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Newsletter #35

Newsletter #35

We had a busy and wonderful week! The children were very excited and a little sad too that this is the last week of framework – it’s last week of poem, new radicals, word wall words, high frequency words, grammar and culture. We had a great week making our products and practicing our lines – I am so impressed at the children’s focus and motivation as they work through their PBL, they are loving the process and are being great scientists and thinkers!

*Sharing some class picture we took this week*

THREE THINGS COMING UP THIS WEEK:

  1. Memorial Parade at Zeeland Downtown on Mon, May 29th at 8:45AM! Please remind your child to wear the Blue Jacket, meet me at south of Main street near the intersection of Centennial&Cherry.
  2. Last field trip to Farmers Market on Wed, May 31st morning! NO HOT LUNCH that day please.
  3. PBL Presentation and reception afterwards on Thurs, June 1st at 2:30PM in the Music/Choir Room! *Let me know if this changes your child’s transportation plan (I would imagine most, if not all of our children will be pick up by family!)*

What did we learn and What will we learn?

Mandarin/Language Arts: We continue to grow and learn new characters/phrases, as well as expanding our vocabularies in our daily conversations and news sharing. We practiced how to read with a friend this week and it will soon be a permanent choice for our daily 5. Next 2 weeks we will focus a lot on reviewing all that we have learned in Kindergarten!

Bible: This week we focused on reviewing the Fruits of the Spirit we have learned each day. This week we talked about goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control and how we see them in our daily life. We had the chance to tell a mom about what we learned about God in Kindergarten and reflect on it as our days at school is ending. We will start reviewing some of our bible stories as we wrap up the school year.

Memory Verse/Fruit of the Spirit: We are practicing our May’s Bible Memory Verse which is about going out and doing His work! Next week we will draw this bible memory verse out and start the process of filling in our Spiritual Journal – it’s a journal that will follow the children all through their ZCS years! I will also be assessing their May Verse.

We are working on practicing and memorizing the Lord’s Prayer – you can also find it on our Bible Memory Verses recording page. I encourage you to practice the Lord’s Prayer with the children at home too (when you pray/before bed, or even when you have some extra time).

Math: We continue to practice our number sense and learning how numbers work together (addition/subtraction) as well as story problems. We are reviewing our equations along with telling stories and using the right phrases when we do tell our math stories. We are also learning 3D Shapes, identifying them while reviewing our learning on directions.

Exploring God’s World (Sci/SocStu): For PBL, this week we focus on creating our products and practicing our lines as we get ready to teach! The children are loving the process and can’t wait to share their learning with you! We also had the chance to talk about goods, services, our needs and wants as well as trading. Next Wednesday we will be going on our last field trip to farmers market and make connections to all these concepts in real life situations.

Writing: We are sharing our first How To Book stories and continue to write stories.

Play: We love love animals, there was a lot of role playing school/work, as well as home this week. Many of the children also chooses to practice their PBL lines during play this week!

Things to Note:

Memorial Day Parade: Memorial Parade is on the 29th morning. I look forward to seeing the Kindergarteners in their blue jacket! You may send the jacket back to school on Tuesday.

From ZCS Office – If you have not already done so, please hand in your enrollment form/packet to the school office! Thank you!

PBL Celebration – Please join us as we celebrate the children taking ownership of their learning on Thursday, June 1st at 2:30PM! Families and friends are all welcome as the children teach you all about their animals (in Mandarin) follow up by reception afterwards! We look forward to seeing you and presenting in front of you!

From the Immersion Coordinator – As we move into the summer months, stop by my office (#69 between the library and gym) if you would like a handout from add.a.lingua that gives suggestions and ideas for enhancing your child’s immersion education during the summer. As always, feel free to stop in or email me (jpierce@zcs.org) with any questions that you might have.

What’s Coming Up?

Specials: Monday – Spanish, Art, Tuesday – Music, Spanish. Friday – Spanish.

Memorial Day Vacation/Parade (NO SCHOOL): Monday, May 29th.

Farmers Market Field trip: WednesdayMay 31st. (We might not make it back in time for Hot Lunch so please NO HOT LUNCH that day as well)

PBL Celebration: Thursday, June 1st, 2:30-3:25PM. You won’t want to miss this! Join us for reception afterwards as we celebrate a great year of Kindergarten.

End of the year Chapel: Wednesday, June 7th at 1PM.

Last Day of School: Thursday, June 8th.

