Plum Garden / 梅园书栈
Ethan was working on the math problem
梅园报晓 Plum Garden News—No.34
June 15 – June 18
Kindergarten / First grade
Important dates
6/18 Kid’s Carnival–Last Day of School
6/22 Summer Camp Starts
Ni hao Parents,
This is our last week of school. We are getting ready to wrap up and say good-bye to the 2008-2009 school year. The children and I had a terrific year together. I appreciate their hard work. It was my pleasure to teach them and watch them grow. I would like to thank you all of you parents for your support during the entire school year. I am appreciative that we learned and benefited from each other. Your child’s report card is ready for pick up on Wednesday, 6/17 at Ping’s office. If you have any questions and/or concerns about your child’s evaluation, I will be glad to answer your questions. If you wish to contact me regarding their report card, I will be available on Wednesday and Thursday between 3:00pm to 4:00pm.
Today, we have celebrated Ethan’s birthday. He will turn six on June 29th. Thank you Ethan’s family for sending the yummy birthday cake.
Do you have a plastic water pool, a water sprinkler, and/ or a water slide at home? May we borrow them just for a day? Thursday, June 18th will be the last day of school. We will be hosting a kid’s carnival on the schoolyard. We would like to set up some water activities for the students to play. We will provide some finger snacks and we will also have music and games for the children. Please let me know if you have any water activity supplies that we can borrow. Thanks!
Learning foreign languages require a lot of practice. I hope that your child can continue to maintain his/her ability speak, read, and write Chinese during the summer. Language is like a tool, the more you use it, and the more comfortable you are with it. Reading is a wonderful way to increase their vocabulary and writing skills; it keeps your child on their standards although you might not read Chinese. I strongly believe that Chinese reading is like English reading. Sometimes, you will be surprised by your child’s Chinese reading skills. Shown below are a few of the reading and book resources that you can explore during the summer time. Those on-line bookstores all have English translations. It helps you to find the right level of reading books for your children. Basically, you can look for 4-8 years old reading books for your child. The companies below sell both Traditional and simplified storybooks.
* China Sprout— http://www.chinasprout.com/shop/education/books/storybooks
* Language Lizard’s— http://www.languagelizard.com/
* Ni Hao books— http://www.nihaobooks.com/books/storybooks?p=2
* Asian Parent— www.AsianParent.com
If you need help to find a right level of books, you can send me a link and I will be glad to take a look at it. Also, the most of Berkeley and Oakland public libraries have offered very wonderful summer reading program. It is nice to encourage your child to participate it.
This week, we are wrapping up the inquiries that we have learned about transportation. We will also review all Chinese lessons from lesson1 to lesson 7. We will sing all of the songs that we have learned during the entire school year. The children will help to take down their work and pack them in their suitcases so that they can bring them home on the last day.
The Plum Garden weekly subject planners are listed below:
Language: We are reviewing all of the lessons from lesson one to lesson seven. There will be more sentence order exercises in the morning for the children. We will write a short note for Father’s Day. We are reviewing vocabularies from the transportation inquiries.
Math: We are reviewing the entire years’ math. Individual study time will be given to focus on addition problems within 30 and subtraction problems within 20.
Science and Life Science: We are reviewing our experiments.
Art: We are going to finish making our luggage. We will make a card for our Fathers on Father’s Day.
Social Studies and PSE: We will finish our summer journey plans. The children will take it home along with their vacation planners and they can bring it along with them on their trip. The children can continue to write down their vacation activities in their journals.
Singing: We are going to sing all of the songs that we have sung this year!
谢谢! Thank you very much and I hope you and your family have a wonderful summer! See you all in the fall.
Cheers,
Kai Laoshi ☺
Plum Garden / 梅园书栈
梅园报晓 Plum Garden News—No.33
June 8 – June 12
Kindergarten / First grade
A special guest-Grandpa Chen, 陈爷爷 / Chen Ye Ye
Important dates
6/11 School Picture Day at 9:30am
6/18 Kid’s Carnival–Last Day of School
Ni hao Parents,
This is the penultimate week at Shu Ren. We are still learning about the transportation. We are glad to have Julian’s grandfather (陈爷爷 / Chen Ye Ye) came to the class this afternoon. Chen Ye Ye was a bus driver. He worked at AC Transit for 33 years. He was honored by the AC Transit Company as a thirty years safe driver. He explained to the children how the public transportation changed from time to time in the Alameda County. Chen Ye Ye also gave each child a sixteen years honored safe driver badges. Thank you Chen Ye Ye for sharing his experience with the children.
Party time! This month, the Plum Garden has two birthday stars—Julian and Ethan. Julian will turn seven on June 27th and Ethan will turn six on June 29th. Today, we have celebrated Julian’s birthday. We will celebrate Ethan’s birthday at 2:30pm next Monday, June 15th.
