It’s always so nice seeing every child in our play group on a pleasant Saturday morning – greeting them at the door and hearing them say ‘Ni hao’ to us with that cute smile on the little faces.

In the first session today we had Nikki, Georgie, Helena and our new member – Yuehun in our Monkey group. For Nikki, Georgie and Helena – I knew it wouldn’t be a problem for them to repeat each word after me, but they still did surprisingly well – even with the four-syllable words today, they managed to say them clearly in just one go. When we were reviewing the words on the flashcards, before I showed all the cards to the table, Helena said ‘I want the Mickey Mouse one, the pai dui (party) one’ – which showed that she could remember the word without looking at the card. There were quite a few candles on the card ‘la zhu’ (candles), so we counted them together in Mandarin – which all of them could do without my help. It was Yuehun’s first time at our playgroup, I would give him a high mark for settling into us so quickly and nicely. Yuehun could not only say each word we taught, but also say ‘xie xie’ (thanks) to me every time I handed him something. Overall all four children in our group performed very well today, good job!

We had Bella, Leah, Chloe, Harry, and Jade in our group in the second session today. All five of them did great jobs learning our new words and phrases on the topic ‘Birthday’. Jade and Leah really liked our birthday song and hummed  it during the activity, too. We played with toy cakes with candles and fruits on them, I pointed at the those and reinforced the Mandarin words ‘la zhu’ (candles), ‘ying tao’ (cherry), ‘ju zi’ (mandarin) and ‘nai you’ (cream) etc with the children. Chloe could copy each and every word I taught her to say, and Bella was very good at repeating the words as well. Ryan and Kiera joined us in the ‘dressing the bears’ activity (by the way, I was really sorry we didn’t have enough bears so each child could have one) and everybody dressed their bears with pretty outfits! Meanwhile, I told them to say words including ‘ku zi’ (pants), ‘da yi’ (coat), ‘xie zi’ (shoes) and ‘yanjing’ (glasses) etc. When we were packing up the toys, all of the children helped putting toys back in the box. Harry said ‘Bu yong xie’ (No worries) to me when I said ‘xie xie’ to him, how exciting!

Xie xie and see you all next week!

Monica

Week 9: Friday, Saturday Craft Room General Overview

It was the birthday of our lovely panda Ding Ding this week and we had a great ‘pai dui’ (party) for him! We brought to the class presents, hats, and cakes with candles. We first taught the children to say ‘Sheng ri kuai le’ (happy birthday) and words including ‘sheng rid an gao’ (birthday cake) and ‘la zhu’ (candles) etc, and then everybody put on their hats and celebrated Ding Ding’s birthday together. I heard Leah humming the song throughout the class, that was lovely!

We made birthday cards for craft this week. Everyone did great and exerted their imagination to decorate the cards with stars and beautiful drawings, well done!

See you next week!

Xie Xie!

Colleen