NO Hot Lunch and PM Bussing: Thursday, June 8th.

Prayer Requests:

Please pray for the children as they get ready to share their learning with you this coming Thursday. Pray for calm nerves, courage in speaking up in front of others (especially to you adults!) They are so ready and so excited and I have been very impressed with all that they do all through the process 🙂

We are approaching the end of the school year very quickly so pray for perseverance, patience and continue to hang in there as summer break approaches! Prayers for finishing Kindergarten strong and a good end of the year time together.

谢谢!

-黎老师

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Newsletter #34

Newsletter #34

The weather was so nice this week and the children loved going outside.We are also thankful that we get a classroom with AC so it’s actually not that hard to get the children back on track to learning as they come back HOT from outside! On Friday we started compiling our research to make the final products that we will use to teach you about animals and it turned out so wonderful! We had a good chunk of time where I meet with each group and assigned the other groups to keep working and moving forward as I meet with other groups – the children stayed on task, made their own decisions and help others all along. At the end of it they told me it felt so short and we agreed it’s because we were having so much fun! I am one proud teacher 🙂

*The lines for their PBL Presentation was also send home so that they can take some time to practice and hopefully memorize the lines within the next 2 weeks!*


As we get ready to go to Farmers Market on May 31st, I sent a paper home (in English) that the Kindergartener can work with you to think about how your family use money, and how the children can use their money at Farmers Market. I encouraged the children to answer the question as much as they can writing in Mandarin, or they may draw a picture and you can help them label the pictures (in English). The children know we will discuss the paper together next week, so please send it back to school latest by Friday, May 26th! Each child will have $2 dollars to spend at the market.


What did we learn and What will we learn?

Mandarin/Language Arts: We continue to grow and learn new characters/phrases, as well as expanding our vocabularies in our daily conversations and news sharing. Our poem this week was on drawing Spring so on Monday morning we drew what we heard and read in the poem! The children were so excited as they realized that the last sentence of the poem says – I take my color pencils and draw spring: which is exactly what we were just doing! We just learned how to read with a friend this week and it will soon be a permanent choice for our daily 5. Next week will be our last week focusing on framework and the following weeks we will focus on reviews.

Bible: This week we focused on reviewing the Fruits of the Spirit we have learned each day. We started with reviewing what the words mean, and then talked about how we see the fruits in our daily life. We also talked about how we can ask the spirit to help us show one of the fruit (or more) when we are struggling with different things. We talked about love, joy, peace, patience and kindness this week. Next week we will talk about goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Memory Verse/Fruit of the Spirit: We are practicing our May’s Bible Memory Verse which is about going out and doing His work! Next week we will draw this bible memory verse out and start the process of filling in our Spiritual Journal – it’s a journal that will follow the children all through their ZCS years!

We are working on practicing and memorizing the Lord’s Prayer – you can also find it on our Bible Memory Verses recording page. I encourage you to practice the Lord’s Prayer with the children at home too (when you pray/before bed, or even when you have some extra time).

Math: We continue to practice our number sense and learning how numbers work together (addition/subtraction) as well as story problems. We are reviewing our equations along with telling stories and using the right phrases when we do tell our math stories. We are also exploring and learning 3D Shapes, identifying them while reviewing our learning on directions.

Exploring God’s World (Sci/SocStu): For PBL, this week we focused on researching all about our animals. At the end of the week we finalized our research and move into thinking how to present our ideas to you. Next week we will focus on making our products and practicing to teach! The children are nervous but more excited that they will get to share their learning with you! We are also reviewing some Social Studies concept as we get ready to go to Farmers Market soon.

Writing: We finished sharing our Small Moment Critter Barn story and are now moving towards writing our How To Books! We talked about how we write how to books and talked about ideas we can teach others “How To” do.

Play: We love love animals, there was a lot of role playing school/work, as well as home this week. We continue to enjoy making art and little gifts for others here and there.

Things to Note:

Water Bottle and Towels: Water bottle and towels were send home (for the last time this year) on Friday, please clean them and return them on Monday!

ZCS Library Books: All students should return all Library books by next week. At this point in the school year, new books cannot be checked out. If you see any books at home that belong to ZCS please bring them back.

Memorial Day Parade: Memorial Parade is on the 29th morning. The instruction on the parade was send home last week – If you have any questions let me know! Please EMAIL me if you are NOT COMING!