The head of school is arranging a day for picture taking to celebrate the end of our first school year at Shu Ren. We have invited a professional photographer to come and take class/school pictures this Thursday at 9:30am. We like to have every child in the pictures as possible as we can. This is the Shu Ren first year. We started with five students and now we have 23 children in the school. It would be nice to have all of the children in the pictures.
Do you have a plastic water pool, a water sprinkler, and/ or a water slide at home? May we borrow them just for a day? Thursday, June 18th will be the last day of school. We will be hosting a kid’s carnival on the schoolyard. We would like to set up some water activities for students to play. We will provide some finger snacks and we will also have music and more games for the children. Please let me know if you have any water activity supplies that we can borrow. Thanks!
We will review the last inquiry “Safety on the road / 马路交通安全守则.” The new inquiry for this week is “What journeys have we made? / 我们计划什么旅程?”
The Plum Garden weekly subject planners are listed below:
Language: We will continue to learn lesson 7 “冬至 / the winter solstice.” We have been doing the new vocabularies and phrases exercises. We will continue to learn how to put sentences in order. This is a sentence building activity that helps the children to understand Chinese grammar structures. We will continue to learn how to use adverbs in sentences, such as 也 and 又. We will learn about how 又 is a conjunction word and how we use it in a sentence properly and compare its’ meaning when it’s an adverb in a sentence. We will continue to learn transportation that goes by water and air. We will learn new vocabularies from the weekly inquiry: “What journeys have we made? / 我们计划什么旅程?”
Math: We will continue to learn “30以内的数字 / the numbers within 30.” From doing the exercises, the children will build an understanding on how to use objects to take away the extra numbers and adding more numbers to match the exact amount. They will learn what the different meanings in Chinese between the total and ordinal number are, such as 10个 and 第10个. We will also start to learn how to solve addition and subtraction word problems within 20. By the end of this section, the children will know how to count, write, compare numbers, and order numbers within 30. They will know how to add and subtract and how to solve the Comparison problems within 20.
Science and Life Science: We have summarized our bicycle gears experiments. We all found out when we switched to a small / low gear that has shown us the pedaling is much easier and uses less strength and the gear turns around quickly. With a large gear / high gear, it has shown us that it is much harder for pedaling and uses more strength than the low and medium gears and the gear turns around slowly. For this weeks’ science experiment, we will use a balloon to push a rocket ship. We will discover how the air can force an object and make it move.
Art: We will finish our traffic road map tomorrow. This week, we will make flying saucers and rocket ships. We will also make luggage for our trips.
Social Studies and PSE: Last Friday, we had a brainstorming about summer vacations. The children have decided their own trip destinations. This week, they will learn how to plan their journeys. We will gather all the resources and information to prepare for the trip. Such as the weather report, passport, money, clothes, the notes, and overseas traveling policies etc… Here are a few questions that the children will be working on this week.
• What kinds of transportation do they want to use for their traveling?
• When do they want to leave and arrive?
• Who will accompany them on their trip?
• What do they want to see at their favorite place?
• What things do they want to bring on their trip?
Singing: We will continue to sing “making a airplane / 造飞机 and Taihu boat / 太湖船.”
谢谢! Thank you! ☺
Kai Laoshi
-
- Turning around the wheels
-
- We were playing Chinese Jeopardy
-
- Flying saucer
-
- Happy 7th Julian!
-
- Julian’s half birthday party
-
- Chen Ye Ye shared his experience with the children
-
- A special guest-Grandpa Chen, 陈爷爷 / Chen Ye Ye
Plum Garden / 梅园书栈
Transportation map
梅园报晓 Plum Garden News—No.32
June 1 – June 5
Kindergarten / First grade
Important dates
6/18 Last day of school
Greeting Parents,
It is June! Another new month has begun! The transportation theme will be finishing in two and a half weeks. Last Friday, we were lucky to have a special guest; Anna Zimmermann who was here in the class, sharing her work and study experiences with us. Anna is currently working at the San Francisco Department of Environment. She speaks Mandarin very fluently. She has studied and worked for the Environmental Protection Organization in China. She visited many Chinese cities and did a lot of research about pollution and environmental protection issues. She showed us the pictures that she took from China and the Bay Area. She compared the different types of transportation between China and the Bay Area during the demonstration. She showed the children what green transportation is and how we use green transportation to reduce pollution problems and why this is important. She only spoke Mandarin during the demonstration. Her speech is very encouraging for the children to learn Mandarin. She explained to the children that she learned her Chinese in college and how she appreciates the language. She also graduated with an IB high school diploma in the United States. We enjoyed listening to Anna’s presentation and enjoyed chatting with her. She is also really impressed by how quickly the children learned Chinese and built their new vocabulary! Thank you Anna!
Party time! This month, the Plum Garden has two birthday stars—Julian and Ethan. Julian will turn seven on June 27th and Ethan will turn six on June 29th. We will celebrate their birthdays before school ends. Julian’s birthday party will be celebrated at the Plum Garden on Monday, June 8th at 2:30pm and we will celebrate Ethan’s birthday at 2:30pm on Monday, June 15th.
