The Krause Early Elementary School

Chinese Your Kindergarten

Dear parents, As the rst trimester is coming to its end, I would just like to say Hen hao! (very good) to your child for his or her progress in learning the Chinese language and culture. Listening: We watch the rst movie in Chinese. It is called Ants and an Elephant. It is a good practice for childrens listening skills. With the help of animations, children are able to understand the story and some of them can even identify words such as the elephant and thank you. We are still listening to stories on a daily basis. This weeks stories include What I See, Le Les Birthday Party, etc. Speaking: This week we continue with our learning of ten basic color words. Why it takes a little longer? I guess these words are somehow abstract for children. In particular, the words for brown and yellow are more difcult than others because of their pronunciations. A new sentence pattern I see ... is introduced and used in the book about colors we make. Also, we learn a new nursery rhyme called A Little Mouse. I try to select some very popular nursery rhymes back to the days when I was little. The newly developed nursery rhymes seem not as classic as the old ones (I learned this lesson from last years teaching). On Thursday, we learned the words for thanksgiving and a new song called Two Tigers. Reading: I make some adjustment to the character recognition in the nursery rhyme of A Little Bunny. Only ten more frequently used characters are
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required. Again, the children are my teachers when I am trying to improve the effectiveness of teaching how to read in Chinese. In the new nursery rhyme, we not only review what we learned, but also learn to recognize new characters such as mouse, above, below. Writing: We learn to write above and below. I will select some simple characters with less strokes for children to start to learn how to write. Math: Most children can now count to 30 by 5s. Some of them, without being taught, can count all the way to 100 by 5s. What a big surprise! Chinese culture: We watch a magic show of the Chinese New Years gala hosted by China Central Television (CCTV). In Chinese, different characters may have the same pronunciation, and at the same time, the same characters may have various pronunciations and meanings. The title of this show is called (May you have surplus and remainders year after year). Here sounds the same to surplus and is therefore often used in new year wishes. Materials: The books we have read are upgraded to audio versions. A movie tab is added to resources. There you can nd the movie we watch. Songs, nursery rhymes, animations of Chinese characters have all been updated. I am still working on the way to upload characters children can read. Keep warm in the nearing winter!