The topic this week was ‘Happy birthday’ and we had Tara, Riley and Oliver in our Lion Group this week. The children did very well in the flash cards revision – under the encouragement of the stickers, they all tried their best to follow me say the words. We played with toy birthday cakes during activity time today. Riley cut the cake for everyboday, and Oliver showed great interest in the candles. We also put ‘la zhu’ (candles), ‘ying tao’ (cherry), ‘ju zi’ (orange) and ‘nai you’ (cream) on the cake together, and sang ’sheng ri kuai le’ (happy birthday) for our lovely Ling Ling. To finish up, we made birthday cupcakes for craft. What a perfect pai dui (party)!

In the seconde session we had Aidan, Marina, Liye and Kate in our Lion Group. They did remarkably well in learning the new words and were awarded with stickers. Liye and Marina also counted their stickers in Mandarin ‘yi, er, san…’, well done! We played with toy cakes during activity cake. When the children were putting candles and fruits onto the cake, I reinforced these words in Mandarin and most of them could very well follow me. One of the new words we came across was ‘dao’ (knife), most children said it nicely in class. For craft we made ‘cupcakes’ – the children seemed to really enjoy it and decorated their plates with colourful stars and ribbons. Liye even sang ’sheng ri kuai le’ to Ling Ling, lovely!

Xie xie and see you next term!

Colleen

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