This week, we will review what makes vehicles move, how it functions, how can we reduce air pollution, and what green transportation is. The inquiry of this week is “Safety on the road / 马路交通安全守则.”
The Plum Garden weekly subject planners are listed below:
Language: This week, we will be starting a new lesson, lesson 7 “冬至 / the winter solstice.”
We will learn new vocabularies: 七 (seven), 冬 (winter), 那 (that, those, and how), 妈 (mother), 又 (again, also, once again, and both … and), 家 (home and family), 人 (people and person), 吃 (eat), and 年 (year, age, harvest, and New Year). We will continue to learn radicals and put sentences in order exercises. We will learn how to use adverbs in sentences, such as 也and又. We will learn about how 又 is a conjunction word and how we use it in a sentence properly and compare its’ meaning when it’s an adverb in a sentence. We will continue to learn transportation that goes by water and in the air. We will learn new vocabularies from the weekly inquiry: “Safety on the road / 马路交通安全守则.”
Math: We are starting a new section “30以内的数字 / the numbers within 30.” By the end of this section, the children will know how to count, write, compare numbers, and number orders within 30. They will know how to add and subtract and how to solve the Comparison problems within 20.
Science and Life Science: Today, we made sailboats. The sailboat also has 4 wheels on it. We were testing how the wind makes the sailboat moves. We blew on the boat to make it moves. We were also tried to observe how the sail changed the direction during the experiments. We will learn how bicycle gears work. I will use my bicycle to show the children the principle of gear rotation. The bicycle gears work as leverages. The children will learn the basic concepts about how low (smaller sizes), medium (medium sizes), and high gear (larger sizes) cause the bicycle to function differently. They will learn about why low gears are used for going uphill, medium gears are used for keeping a constant speed, and high gears are used for downhill runs. The children will use their hand to pedal the bike and discover how the different sizes of gears change their performance and how their amount of forces differs.
Art: We will continue to work on our traffic road map. Last week, we added a Bart train and dragon boats to our map. This week, we will add airplanes in the sky. We will use recycled materials to make the airplanes and rockets.
Social Studies and PSE: We will continue to learn about green transportation and how we can help reduce pollution. We will learn the road signs and what each of them mean. We will learn how to be safe on the road and why we need to follow the traffic signs.
Singing: We will continue to sing “making a airplane / 造飞机 and Taihu boat / 太湖船.”
谢谢! Thank you! ☺
Kai Laoshi
-
- Ethan’s sailboat was pushing away Maya’s sailboat
-
- Before the race
-
- Ready…..
-
- Our sailboats
-
- Maya: go sailboat! go sailboat!
-
- Guest speaker-Anna Zimmermann
-
- Can egg stand up and still on Dragon festival?
-
- Transportation map
Plum Garden / 梅园书栈
-
- Scooter day
-
- We are making thank you book for Berkeley Fire Department
-
- Ethan: Here needs a couple of drawings
-
- Julian: What color should I use?
-
- Maya’s art car with curly design
-
- The giant sunflower
-
- The yellow spots of sunflower leaf was covered with black paper for a month
-
- Oscar was making a Shu Ren School bus
-
- Chinese style flower fans
梅园报晓 Plum Garden News—No.31
May 25 – May 29
Kindergarten / First grade
Greeting Parents,
Thank you all of the parents for participating in the first PTA meeting and workshop and for bringing the delicious foods. Once again, your participations are vital to us.
We already started our last theme, 交通工具 / Transportation. For five weeks, from 5/19 to 6/17, will be the total amount of learning weeks for this inquiry. The subject will focus on Language, Science, The Arts, PE, and Mathematics. The central idea is about how people use many types of vehicles to get around the world.
The inquiries are:
* The different types of transportation that we use / 我们使用不同类型的交通工具
* What makes it move? / 是什么能让它动？
* How does it function? / 它们有什么用途？
* What journeys have we made? / 我们计划什么旅程？
* How can we reduce air pollution? / 如何减少空气污染？
* Safety on the road / 马路交通安全守则
The Plum Garden weekly subject planners are listed below:
Language: We will review lessons one through six. We will be doing lots of vocabularies, phrases, and sentences structure exercises. We will continue to work on the vocabulary flash cards. We will be playing a Chinese Jeopardy game to enhance the children’s language skills. The new vocabularies of the week inquiries, we will learn “Different types of transportation that we use / 我们使用不同类型的交通工具 and what makes it move? / 是什么能让它动?”
Math: We will wrap up the Geometry section “方盒，圆罐和球形 / Cube, cylindrical, and ball shape.” This week, we will start a new section “30以内的数字 / The numbers within 30.” We will learn how to count, add and subtract within 30.
Science and Life Science: We will use the shape concepts that we have learned in our last math section to make different shapes of wheels. Some wheels are round, triangular, square, hexagram, spherical, and cylindrical. Before we observe our experiments, the children will make a hypothesis on which types of wheels they think will run faster or slower and which types of wheels will veer to the side or run straight, then we prove our hypotheses by conducting an experiment.
