Newsletter #27-28

We had a busy 4 days week which feels a little pack and weird because this coming week is a 4 days week again. This is a two week newsletter covering this week as well as this coming week before Spring Break!

On Wednesday, we watched a video of book reading in Japanese and experience reading story in another language. It was fun to try to figure out the plot of the story, beginning middle and end as we watch and discuss carefully. On Thursday, we had Amanda Barton share her book and her experience as an author with us. On Friday, we went on our Garden’s Crossing Fieldtrip.

I am not sending HW or flashcard for next week because we will focus on reviewing – I am planning to send Book Bags home for practice during Spring Break! When we get back from SB we will continue on framework learning U5W3!

What did we learn and What will we learn?

Mandarin/Language Arts: We continue to focus on strengthening what we have learned, and exploring weekly words through our framework. We will be reviewing as well as focusing on reading (and reviewing our reading strategies) this coming week. We will also be reviewing the different grammar structures we have learned and have a round of jeopardy on our word wall words and high frequency words! When we come back from Spring Break we will dive into framework U5W3 and learning how to read with a friend for Daily 5.

Bible: We finished telling our last parable of the unit The Pharisee and Tax Collector (Praying with a humble heart). We will review all the parables we have told and the children will be bringing them home – I encourage you to recall/reread each parables with the children. Parables can be tricky, especially for little minds. We have talked about Jesus entering Jerusalem, Learning to be a good servant. We will continue to tell the easter story daily, leading up to the Good Friday and Easter weekend.

Memory Verse/Fruit of the Spirit:  We started to practice our March&April Bible Memory Verse (which is the verse about Easter). Each month we have a new Bible verse, but since the exact date for Easter is different every year we learn this verse throughout the months of March AND April. There will be no new verse in April. Please continue to practice this Easter verse and reflect on it’s important meaning of Easter! We continue to discuss our March’s Fruit of the Spirit – Faithfulness as well. When we come back from Spring Break we will start talking about Gentleness.

Math:  We worked on our teen numbers, discovering partners of group that add up to 10, and continue practicing writing our numbers. We will continue to practice our math concepts. I encourage you to ask the children some partners that add up to 10! Next week we will tell math story using a grocery shopping picture – listing out amount, classifying the things in group, as well as comparing and contrasting through addition/subtraction. We will continue to explore different math concepts, practicing our numbers, and started exploring different ways we can compare and contrast the amount of things.

Exploring God’s World (Sci/SocStu): We got a glance of the many things we will be learning in Is It Living? Unit through our Fieldtrip to Garden Crossings. We will be talking about living/non-living things and how to differentiate them. We will take about about how the three ways we know things are living are 1) They can reproduce 2) They grow 3) They eat/take in food as well as produce food. We will continue to explore the living and non-living, and will be talking about seeds and growth through Eric Carle’s book The Tiny Seed.

Writing:  We are on a mission to look at beginning, middle and end of each book we read aloud and shared reading in class, and also sharing our stories in the same sequence. We had some practice thinking and telling our Garden Crossings Fieldtrip individually. And we continue to work on our unfinished stories or writing our Garden Crossing Story – I am asking the children to choose a small moment from this field trip and expand their stories to write a small moment story.

Play: The children are loving role playing as animals. It includes animals in school, animals at home, and animals in competition. They are constantly doing so and engaging in play and conversations all in Mandarin!

Things to Note:

Parent Teacher Conferences: Thank you for coming to conferences! It gives me joy to know that I am partnering with you as we support the children! Kindergarten is a year full of growth and I am blessed to be able to be a part of your children’s daily life this year. I’m excited to see more growth and progress – the next 2 months are BIG months!

Garden Crossing Flowers Pick Up: A letter went home this afternoon regarding a special gift your child planted at our field trip this morning.The dates to pick up the flowers are Thursday, May 11, Friday, May 12, or Saturday, May 13.

Water Bottle and Towels: Water bottle and towels will be send home this coming Thursday, please clean them and return them back to school when we get back from Spring Break!

March is Reading Month (Wacky Wednesday): Approaching the end of March is Reading Month we will read some Dr. Seuss books and celebrate Wacky Wednesday on March 29th –  Crazy clothes, crazy outfits, crazy hair! Just not wacky behavior. We will also wrap up March is Reading Month by reading at a special location!