Mandarin Homework&Flashcard: Homework that will be coming home next week will be word wall words and high frequency words from framework U6W5 – it’s our LAST week of framework. Thank you for your continue work at home!

From ZCS Office – If you have not already done so, please hand in your enrollment form/packet to the school office! Thank you!

From the Immersion Coordinator – As we move into the summer months, stop by my office (#69 between the library and gym) if you would like a handout from add.a.lingua that gives suggestions and ideas for enhancing your child’s immersion education during the summer. As always, feel free to stop in or email me (jpierce@zcs.org) with any questions that you might have.

What’s Coming Up?

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

Memorial Day Vacation/Parade (NO SCHOOL): Monday, May 29th. Kindergarteners who are interested and available that day are invited to march in the parade in downtown Zeeland!

Farmers Market Field trip: WednesdayMay 31st. (We might not make it back in time for Hot Lunch so please NO HOT LUNCH that day as well)

Save the Date – PBL Celebration: Thursday, June 1st, 2:30-3:25PM. You won’t want to miss this! Join us for reception afterwards as we celebrate a great year of Kindergarten.

Last Day of School: Thursday, June 8th.

NO Hot Lunch and PM Bussing: Thursday, June 8th.

Prayer Requests:

Please pray for the learning in working together and being good group mates as we work closely with the friends in our group during PBL Project. Pray that it will be a meaningful learning experience not only to dive into the animals that God has created, but also learning how to work together, distributing jobs, helping each other, and be kind and humble when we are discussing and making decisions about our animals.

We are also approaching the end of the school year very quickly so pray for perseverance, patience and continue to hang in there as summer break approaches! Prayers for finishing Kindergarten strong and a good end of the year time together.

谢谢!

-黎老师

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Newsletter #33

Newsletter #33

It’s a wonderful time of the year where we get to enjoy the wonderful nature and the children love sharing Tulip Time traditions that your families do each year 🙂 I would also like to celebrate you! Happy mothers day – I hope you enjoy a wonderful time with your family and thank you for all you do. I hope you enjoy the flowers that the children have planted (pick them up at Garden Crossings today if you haven’t already!), the little animal they made during Art, and the flower and message!

What did we learn and What will we learn?

Mandarin/Language Arts: We continue to grow and learn new characters/phrases, as well as expanding our vocabularies in our daily conversations and news sharing. In leveled reading, we continue to work on reading books that are getting harder (seeing new words, understanding what they mean, as well as practicing our understanding and reading strategies). We just learned how to read with a friend this week and it will soon be a permanent choice for our daily 5.

Bible: We talked about how Holy Spirit help guide us to know what God wants us to do (making good choices as well) and His plan for us. We talked about how sometimes even though we are doing God’s work, we might run into difficulties too. But we have to be courageous and continue to tell people His words – with God helping us, also through Holy Spirit’s guidance. We wrapped up our unit on God’s Love and reviewed the different ways Holy Spirit has helped God’s people do His work after Jesus went back to heaven. We will soon go back to Moses’ stories that we shared before Jesus’ stories! Next week we are focusing on reviewing all of the fruits of the spirit, each and every one of them and how do they look like in our daily life.

Memory Verse/Fruit of the Spirit: We are practicing our May’s Bible Memory Verse which is about going out and doing His work! We continue to talk about and discuss May’s Fruit of the Spirit – Self-Control.

We are working on practicing and memorizing the Lord’s Prayer – you can also find it on our Bible Memory Verses recording page. I encourage you to practice the Lord’s Prayer with the children at home too (when you pray/before bed, or even when you have some extra time).

Math: We continue to practice our number sense and learning how numbers work together (addition/subtraction) as well as story problems. In Kindergarten, many skills are reviewed and strategies are practiced so that the children have a solid understanding of the numbers before expanding to learning harder concepts or with bigger numbers. We are also exploring and learning 3D Shapes, identifying them while reviewing our learning on directions.

Exploring God’s World (Sci/SocStu): We have started talking about our PBL Projects which is a children based research unit on animals. We are at the researching phase – we are recalling what we already know, what we would like to know, as well as thinking of different ways that can help us find out what we would like to know. We are also learning ways to organize our thoughts on a thinking map/graph so that we do not miss anything when we are teaching our parents about our animals. The children are so excited and are loving the PBL process! 🙂 I can’t wait for them to share their learning with you!

Writing: We are in the process of finishing another small moment stories for our Critter Barn field trip. We are also starting to write some How To book and teach other to do things that we know how to.