Art: The children have drawn their art cars and made the Shu Ren School bus. We will continue to decorate our road map. This week, we will make trucks and turning wheels called “Getting a grip.”
Social Studies and PSE: Last week and this week, we are trying to discover how the world works. From the old time to the modern, from the East to the West, from the country to the city, and from the house to the school how we get around to the world by feet, bike, car, train, boat, and plane. The children have understood how transportation reduces peoples’ commute. We will continue to discuss about the first invention of the wheel and from time to time how the human innovated the wheel to make it function better.
On Thursday, June 4 is Duan Wu Jie / 端午节; also know as Dragon festival holiday. We will learn about how this holiday was brought to us (from 战国时期 / Warring States Period), a famous historian (屈原 / Qu, Yuan) and some of the special characters in Duan Wu Jie myth story (白蛇传 / White Shank). Also, I will introduce the traditional food (粽子 / Chinese Tamale) that we eat during the Duan Wu festival.
Singing: The children sang fantastically and learned and committed this song to memory incredibly fast. The new song “Fly Fast, Train / 火车快飞” only took two days for them to learn. This week, we will sing “making a airplane / 造飞机.”
谢谢! Thank you! ☺
Kai Laoshi
Plum Garden / 梅园书栈
Seed socks
梅园报晓 Plum Garden News—No.30
May 18 – May 22
Kindergarten / First grade
Up coming events and important dates
5/19 PTA Meeting.
5/25 Memorial Day. School Closed.
Greeting Parents,
I would like to say thank you to all of the children for doing such a good job of being patient during the Julia Morgan ballet field trip. Also, thank you Teacher Lisa Jean and Maya’s father, Tony and Kieren’s mother, Heidi for helping to chaperone the field trip.
Tuesday, 5/19 at 6:30pm is Shu Ren School first PTA meeting. Thank you Oscar’s mother, Katherine for making it possible for us to have the meeting. I am encouraging the parents to participate in the meeting. Shu Ren couldn’t run without your help especially since the school is growing. Your involvements and ideas are very important to us. We will have an open house before the meeting in the Plum Garden classroom. Please come at 6:30pm to look at your child’s work. Your child will give you a brief tour according to their checklist of things to show you for open house. Our English teacher, Teacher Lisa Jean will be in the classroom as well, so please feel free to introduce yourself and chat with her. We will also have a guest speaker, Anne-Marie Pierce. She will hold an IB workshop for Shu Ren’s parents, staffs and teachers. As an IB teacher and parent (my daughter is entering the IB diploma program in Berkeley High School in the fall 2009), this is a very good opportunity for parents to understand about the IB inquiries and why Shu Ren International School chooses to be an IB school. I am looking forward to see you.
Time goes by fast. We are starting our last theme, 交通工具 / Transportation. For five weeks, from 5/19 to 6/17, will be the total amount of learning weeks for this inquiry. The subject will focus on Language, Science, The Arts, PE, and Mathematics. The central idea is about how people use many types of vehicles to get around the world.
The inquiries are
* Different types of transportation that we use / 我们使用不同类型的交通工具
* What makes it move? / 是什么能让它动？
* How does it function? / 它们有什么用途？
* What journeys have we made? / 我们计划什么旅程？
* How can we reduce air pollution? / 如何减少空气污染？
* Safety on the road / 马路交通安全守则
The Plum Garden weekly subject planners are listed below:
The first sunflower in Shu Ren's garden
Language: This is the last week to learn lesson 6: Playing games / 游戏. The children will continue making flash cards for themselves so that they can study. Each morning, the children will take turns making a couple of phrases to share with their classmates. The flash cards will be sent home with the children before the summer so that they can use it to review their Chinese vocabularies at home during the summer break. We will also continue to learn radicals. We will have more exercises radical words. We will review all the vocabularies that we have learned about plants. The new vocabularies of the week inquiry, we will learn “Different types of transportation that we use / 我们使用不同类型的交通工具.”
Math: We will continue to study our Geometry section “方盒，圆罐和球形 / Cube, cylindrical, and ball shape.” We will continue to practice patterns and will use different shapes of blocks to build a favorite vehicle. Next week, we will have a completely new section.
Art: This week, we will finish Chinese flower fan painting and the children will use recycled materials to make a vehicle.
Social Studies and PSE: We will discover when people invented transportation vehicles. We will count how many types of transportation we see in our daily lives. We will learn transportation by land (car车子, truck卡车, train火车, motorcycle摩托车, and bike自行车), by water (boat船and ship舰), and air (airplane飞机, spaceship太空船, and helicopter直升机). We will learn how peoples’ lives had changed after the first vehicle was invented. The children will understand how transportation reduces peoples’ commute.
Singing: We will sing a new song “Fly Fast, Train / 火车快飞.”