Mandarin Homework&Flashcard: Homework and flashcard for U5W3 will be going home as usual when we get back from Spring Break. Thank you for your continuous help at home making sure the children are following stroke order and word proportion, as well as practicing the flashcards.

Save the Date: We are thankful that Ann H is organizing another year of Wei Wei Palace Dinner – More details coming soon but mark your calendars for April 22, 6PM for a Mandarin Immersion Dinner Night!

From the Immersion Coordinator – Check out the latest blog post by add.a.lingua at https://addalinguablog.com. Gina Vander Zwaag, one of our 6th grade students, wrote about her experience as an immersion student. While there, you could also go back and check previous posts by other Zeeland Christian parents. Thanks to everyone for advocating for our immersion program at ZCS!

What’s Coming Up?

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

Wacky Wednesday: March 29th – Crazy clothes, crazy outfits, crazy hair! Just not wacky behavior ?

Spring Break: March 31st-April 9th.

Back to School: April 10th.

Critter Barn Fieldtrip: April 20th, ALL DAY.

ZCS AUCTION: April 21st, Friday. The Zeeland Christian auction on April 21.This is our number ONE fundraiser for the year! We would like to encourage you to set this date aside, bring family and friends, and come for a night of fun, food, fellowship and support of ZCS!

Farmers Market Fieldtrip (tentative depending on weather): May 31st.

Prayer Requests:

Please pray that the children will have a meaningful and personal experience as we talk about Easter stories and start to understand how great Jesus love for us through this Easter week. Please pray for continue focus as Spring Break is approaching and it can be hard to hold ourselves together sometimes! We will continue to be busy after spring break so continue to pray for health and stamina. We are also taking more challenges as as class – so prayers that the children will be able to adjust and take on more as we get ready for 1st grade!

I pray that you all will have a safe, fun, relaxing and enjoyable Spring Break!! ?

谢谢！

－黎老师

Newsletter #26

We started the week with some snow! We’re not too excited about having to wear our snow pants again but had a lot of fun outside. We also had a great Blackout Reading Day on Wednesday where we get to spend some time reading in the dark! It was a refreshing and new activity and there was a lot of excitement – it’s always fun to experience reading in different ways/settings 🙂 We will be listening and reading in another language next week – I am planning to play a Korean folktale video and see what the children think about hearing a language sounding a little similar to Mandarin and if they can guess what the story is about!

What did we learn and What will we learn?

Mandarin/Language Arts: We are practicing our sentence structure a lot in speaking/writing – we are remembering the order that we tell the time first, then who, then where, and doing what (I am encouraging the children to describe feelings, how things look like, or describing things with adjectives as well). The children are getting very used to spotting/catching our phrases/characters/words of the week, and our noodle jar is filling up fast! Next week we will practice U5W2 framework and the following 4 days before Spring Break we will focus on reviewing!

Bible: This week we told the parables of The Lost Coin and The Lost Sheep (the one who repented and changed in Him is something we should rejoice for), The Good Shepherd (God is our shepherd and He will protect us), and Building on the Rock (Be the wise builder and build your house on the rock). Next week we will wrap up our Bible Unit with the parables of The Pharisee and Tax Collector, and we will review all of parables before sending them home so that your children can tell you what they have learned! Parables can be tricky, especially for little minds. We will then start our Easter stories.

Memory Verse/Fruit of the Spirit:  We started to practice our March&April Bible Memory Verse (which is the verse about Easter). Each month we have a new Bible verse, but since the exact date for Easter is different every year we learn this verse throughout the months of March AND April. There will be no new verse in April. Please continue to practice this Easter verse and reflect on it’s important meaning of Easter! We continue to discuss our March’s Fruit of the Spirit – Faithfulness as well. I also encourage you to talk about the Fruit of the Spirit with your child, it can be pretty abstract and harder for Kindergarteners to understand.

Math: We are working on reviewing and practicing our 10+more in our teen numbers, practicing writing our numbers (and making sure they are not backwards too!). Next week we will continue to dive more into teen numbers as well as looking at 10 partner groups.

