8th August,2009

We continued the topic ‘winter’ this week.  Children became more familiar with words via touching those actual items because some of them put right items in the bag when we said ‘mao zi (hat)’ and ‘shou tao (gloves)’ accordingly.

The story for the second session was about four seasons again. I was proud when children listened carefully and followed me to say those words.

Ethan loves our new ‘fruit-cutting’ toy and learnt to say ‘mian bao (bread) and ‘dao (knife)’. Well done!

See you next week!

Vicky

08/08/09

What a delight to see our lovely ones at Annex Room each week, and observe them on how they are making every little progress in Mandarin language learning. The topic we learned about this week was ‘winter’, and I found that the sensory section works well with the young children as they learn from touching and feeling. James, Lucas and Ava were really concentrated when we had hats, gloves and scarfs in our hands and repeated these words. Morley could understand me when I said ‘please help me…’ and ‘please pass me the… (on the floor)’ and helped us packing up the toys. Brilliant!

Luke and Dylan were with me when we made crafts this week. Both boys were quite interested in the process of drawing, so I took this chance to teach them the words of the colours (eg. lan se – blue and hong se – red). They both copied the words very well.

Michelle was one of the several children that I find with a lot of potential. She could understand many of the questions that I asked in Mandarin, and could answer them either in English or in Chinese. I would then say to her in Mandarin ‘How would you say this in Chinese’, and she could come up with the answer in Chinese most of the time. When we were playing with the doll house, we learned quite a few words in this way – and she tried to follow me and say short sentences like ‘put the bed in the house’. That was truly fantastic.

Can’t wait to see you all next week!

Monica