谢谢! Thank you! ☺
Kai Laoshi
Plum Garden / 梅园书栈
Plum Gradeners' Regional Park Botanic Garden field trip with the docent, Ms.Michal
梅园报晓 Plum Garden News—No.29
May 11 – May 15
Kindergarten / First grade
Up coming events and important dates
5/12 Berkeley Fire Department visit and Demonstration at Shu Ren.
5/14 Julia Morgan Center, The Seasons Ballet Performance Field Trip.
5/19 PTA Meeting.
5/25 Memorial Day. School Closed.
**May is National Senior Citizen Month**
Greeting Parents,
Tomorrow, May 12 Berkeley Fire Department will be visiting Shu Ren at 10:30A.M. The fire fighters will be showing the children their rescue equipment and also giving the children a fire emergency escape demonstration. After the demonstration, the children will have a chance to see the inside of a fire engine.
On Thursday, May 14 we will have a trip to the Julia Morgan Center to see a ballet performance, Tchaikovsky’s “The Seasons.” It is conducted by the Berkeley Ballet Theater. I think that this is a wonderful experience for the children to watch how humans use their body movements to express things; in this case, the seasons. We have learned about how artists use their paintbrushes to capture the seasonal colors and we have learned about how musicians present the seasons through different instruments to create different feelings. From different art forms, canvas to the music to the body movement, I hope these can inspire the children a little bit. The performance will start at 10:00 A.M. Pre-K and we will divide into two groups: Group A and Group B. We will be group A and will be leaving school at 9:05 A.M. and will be taking the 51 AC Transit bus to the Julia Morgan Center. Please arrive to school no later than 8:45 A.M.
Group A chaperons: Kai Laoshi, Teacher Lisa Jean, Tony Moore
Group A students: Miles, Mia, and Desmond (Pre-K)
Maya, Ethan, Julian, and Oscar (K/1st)
We had a good time hiked in the botanical garden on last Tuesday even though it was raining. During the trip, the children were very excited about counting bridges that we have passed and they identified many of the plants that we have learned in class. We are also very lucky to have a very nice docent gave us a wonderful tour and also, to have Teacher Lisa Jean to accompany us on our field trip. Teacher Lisa Jean is very knowledgeable in California native plants. The children made a beautiful book for the docent and a banner for the Plum garden. Please come to see their botanical garden field trip pictures.
Summer is not far away—in fact, it’s right around the bend! We are about to finish up our last plant inquiries, “Fruits and seeds / 果实和种子.” Starting next Wednesday; we will have a completely new theme, “Transportation.” It will be the last theme for our 2008-2009 school year. We will learn everything about vehicles.
For this weeks’ inquiries, we will continue to learn about “Flower / 花” and “Fruits and seeds / 果实和种子.”
The Plum Garden weekly subject planners are listed below:
Language: We will still continue to learn lesson 6: Playing games / 游戏 and we will be having more word order exercises. The children are also making flash cards for themselves so that they can study. Each morning, the children will take turns making a couple of phrases to share with their classmates. The flash cards will be sent home with the children before the summer so that they can use it to review their Chinese vocabularies at home during the summer break. We will also continue to learn radicals. We will have more exercises radical words. The children will also learn new vocabularies from our weekly inquiries: “Flower / 花” and “Fruits and seeds / 果实和种子.”
Math: We will continue to learn Geometry section “方盒，圆罐和球形 / Cube, cylindrical, and ball shape” We will learn how to look a shape object from different perspectives. I will be showing the children some of the three-dimensional perspective pictures that I have. We will continue to use the Chinese traditional puzzle tool called Tangram to learn the most common shapes and how to use it to shape objects. It is a very challenging tool and it needs a lot of patience. Through Tangrams, the children can learn how to be flexible in their thinking. Thank you Teacher Jadin for letting us to use her Tangrams. We will play games to match shapes.
Science and Life Science: The children will discover the flowers that have opened in our schoolyard. They will be a “plant doctor” and take a very close-up look at the inside of the flowers, fruits and seeds. We will explore different kinds of fruits and vegetables. The children will learn how to identify which part of fruits and vegetables that we eat, such as: carrots are the root parts, broccoli are the flower parts, lettuce is the leaf part, eggplant is the fruit part, pea is the seed part, and celery is the stem part. We will also taste them. We will discover different kinds of seeds and how a tiny sunflower seed can grow very tall. We will learn where the fruits and seeds come from and how they develop.
Art: We will pick flowers from our garden and learn flower arrangement. We will make a Chinese styled flower fan. The children will learn how to use watercolors to paint flowers on rice paper. We will make a dried, pressed flower bookmark.
Social Studies and PSE: We will learn why animals need vegetation to survive and how plant seeds are carried by animals, insects, and the wind (also know as pollination). The children will understand that plants and human and animals’ lives are closely related to each other.
Singing: We will continue to sing “Knowing the parts of the plant/ 认识植物的身体.”