Exploring God’s World (Sci/SocStu): We wrap up learning about getting along with each other (even though these are skills Kindergarteners will continue to learn and practice ALL YEAR LONG) by talking about conflics and ways to resolve them. We are preteaching and exploring the different vocabularies and concept of our Science Unit – Is It Living, and our field trip to Garden Crossings next week is going to help us kick off the unit.

Writing: We are working on writing our stories! Every Thursday and Friday I meet with each child to check in on their writing, and I will also teach mini lessons of writing before giving them a good amount of time working on their writing. I look forward to sharing some of their work with you!

Things to Note:

Water Bottle/Towel: Water Bottle and Towel were sent home on Friday. Please clean them and return them to school on Tuesday.

Parent Teacher Conferences: I look forward to our time together as we talk about joys and challenges, as well as ways to support the children as much as we can at home and at school ? See you this coming Monday/Tuesday!

New Attendance/Absentee Email: Please e-mail attendance@zcs.org and copy ME to report an absence. Please include the student name, teacher, and reason for absence in the body of the e-mail. Thanks!

March’s Reading Incentives: Keep reading for Pizza Hut and Whitecaps Reading Club!

Mandarin Homework&Flashcard: Homework and flashcard for U5W2 went home on Friday, and we will be reviewing the couple of days before Spring Break and come back to framework U5W3 after Spring Break!

Save the Date: We are thankful that Ann H is organizing another year of Wei Wei Palace Dinner – More details coming soon but mark your calendars for April 22, 6PM for a Mandarin Immersion Dinner Night!

From the Immersion Coordinator –With conferences here again, I thought it was a good time to remind you of my availability. Please connect with me (Jodi Pierce) if you have any questions regarding the immersion program! I absolutely love connecting with parents and helping everyone to better understand how we do immersion at ZCS. You can stop by my office between the media center and the gym (the door closest to the gym–#69) or send me an email jpierce@zcs.org.

What’s Coming Up?

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

Parent Teacher Conferences: March 20th and 21st (NO SCHOOL on March 20th).

Author Visit (Amanda Barton): March 23rd.

Garden Crossings Fieldtrip: March 24th 8:45-10:30AM.

Wacky Wednesday: March 29th – Crazy clothes, crazy outfits, crazy hair! Just not wacky behavior ?

Spring Break: March 31st-April 9th.

Critter Barn Fieldtrip: April 20th, ALL DAY.

ZCS AUCTION: April 21st, Friday. The Zeeland Christian auction on April 21.This is our number ONE fundraiser for the year! We would like to encourage you to set this date aside, bring family and friends, and come for a night of fun, food, fellowship and support of ZCS!

Prayer Requests:

Please pray that the children will have a meaningful and personal experience as we talk about Easter stories and start to understand how great Jesus love for us through this Easter unit. Please pray for continue focus as Spring Break is approaching and it can be hard to hold ourselves together sometimes! We will also continue to be busy before and after spring break so continue to pray for health and stamina ?

谢谢！

－黎老师

Newsletter #25

This week, we had a mystery guest (Zhang Laoshi) come in and read a book to us while Li Laoshi went to another class to be a special reading guest as well. The children are so excited and look forward to every event in this March Reading Month and it gets me excited to see them loving reading! We also had a special chapel because we have some guests coming from Philippines.

What did we learn and What will we learn?

Mandarin/Language Arts: We continue to take more independence in producing our language, whether it’s speaking, reading, writing or attempting to complete Mandarin Language Arts tasks. We are also working intentionally to listen to the things we say and see if the grammar structure of our sentence makes sense or not. We are working intentionally more and more on remembering the words that we have learned or practiced before, and finding them in books we are reading. We continue to explore the many components of Mandarin through our framework learning each week.

Bible: We told the parables of the Sower (Those who listen to God, retain His word, and persevering it as we do Hi work would produce a crop), the Midnight Visitor (If you ask with your whole heart, your prayers will be heard and answered), and the Great Banquet (if God invited you to His banquet, would you join him?). Next week we will talk about the parables of the Lost Coin and the Lost Sheep, the Good Shepherd and Building on the Rock. 

Memory Verse/Fruit of the Spirit:  We started to practice our March/April Bible Memory Verse (which is the verse about Easter) as well as our March Fruit of Spirit Faithfulness. We talk about trust and faithfulness – and how we can see evidences of love in our daily life. We will talk about the verse and fruit more this month.

