each one and talked about how these are the materials that is a part of our land. We will continue to explore different earth materials, as well as land and water. As Christmas gets closer we will also talk about needs and wants, and introduce that concept soon.
Writing: We continue to talk about how story has a beginning, middle and end. We shared our thanksgiving story and started talking about how we can write stories through sentences.
Play: Play is now done in combination of English and Mandarin for the children – which is so fun to witness and hear 🙂 I also wanted you to know that for most of the days every week (Tuesday-Thursday about 2:35-3:15PM) we typically go down to the Preschool classrooms to play. So if there are times you need to pick up your child early, let me know so that I can let you know where we are at during that time of the day in case we are not in the classroom.
Things to Note:
Towel and Water Bottle: Water bottle and towel were sent home this week to clean. Please send them back with the children tomorrow (Monday)!
Looking Ahead: To also keep you in the loop – As January approaches, your child will start reading and getting leveled reading books, and this is send home in their book bags every weekend to practice at home. Also, I will start assessing the children’s word wall words and high frequency characters weekly. I want to let you know that my hope is they will be able to recognize and produce/write (in correct stroke order), their word wall words of the week, and to be able to recognize their high frequency characters. The high frequency characters will also help them as they start reading.
Going Home Routine (on Tuesdays when LiLaoshi in on Bus Duty):On Tuesdays, I have Bus Duty so I am not there to dismiss the children at the end of the day. Typically there is a mom who helps me dismiss the children, but if there are times when it’s a mom that is unfamiliar with the children and/or the person/parents picking up – please feel free to pop in the classroom and pick up your child. They know that they are supposed to stay at their seat and can visit their friends/neighbors while they wait, in Mandarin 🙂 You do not need to wait for me to get back to class before you go.
Mandarin Homework&Flashcard: Homework and High Frequency Words will be on U2W4. Please help me in keeping your children accountable for following stroke order and word proportion on Homework (AND saying the words after writing it), as well as recognizing characters (and hopefully understanding most of it) for Flashcard 🙂 Thank you for all you do at home!
Specials: Monday – Spanish, Art, Tuesday – Music, Spanish. Wednesday – Library, PE. Thursday – Spanish.
Featured Friend: Alina 何雅明 is featured on the week of December 5! Elise is featured on the week of December 12!
Love Letters to God Book Order DUE: December 7.
Glenys Nellist Author Visit: December 8.
Hearing Screening: December 8, 1PM.
NO PM busing and NO Hot Lunch: December 9.
Nativity Scene Shoebox DUE: December 14.
Jingle Jogs: December 19 or 21. (I will let you know when I find out the exact time our class is running!)
Christmas Chapel: December 22, 9:15AM.
NO Bussing and NO Hot Lunch: December 23.
Christmas Vacation: December 24-January 8.
Prayer Request:
We had the chance to have a classroom meeting on ZCS playground/classroom rule on Being Kind (友好 yǒuhǎo) and Being Safe (安全 ānquán). We talked about how we can be kind and safe with our looks, words, actions and gestures. We practiced how to be kind and safe, as well as how we look like when we are not being kind or safe. Please pray that the children can continue to develop relationships with each other (in class and out of class), please pray that we will form strong, God-centered friendship and continue to learn to get along 🙂
December is a quick and busy month – there are a lot of excitements as well as many things happening. Please pray that in midst of all the planing and busyness, the real meaning of Christmas, Jesus, could be the center of it all.
谢谢！
－ 黎老师