谢谢! Thank you! ☺
Kai Laoshi
-
- We were picing color crayons
-
- Lupine
-
- We were on the bridge
-
- We were surrounding by the redwood trees
-
- Plum Gradeners’ Regional Park Botanic Garden field trip with the docent, Ms.Michal
-
- Flower arrangement class
-
- Vegetables tasting
-
- Mom’s gift box is ready to send home
-
- Vegetables tasting
-
- Maya was picking her first strawberry
-
- A thank you book for the docent
-
- Carnation flowers are for Moms
-
- Oscar found the flower that match to his crayon color
-
- Hi, banana slug
-
- A frog
Plum Garden / 梅园书栈
The sunflower plants are taller than us
梅园报晓 Plum Garden News—No.28
May 4 – May 8
Kindergarten / First grade
Up coming events and important dates
5/5 Regional Parks Botanic Garden Field Trip.
5/12 Berkeley Fire Department visit and Demonstration at Shu Ren.
5/14 Julia Morgan Center, The Seasons Ballet Performance Field Trip.
5/19 PTA Meeting.
5/25 Memorial Day. School Closed.
**May is National Senior Citizen Month**
Greeting Parents,
As you have probably received an email from head of Shu Ren regarding the Swine Flu, we are encouraging and reminding the children to wash their hands frequently. I have shown them the proper way to wash their hands and how to cover their mouths when they are sneezing and a few other procedures to avoid getting sick. If you need more resources about and/or how to prevent the Swine flu, please feel free to contact Ping or check out the school’s bulletin for further information. Be healthy!
Carrot from our garden
May has just started. The children are already excited about the up coming school events. We will have two field trips soon: visiting the Botanical Garden and watching ballet performance at Julia Morgan Center, and the Berkeley Fire Department (who will be visiting us). The following is a detailed procedure for the upcoming field trips:
Regarding our Regional Park Botanic Garden field trip, tomorrow on Tuesday, we will be leaving Shu Ren at 9:30 A.M. and arrive at the Tilden Park’s botanical garden at 10:00 A.M. The docent will give the children an hour tour in the garden. Please arrive to school no later than 8:45 A.M. Here are a few reminders for the field trip of what you should bring:
* Comfortable clothes (Please dress your child in layers)
* Comfortable shoes (Good for hiking). Since it rained this afternoon and last weekend, the ground might still be muddy or slippery, please prepare appropriate shoes for your child.
* Sun block (Please help your child apply it before the trip)
* Hat
* Lunch (Heating up needs to be done at home and the lunch needs to be packed in a bag with handles of some sort)
* Water
We will be back at Shu Ren at 1:00P.M. The children will have English lessons following the field trip.
Next Tuesday, May 12 Berkeley Fire Department will be visiting Shu Ren at 10:30A.M. The fire fighters will be showing children their rescue equipment and also giving the children a fire emergency escape demonstration. After the demonstration, the children will have a chance to see the inside of the fire engine.
Thursday, May 14 we will have a trip to the Julia Morgan Center to see a ballet performance, Tchaikovsky’s “The Seasons.” It is conducted by the Berkeley Ballet Theater. I think that this wonderful experience for the children to watch how humans use their body movements to express things; in this case, the seasons. We have learned about how artists use their paintbrushes to capture the seasonal colors and we have learned about how musicians present the seasons through different instruments to create different feelings. From different art forms, canvas to the music to the body movement, I hope these can inspire the children a little bit. The performance will start at 10:00 A.M. We will be leaving school at 9:15 A.M. and will be taking the 51 AC Transit bus to the Julia Morgan Center. Please arrive to school no later than 8:45 A.M.
For this weeks’ inquiries, we will continue to learn “Why native plants are important to their originated environment / 原生种植物对原生地带的重要性” and we will start to learn about “Flower / 花.”
Book order update: the China Sprout Company is currently making a backorder of Grandfather Tree. Due to the additional shipping charges that we will receive if both our books are shipped separately, I decided to have them shipped together.
The Plum Garden weekly subject planners are listed below:
Language: This week, we will continue to learn lesson 6: Playing games / 游戏 and we will continue to learn verbs and adjectives. We will be having word order exercises. We will also continue to learn radicals. The children will learn how to recognize the radical characters. The radical is a systematization of Chinese character. It represents a part of each word and it classifies related characters. We will have more exercises about the radical words in the mornings. We will recite the Tang poem “游子吟.” The children will also learn new vocabularies from our weekly inquiries: “Native plants are important to their originated environment / 原生种植物对原生地带的重要性 and Flower / 花.”
Math: This week, we will begin a new Geometry section “方盒，圆罐和球形 / Cube, cylindrical, and ball shape” This is a very short section. The children will learn that three-dimensional cube, cylindrical, cone, and ball shapes are the extension forms of squares, triangles, and circles. Also, learning shapes is the best way to guide children into learning to do fractions. They will understand the basic concept of the fractions through this learning section. Since we have learned how to recycle and classify our trash, we will continue to use recycling objects to learn shapes. Such as rectangle and square boxes, cans, balls, and paper cones etc… We will continue to use the Chinese traditional puzzle tool called Tangram to learn the most common shapes and how to use it to shape objects. It is a very challenging tool and it needs a lot of patient too. Through Tangrams, the children can learn how to be flexible in their thinking. Thank you Teacher Jadin for letting us to use her Tangrams.