Play: We love love animals, there was a lot of role playing school/work, as well as home this week. This week I also added some strings and beads so there are a lot of necklaces, bracelets and bookmarks going on!

Things to Note:

Memorial Day Parade: Memorial Parade is coming in 2 weeks. The instruction on the parade was send home last week – If you have any questions let me know! Please EMAIL me if you are NOT COMING!

Mandarin Homework&Flashcard: Homework that will be coming home next week will be word wall words and high frequency words from framework U6W4. Thank you for your continue work at home!

From ZCS Office – If you have not already done so, please hand in your enrollment form/packet to the school office! Thank you!

Expand(ED) Deadline Coming Soon: Please sign your child up for any Expand(ED) opportunities on this website (or search ZCS Expand(ED) online) by Friday, May 19. Opportunities include academics, sports, language, and creative arts. Camps will be canceled if there are not enough students signed up. If you have any questions, please email mklompmaker@zcs.org

From the Immersion Coordinator – All immersion parents are invited to learn more about your child’s immersion education at an Immersion Parent Round Table Discussion. While these are completely optional, I encourage anyone to join at least one meeting whether you have questions or just prefer to listen. The grade levels are just suggested ranges so that we can focus on topics which tend to be of interest to that level but don’t feel restricted by them. We will meet in the classroom at the back of the media center. Bring your lunch and your questions!

  • May 17 at 12:00: Preschool-3rd
  • May 18 at 12:00: 4th-8th

What’s Coming Up?

Specials: Monday – Spanish, Art, Tuesday – Music, Spanish, Wednesday – LAST Library time this year, PE. Thursday – Spanish.

Memorial Day Vacation/Parade (NO SCHOOL): Monday, May 29th. Kindergarteners who are interested and available that day are invited to march in the parade in downtown Zeeland!

Farmers Market Field trip: WednesdayMay 31st. (We might not make it back in time for Hot Lunch so please NO HOT LUNCH that day as well)

Save the Date – PBL Celebration: Thursday, June 1st, 2:30-3:25PM!

Last Day of School: Thursday, June 8th.

NO Hot Lunch and PM Bussing: Thursday, June 8th.

Prayer Requests:

We are taking on new challenges and learning to be more independent on many things in class! Prayers for courage and learning spirit as we take big steps in this last month of Kindergarten. Prayers for the children as they take on more responsibilities and ownership of their learning and the things that they do each day ?

Please pray for the learning in working together and being good group mates as we work closely with the friends in our group during PBL Project. Pray that it will be a meaningful learning experience not only to dive into the animals that God has created, but also learning how to work together, distributing jobs, helping each other, and be kind and humble when we are discussing and making decisions about our animals.

谢谢!

-黎老师

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Newsletter #32

Newsletter #32

We started the week celebrating another jar filled – it’s always exciting to see the children taking ownership of their own learning (jars filled are all their hard work!) We are also working on being more independent in class! This week we started with less to no reminders to do our classroom job, putting things in our red alert folders ourselves, as well as starting morning work independently. We have also started leading lunch prayers (I am most excited about this!) during lunch, one child per day. They are also in charge in delivering important verbal reminders and information to you from school to home.

*Sharing some pictures from our celebration, worm lesson and beginning stages of Critters PBL!*

It’s been such a pleasure working with you this year – thank you so much for the little things you send in during this week! Feeling so blessed and loved as your child’s teacher 🙂 I love what I do each day! Enjoy the wonderful weekend and don’t forget to go and pick up your 1ST (Garden Crossings) Mother’s Day Gift!

Next week’s schedule:

-½ Day Wednesday, May 10 –  Buses will be running (10:45 middle school dismissal/11:50 Elementary Dismissal.)

-Full Day Thursday, May 11 – NO Hot Lunch and NO PM Busing

-Full Day Friday, May 12 – NO Hot Lunch and NO PM Busing

What did we learn and What will we learn?

Mandarin/Language Arts: We continue to grow and learn new characters/phrases, as well as expanding our vocabularies in our daily conversations and news sharing. In leveled reading, we continue to work on reading books that are getting harder (seeing new words, understanding what they mean, as well as practicing our understanding and reading strategies). We just learned how to read with a friend this week and it will soon be a permanent choice for our daily 5.