Math: We practiced 17,18,19 and 20 this week. We continue to practice addition and subtraction, classifying as well as partner groups addition. We did a review on concepts we have learned in unit 3 Math, took the unit 3 test and is now moving forward to unit 4 Math!

Exploring God’s World (Sci/SocStu): We continue to discuss How Do I Get Along with Others, and we will talk about how we get what we need and what we want. We will also start talking about our next Science Unit: Is It Living the next few weeks.

Writing:  We are talking about small moments and adding details to our stories. We talk about how small moments is story writing about something small in our life, and we add details like conversations and feelings into our writing to let the readers know more specific of what happened.

Play: We continue to enjoy playing school with our animals. We also made some snow art and flower art with pom pom and cotton balls.

Things to Note:

Parent Teacher Conferences: Conferences Sign up started on March 3rd at 9:00AM until March 15th, 10PM. Please send in the conference paper back to school by Monday (March 13th) if you are planning to do so so that I can best prepare for our time together. Thank you!

March’s Reading Incentives: Keep reading for Pizza Hut and Whitecaps Reading Club!

New Attendance/Absentee Email: Please e-mail attendance@zcs.org and copy ME to report an absence. Please include the student name, teacher, and reason for absence in the body of the e-mail. Thanks!

Mandarin Homework&Flashcard: Homework and Flashcard this coming week are words/phrases from U5W1. Please continue to help me keep your child accountable of the stroke order and word proportion, as well as continuing to practice the flashcards! Thank you 🙂

Save the Date: We are thankful that Ann H is organizing another year of Wei Wei Palace Dinner – More details coming soon but mark your calendars for April 22, 6PM for a Mandarin Immersion Dinner Night!

From the Immersion Coordinator – Do you teach a specific dialect of the language or have a preference of where the native speaking teachers come from? No, we do not focus on dialects or specific regions where Spanish or Mandarin is spoken. Actually, we prefer to expose our students to as much variety as possible when it comes to variations in the languages. This helps the students gain a more diverse vocabulary, better comprehension skills, and a broader command of colloquialisms. In fact, just this week I watched a group of 2nd graders realize that peanut butter has a different name in Ecuador than in México.

What’s Coming Up?

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

Parent Teacher Conference Sign Up: March 3rd-March 15th.

Blackout Reading Day (March is Reading Month Event): March 15th, Wednesday – Wear black and bring a flashlight to school! We will read in the DARK!

Parent Teacher Conferences: March 20th and 21st (NO SCHOOL on March 20th).

Author Visit (Amanda Barton): March 23rd.

Garden Crossings Fieldtrip: March 24th 8:45-10:30AM.

Wacky Wednesday: March 29th – Crazy clothes, crazy outfits! We will get crazy reading!

Spring Break: March 31st-April 9th.

Prayer Requests:

March is such an exciting reading month but it is also busy, and it can be hard to look forward to Spring Break and staying strong. Please pray for strength and perseverance for our class!

In light of March’s fruit of the spirit Faithfulness, I am praying for the children’s spiritual growth – the children are making so many connections during bible stories time and is learning the lessons in Jesus’ parables. Join me in praying that the children will continue to grow in Him and to get to know Him more and more each day.

谢谢！

－黎老师

Newsletter #24

On Friday morning we sorted out the coins we have collected to help Wayne before counting it together as a class. We sorted it through the values from one cent, one dime, quarters, half dollar, dollar as well as others. Our class collected $36.96 dollars in total!

What did we learn and What will we learn?

Mandarin/Language Arts: We are focusing on adjectives and verbs for our grammar – it is so fun to teach and start hearing the children expands the way that they share news and speak/write their sentences! We also take this opportunity to review our past grammar lessons. We continue to review our words and learning new words. Our leveled reading book is slowly transitioning to having new characters and phrases that the children would need to start decoding more – whether it’s on recognizing the words and/or understanding the books. Our daily 5 has transitioned fully into children’s choices, and we are learning to keep ourselves accountable by crossing out our choices each day. We will continue to take the journey and challenges towards more independence, and taking ownership of our learning.

