9/25 Class Review

In today's class , we first reviewed what we learned last week.  This included the 8 Chinese characters: 大, 小, 云, 卫, 你, 好, 我, 叫. One of the homework for this week is to read lesson 1 from the textbook everyday and try to cover the Pinyin part while reading the characters.
  

Today we started to learned Pinyin (拼音). We learned 4 initials (first part of the pinyin): d (image the sound of the horse), n (there will has a vibrate on your nose when you trying to say this), h (喝水 "drinking water"), and x (cut the watermelon). Also, we learned four final consonants (second part of the pinyin): a (open your mouth wide when u triying to say this), o ( the sound of the roster makes early in the morning), i ( 衣服"clothes"), and ao (袄 " heavy coat"). And then the teacher putted some vowel and final consonant together to make some words: daˋ(big 大), niˇ( you 你), haˇo (good 好),and xiaˇo (small 小). 

After we finished learning the pinyin, we started to learn Sheng Diao(声调).  Sheng diao is the sound the Chinese characters make,  crucial to learning Chinese. There has four Sheng Diao: --, ˊ, ˇ,ˋ.  We practiced Pinyin and Sheng Diao on the textbook page 5 and page 6 in class.

At the last part of the class, we were singing the colors song we learned last week. Also, we read again the book we read on the first day of the class. The little panda meet other animals and introducing themselves. 

*Homework: read lesson 1 from the textbook everyday and try to read both the character and Pinyin parts. Also, complete the practice book A page 1 -3. Next week we will start lesson 2 so it will be halpful if you can preview the text.

Class 9/18/2016

There will be a parent meeting next week, on 9/25/2016. All parents please attend!

In class today we learned the characters 大 (big), 小 (small), 云 (cloud). The teacher gave them a practice sheet with the words on there and it would be awesome if they can practice writing the words at home. 

We played a game called "little detective" in class today.  In this game the teacher puts Chinese characters on the board that the students have already learned, and asks one students to be the detective and one to be the robber.  The student that is the robber goes to the board and takes one of the characters off the board while the student that is the detective has their back to the board and their eyes closed.  The student that is the detective then has to detect which character the robber took.  

We read the first lesson of the textbook in class today. It is a simple story that introduces the characters that will appear throughout all the levels of the textbooks at Chinese school.

The teacher, during circle time taught the students the color song, using the names of the colors in Chinese and read them a book.  

See you all next week! 

First Day of Class 9/11/2016

Hello! Welcome to the first day of class! We started today's class by learning how to introduce ourselves. the Teacher went around asking each student their names so they can practice introducing themselves.

We then learned a song called "Hello Song". It is a song that teaches you what to say when you meet someone.

 Circle time followed that and during circle time we learned how to ask people how old they are and what their name is.  "你叫什么" (What is your name?) "你几岁" (How old are you?) 

The teacher then split them into groups of two and as partners, they introduced themselves to each other. They later had to present their partners to the class. 

 After recess, the teacher read a book to the class. The book is about a little panda meeting other animals and introducing himself to them.

 We also learned sheng diao today.  Sheng diao is the sound the Chinese characters make,  crucial to learning Chinese. The four sheng diao's are "-- , /, V, \ " . Characters that share the same pinyin but different sheng diao mean totally different things.

       We have accomplished many things on the first day. See you all next week!