As usual, our sessions started in a cheerful atmosphere. Children have been accustomed to knocking at the door of out puppet theatre to say ‘ni hao (hello)’ to our Ding Ding and Ling Ling. They have already known to say ‘xie xie (thanks)’ when I give them plates and forks before snack time. The routine of our sessions every week seems unchanged, but we have been witnessing improvement of all children. Jasper brought three mini cars in his pocket and he could say ‘che’ (cars). Morley exactly knows what ‘shui jiao (sleep)’ means as I pretended to sleep on the bed of our doll house and repeated the word ‘shui jiao’ to her. She not only understood and imitated me, but also said ‘shui jiao’ in Mandarin.  Thomas, James and Daniel, do you still remember ‘niu nai’ (milk) and ‘xi gua’ (watermelon) we learnt during the activity time? You said those words so well in class, and I’m so pround of you.

Audrey, welcome to Mandarin Stars today. As a new comer, your performance was unbelievable. In addition, Ethan, Dylan and Jonathon were full of energy this week, they poured their energies into our flashcards reinforcement and activities. They did not encounter any problems to repeat words on flashcards, and presented their potential as fast Mandarin learners.  They repeated  nearly every word I taught with prefect intonation. Elvira was more active than ever before and showed great interests in making her own ‘birdie’.

Thank you very much, boys and girls. You brought me many impressive and cheerful weekends. I look forward to seeing you next term!

Vicky

Week 10 Friday Craft Room Xiong Mao (Panda)  Group

We continued the topic ‘Happy Birthday” this week. As it is the second week learning about this topic, I could feel that the children were more confident in saying the words/phrases we taught in class. Children in the first session were relatively younger than those in the second one, but I was very proud of what Nate did – he said a few words during the activity time, such as ‘xie zi’ (shoes), ‘xiong’ (bear) and ‘mao zi’ (hat).  It was a big move for Nate as he is a quiet boy compared with others. Isobel was keen to play ‘dress-the-bears’ toys and was able to point out our bear’s hat when I asked ‘Isobel, where is the hat’ in Mandarin with body language. Declan really enjoyed making his own ‘birthday cake’,  he kept asking more ‘cakes’ on his paper plate. When he first said ‘cake’ in English I said ‘dan gao’ to him a few times, and soon he was able to follow me and say it in Mandarin. Awesome!

We had Ella, Evan, Nick, Laura and Ian in the second session. Laura, Evan and Ian did a fantastic job by competing with each other to say the words on flashcards, and we quickly finished the flashcards revision.  We then had a chance to learn more words from our ‘dress the bear’ toys that totally attracted Nick and Ella. When they concentrated on playing, I taught them to say those items they were looing for in Mandarin, including ‘xie zi’ (shoe/s), ‘tai yang jing’ (sunglasses) and ‘mao zi (hat)’. Some of those words had been taught in previous sessions, but it was a good time for them to refresh their memory.

Xie xie and see you next term!

Vicky