Bible: We reviewed all of the miracles we have heard in class this week and drew a picture that reminded us of the miracles. We also introduced our Parables unit – we talked about how parables are Jesus’ way of teaching us important lessons through telling stories. We also told the first two parables. Thank you so much for your donations for our unit! We started with The Good Samaritan story (Loving your neighbors like yourself), The Lost Son story (God forgives our sins and welcome us back to His arms any time). Next week we will talk about the parables of the Sower, The Midnight Visitor, and possibly The Great Banquet.

Memory Verse/Fruit of the Spirit:  We will be introducing our March Bible Memory Verse (which is the verse about Easter) as well as our March Fruit of Spirit Faithfulness next week.

Math: We continue to explore shapes (making and constructing and breaking shapes apart), continue to explore and practice partner groups, practice teen numbers and practicing counting with 5s and 10s as well as looking for mistakes in a completed math answer that puzzle penguin has given. It’s good practice to find errors and to fix errors. We will be reviewing our unit 3 concepts next week and take our unit 3 test.

Exploring God’s World (Sci/SocStu): Our unit of Social Studies focus on How Do We Get Along With Others. This unit specifically dive in to concepts like fairness, thinking about other rights and feelings, responsibilities, and citizenship. It is actually goals that we work on as Kindergarteners all year long – and now that the children have more language and understanding it is great to really dive into these concepts and talk about them.

Writing: We introduced the writing lesson on small moments and talked about how we can write about small moments, expanding it to a full story. We will continue to explore different components that help us write small moment stories while writing our stories.

Play: The children are enjoying building high buildings with our blocks and marble run. They are also telling stories and acting out stories with our dolls.

Things to Note:

Garden Crossing Field Trip Sign Up: Garden Crossing Field Trip is coming up March 24th, Friday. We need 1 or 2 chaperones to drive 5 kids! We can only go with your support! Sign up link is here: http://www.signupgenius.com/go/30e0d4ea5a922a6fc1-spring1

New Attendance/Absentee Email: Please e-mail attendance@zcs.org and copy ME to report an absence. Please include the student name, teacher, and reason for absence in the body of the e-mail. Thanks!

Parent Teacher Conferences: Conferences Sign up started on March 3 at 9:00AM until March 15th, 10PM. I will appreciate it a lot if you can send in conference questionnaire back to school by next Monday (March 13th) so that I can best prepare for our time together – this is optional. Thank you!

March is Mystery Reading Month: There are a couple of events planned for March Reading Month 🙂 We kicked it off with reading a mystery book this past Wednesday. I am certain that you will here about some of the mystery things from the children as we celebrate each week!

March’s Reading Incentives: Keep reading for Pizza Hut and Whitecaps Reading Club! Students can earn whitecaps tickets for reading incentive during the month of March! Send it back to school with 20 days marked and 15 minutes per day at least for whitecaps ticket voucher 🙂

Mandarin Homework&Flashcard: Homework and Flashcard this coming week are words/phrases from U4W5. Please continue to help me in keeping your children accountable for following stroke order and word proportion on Homework, and recognizing characters for Flashcard. Thank you for all you do at home!

From the Immersion Program Coordinator – How can I encourage my child to use his/her language outside of school? Because language is contextual for children, it is important to provide opportunities where your child knows that others will understand his/her language. Visit a market, store, or ethnic celebration where the language is spoken. Purchase children’s songs in the language. Ask your child to pray in the language. Recognize, praise and encourage any efforts your child makes at home or when you are out; often just the vocalization of your pride makes a difference. Speak openly about why you value your child’s new language.

What’s Coming Up?

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

Parent Teacher Conference Sign Up: March 3rd-March 15th.

NO PM Bussing: March 6th.

Welcome Chapel for Philippines guests: March 10th at 9:15AM.

Blackout Reading Day (March is Reading Month Event): March 15th – Wear black and bring a flashlight to school!

Parent Teacher Conferences: March 20th and 21st (NO SCHOOL on March 20th).

Author Visit (Amanda Barton): March 23rd.

Garden Crossings Fieldtrip – We need chaperones!!: March 24th 8:45-10:30AM.

Wacky Wednesday: March 29th – more details coming soon!

Spring Break: March 31st-April 9th.

Prayer Requests:

With the weather changes we have a couple of friends that are having some cold/flu! Please pray for health and adjustments of the weather changing ?

谢谢！

－黎老师