Science and Life Science: We will review how the chlorophyll (叶绿素) function to a plant goes through the process of photosynthesis (行光合作用). We will continue to review different ways and growing styles of leaves. We will continue to learn the native California plants. We will discover different flowers and take a very close up to look at inside of the flower. We will explore the parts of the flower, such as the stamen / 雄蕊, pistil / 雌蕊, ovary / 子房, pollen / 花粉, and calyx / 花萼. The children will learn the functions of each part of a flower.
Flower collage
Art: The children will continue their flower pattern inspirations from Art Nouveau flower designs. They are almost done with their three-dimensional pattern design objects. We will be using colorful tissue paper to make flowers.
Social Studies and PSE: From our plant stem experiments, the children know that a carnation is the official flower of Mother’s Day and in addition finding particular significance in many other cultures worldwide. We will continue to discover the native plants that we can see in Berkeley or our communities, such as the California poppy (加州罂粟), Coulter’s lupine (羽扇豆也叫鲁冰花), Indian paintbrush, California blue-eyed grass (加州蓝睛草), and Redwood trees (红杉木). The children will understand how the native plants are vital to our environment and to the animals’ habituations. It’s time to call grandparents! May is National Senior Citizen month. We will learn how to show our respect to elder people. I am contacting the Berkeley North Senior Center to see is possible for us to visit the center before the end of May.
Singing: We will continue to sing “Knowing the parts of the plant/ 认识植物的身体.” Mother’s day is coming up in two weeks. We will learn how to sing “世上只有妈妈好 and 游子吟” to celebrate the Mother’s Day.
谢谢! Thank you! ☺
Kai Laoshi
Plum Garden / 梅园书栈
Leaves crown making
梅园报晓 Plum Garden News—No.27
April 27 – May 1
Kindergarten / First grade
Up coming events and important dates
5/5 Regional Parks Botanic Garden Field Trip.
5/12 Berkeley Fire Department visit and Demonstration at Shu Ren.
5/14 Berkeley Ballet Theater Field Trip, The Seasons Performance.
5/19 PTA Meeting.
5/25 Memorial Day. School Closed.
Greeting Parents,
Regarding our inquiry of native California plants, the kindergarten and first grade’s Regional Park Botanic Garden field trip is coming up. We will discover the most popular native plants in the Botanic Garden and we will learn about different kinds of species. We will also learn why the native plants are vital to our environment. On Tuesday May 5, we will be leaving Shu Ren at 9:30 A.M. and arrive at the Tilden Park’s botanical garden at 10:00 A.M. The docent will give the children an hour tour in the garden. Please arrive to school no later than 8:45 A.M. Here are a few reminders for the field trip
* Comfortable clothes (Please dress your child in layers)
* Comfortable shoes (Good for hiking)
* Sun block (Please help your child apply it before the trip)
* Hat
* Lunch (Heating up needs to be done at home and the lunch needs to be packed in a bag with handles of some sort)
* Water
We will be back at Shu Ren at 1:00P.M. The children will have English lessons following the field trip. Please no gum, candy, toys, and money allowed during the trip. Thanks!
For this weeks’ inquiry, we will learn about:
• Why native plants are important to their originated environment
原生种植物对原生地带的重要性
From our last trip to Oakland Chinatown, we still have $30 remaining. I would like to let you know that I have used it to order two storybooks in Chinese (Grandfather Tree and The Lucky Grain of Corn) for the Plum Garden’s inquiries of the plant theme. The grand total of the two books plus shipping and handling is $34.12. Thank you all for your contributions.
The Plum Garden weekly subject planners are listed below.
Language: This week, we will continue to learn lesson 6: Playing games / 游戏. In this lesson, we will continue to learn verbs and adjectives. The children will use verbs and adjectives in their writing sentences. I am also introducing the radical to the children. The children will learn how to recognize the radical characters. The radical is systematization of Chinese character. It represents apart of each word and it classifies related characters. We will continue to learn opposite words. Such as 上下(up and down), 高低(high and low), 高矮(tall and short), 里外(in and out), 快慢(fast and slow), 软硬(soft and hard), 长短(long and short), 前后(front and back), 冷热(hot and cold), 水火(water and fire), 直弯(straight and curly), 多少(a lot and a few), and 粗细(thick and skinny). We will recite Tang poem “游子吟.” The children will also learn new vocabularies from our weekly inquiry: “Native plants are important to their originated environment / 原生种植物对原生地带的重要性”
Math: This week, we will be wrapping up the “分与合 / Separation and combination.” We will review the entire section. Wednesday, we will start a new Geometry section “方盒，圆罐和球形 / Cube, cylindrical, and ball shape” This is a very short section. The children will learn that three-dimensional cube, cylindrical, cone, and ball shapes are the extension forms of squares, triangles, and circles. Since we have learned how to recycle and classify our trash, we will use recycling objects to learn shapes. Such as rectangle and square boxes, cans, balls, and paper cones etc… We will use the Chinese traditional puzzle tool called Tan grams to learn the most common shapes and how to use it to shape objects.