Bible: We talked about how Holy Spirit help guide us to know what God wants us to do/His plan for us. We talk about how Paul and Silas were thrown into jail because they were telling God’s news, but Holy Spirit gave them peace and joy even in midst of hard times. We also talked about how Paul shares news about God but not everyone liked that (and he faces difficulty while doing God’s work as well). But we have to be courageous and continue to tell people His words – with God helping us, also through Holy Spirit’s guidance. We will continue to talk about Paul’s stories and how Holy Spirit help us in our daily life.

Memory Verse/Fruit of the Spirit: We are starting to practice our May’s Bible Memory Verse which is about going out and doing His work! We also had a good discussion about May’s Fruit of the Spirit – Self-Control. We did a lesson where the children have to use self-control so that they don’t touch or eat the chocolate that Li Laoshi has put right in front of them – It was not easy, but the children managed to use self-control as they get through the lesson without getting distracted by the chocolate. Self control is a fruit that we have been working to learn all year and this month we get to dive more into it.

I would encourage you to talk about Holy Spirit with the kids if you are able to as well – it can be a harder concept to grasp at their age certainly.

Math: We continue to practice our number sense and learning how numbers work together (addition/subtraction) as well as story problems. In Kindergarten, many skills are reviewed and strategies are practiced so that the children have a solid understanding of the numbers before expanding to learning harder concepts or with bigger numbers. We are also exploring and learning 3D Shapes, identifying them while reviewing our learning on directions.

Exploring God’s World (Sci/SocStu): We are talking about living/non-living things and how to differentiate them. 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 started the week of with observing and touching the special visitors in our class – worms! It was fun to see children getting excited over His creation and learning about His world! We have also started talking about our PBL Projects which is a children based research unit on animals. We already voted for the 3 animals we are teaching, and will be diving into phases of research which is – what we know and what do we want to know, and how do we find information.

Writing: We finished up our garden crossing stories and had the chance to share it with our friends. This week we also started talking about How To Books and practiced writing a How To Book together that cross over with our Science Learning as we teach others How To Plant Flowers!

Play: We love love animals and is so excited that we get to dive into learning animals and teaching animals in our PBL Unit!

Things to Note:

Water Bottle and Towels: Water bottle and towels were send home on Friday, please clean them and return them on Monday!

Garden Crossing Flowers Pick Up: An email and a hard copy coupon has been sent home! You are welcome to go and pick up your plants. The date for pick up is May 3rd-May13th! It will be a perfect opportunity for some bonding time as Mother’s Day is coming up 🙂

Memorial Day Parade: The note on memorial day parade has been sent home on Thursday. If you have any questions let me know! Please EMAIL me if you are NOT COMING!

Mandarin Homework&Flashcard: Homework that will be coming home next week will be word wall words and high frequency words from framework U6W3. Thank you for your continue work at home!

From ZCS Office – If you have not already done so, please hand in your enrollment form/packet to the school office! Thank you!

From the Immersion Coordinator – All immersion parents are invited to learn more about your child’s immersion education at an Immersion Parent Round Table Discussion. While these are completely optional, I encourage anyone to join at least one meeting whether you have questions or just prefer to listen. The grade levels are just suggested ranges so that we can focus on topics which tend to be of interest to that level but don’t feel restricted by them. We will meet in the classroom at the back of the media center. Bring your lunch and your questions!

  • May 17 at 12:00: Preschool-3rd
  • May 18 at 12:00: 4th-8th

What’s Coming Up?

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

Tulip Time Half Day School: Wednesday, May 10th.

NO HOT LUNCH/PM Bussing: Thursday and Friday, May 11th and 12th.

Garden Crossing Flowers Pick Up: The dates to pick up the flowers are May 3rd till May 13th.

Memorial Day Vacation/Parade (NO SCHOOL): Monday, May 29th. Kindergarteners who are interested and available that day are invited to march in the parade in downtown Zeeland!

Farmers Market Fieldtrip (tentative depending on weather): WednesdayMay 31st. (We might not make it back in time for Hot Lunch so please NO HOT LUNCH that day as well)

Save the Date – PBL Celebration: Thursday, June 1st, 2:30-3:25PM!

Prayer Requests:

We are taking on new challenges and learning to be more independent on many things in class! Prayers for courage and learning spirit as we take big steps in this last month of Kindergarten. Prayers for the children as they take on more responsibilities and ownership of their learning and the things that they do each day 🙂 Also pray for patience and perseverance as we continue learning when summer is getting closer and closer!

谢谢!

-黎老师