03/07/2009

Saturday Craft Room Lion (Shi zi) Group session 1

We had Lindsay, Audrey, Alysha, Lily and Shireen in our Lion group today. We had an exciting topic today – ‘happy birthday’. When the birthday song sounded, I saw Shireen started to sing along in Mandarin – which was surprising. Lindsay, Shireen and Lily performed very well in the flashcard revision. They were able to repeat all the words loudly in Mandarin when I showed them the cards. Excellent! During the activity time, Audrey and Lily showed great interest in the toy birthday cake. They cut the birthday cakes into pieces and put candles and fruits on them. At the same time, I taught them to count the cakes in Mandarin. It was great to see that Alysha, at such a young age, was able to count one, two, three and four in Mandarin. Well done! The Children had a lot of fun in today’s craft time as well. Everyone ended up with lovely birthday cake.

Saturday Craft Room Lion (Shi zi) Group session 2

Alexander, Kristy and Lanah were in our Lion group in the second session. Lanah was a new friend at Mandarin Stars. Nevertheless, she successfully repeated the Mandarin word ‘ping guo’ (apple) during snack time. How great was that! During the flashcard revision, Alexander followed me to say ‘la zhu’ (candle/s) and ‘li wu’ (present/s) perfectly which was really exciting. All children enjoyed playing with our toy birthday cakes. They actively put the candles and fruits on top of the birthday cake to celebrate the birthday of Ling Ling while they learned to say the fruit names in Mandarin as well. Kristy  overall did an excellent job today. She could copy every word that I reinforced in class. Well done!

Have a nice holiday!

See you next term!

Regards,

Jessica

Before anything else I would like to say a huge ‘Xie xie’ to Jane – Nikki’s mum and Jane – Helena’s mum for bringing cakes to the class today! What a great chance for everybody in the class to enjoy the cheerful atmosphere and for us to reinhence the content we learned about!

We had Nikki, Georgie, Helena, Matthew and Angelina in our Monkey Group for the first session today. Throughout the semester I have been deeply touched by these children (and their parents) by their excellent attendence and great motivation showed at our playgroup. The topic we learned about today was ‘Happy Birthday!’, and we were so glad to celebrate the 4th birthday with our lovely Helena. We shared cakes brought by Henlena’s and Nikki’s mums, and sang ‘(Sheng Ri Kuai Le) Happy birthday’ to Helena together in snack time. Angelina spoke out ‘la zhu’ (candle/s) and ‘li wu’ (present/s) without any help when we were reviewing the flashcards, awesome! Matthew did an excellent job in saying all the words and phrases we taught today with perfect pronunciation, and Helena had no trouble saying each new word/phrase clearly, either. Nikki and Georgie asked me and Colleen how to say ‘I’m three years old’ in Mandarin, and soon they were able to say ‘Wo san sui (I’m 3 years old)’ proudly. We have a nice mixture of cultural backgrounds of the children in this group, but all of them were highly encouraged and devoted to Mandarin learning, and I have to say that I have seen all of them improving so much week by week. That is fantastic. Hope to see you all again next term!

In the second session we had Jade, Harry, Leah and Chloe in our Monkey group. This was as well a brilliant session. I have to mention Harry – who is now surprisingly good at Mandarin speaking, even the expressions we haven’t taught in the class. During the activity section, he said ‘Wo ying le’ (I won) after winning the fishing game. Great! The three girls in our group did just as well. Chloe and Jade could say most of the words/phrases from the flashcards without me telling them, and Leah couldn’t wait but said ‘pai dui’ (party) before I even showed the card to them. Furthermore, Leah and Jade seemed to really like our ‘Sheng Ri Kuai Le’ (Happy Birthday) song – they sang it again and again when we were making ’sheng ri dan gao’ (birthday cake) during craft time. We played with the doll house in the class, and everybody liked it! Chloe and Harry both said ‘Dian shi’ (TV) and ‘yi zi’ (chair), and Jade even said ‘wo zai shui jiao’ (I’m sleeping) when I said ‘xiao wa wa zai shui jiao’ (the doll is sleeping). I am so proud of all four of you, and I can’t wait to see you all again next term!

Have a great holiday everyone!

Monica