The celery and carnation flower experiments
Science and Life Science: Last week, we concluded the Mung beans growing processes. The results out have shown us.
1. Outdoor Mung Beans
* Direct sunlight
* Has grown shorter
* Leaves are green
2. Indoor Mung Beans
* Indoors light
* Has grown taller
* Leaves are a dark green color
3. Mung Beans in the box
* No light source at all
* Has grown the tallest
* Leaves are yellow
Some of the children’s strawberry plants are fructifying. We will continue to observe their growing processes. This week, we will summarize the celery and carnation flower experiments. We have blocked a couple of our sunflower’s leaves to see how the sun is affecting the leaf color. We will learn about chlorophyll (叶绿素) and how a plant goes through the process of photosynthesis (行光合作用). Also as result, the no light source contacts of Mung beans have shown us there is no chlorophyll in leaves.
Art: We will use old magazines, flyers, and catalogs to make a flower collage. I will be introducing Art Nouveau flower designs to the children and inspire the children to design their own flower patterns. We will put the design patterns on a three-dimensional object.
Parts of the plants
Social Studies and PSE: The children will continue to learn how green they are and the 4R concepts. (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Raw) The children will learn and know about the carnation– the official flower of Mother’s Day in addition finding particular significance in many other cultures worldwide. We will also discover the native plants that we can see in Berkeley or our community, such as the California Poppy (加州罂粟), Coulter’s Lupine (羽扇豆也叫鲁冰花), and California Blue-Eyed Grass (加州蓝睛草). We will learn how the native plants are vital to our environment and to the animals’ habituations.
Singing: We will continue to sing “Knowing the parts of the plant/ 认识植物的身体.” Mother’s day is coming up in two weeks. We will learn how to sing “世上只有妈妈好 and 游子吟” to celebrate the Mother’s Day.
谢谢! Thank you! ☺
Kai Laoshi
Plum Garden / meiyuan梅园书栈
Happy Earth Day!!!!
梅园报晓 Plum Garden News—No.26
April 20 – April 24
Kindergarten / First grade
Up coming events and important dates
5/5 Regional Parks Botanic Garden Field Trip.
5/12 Berkeley Fire Department visit and Demonstration at Shu Ren.
5/14 Berkeley Ballet Theater Field Trip, The Seasons Performance.
5/25 Memorial Day. School Closed.
Greeting Parents,
I hope you all enjoyed your spring break. The children were very quiet and calm today. They looked well rested during their break.
Just a reminder, the weather is getting warmer and the air is very dry, and the sun is very bright. For your child, skin safety and not having too much sun exposure is best. I would like to remind you to prepare a hat or apply sunscreen for your child and don’t forget to prepare a water bottle too. They have at least an hour and a half hour of outdoor play daily.
Thank you Nathan (Oscar’s father) for coming this afternoon to share his job experience with children.
Parents, I still didn’t receive most of your family recipe attachments. Please email your recipes to me at kai-yao.to@shureninternationalschool.com. I am collecting the family recipes and I’d like to bind them into a cookbook. If you are willing to provide more recipes, I’d be very appreciated.
For this week inquiries, we will review and learn about
• How do plants grow? / 植物是怎么生长的？
• Why do we need plants? / 我们为什么需要植物？
The Plum Garden weekly subject planners are listed below.
Language: This week, we will continue lesson 6, Playing games / 游戏. We will learn 课 (lesson, class), 来 (come), 秋 (fall, autumn), 千 (thousand), 溜 (slide, skate), 滑 (slide, slip, slippery), and 真 (genuine, real, true). In this lesson, we will be starting to learn verbs and adjectives. The children will know how to use verbs and adjectives in their writing sentences. We will also learn opposite words. Such as 上下(up and down), 高低(high and low), 高矮(tall and short), 里外(in and out), 快慢(fast and slow), 软硬(soft and hard), 长短(long and short), 前后(front and back), 冷热(hot and cold), 水火(water and fire), 直弯(straight and curly), 多少(a lot and a few), and 粗细(thick and skinny). The children will also learn new vocabularies from our weekly inquiry: “How do plants grow? / 植物是怎么生长的？” and “Why do we need plants? / 我们为什么需要植物？”
Three ways to grow Mung bean.
Math: We will continue to learn the last section of “分与合 / Separation and combination.” This week, we will review adding and subtracting within 20. We will continue to work on word problems to review how to add and add more process or to subtract and subtract more process. We will continue to learn the sums within 10 and how many ways we can add two numbers together to get the same sum.
Science and Life Science: We will continue to observe three different ways of Mung beans growing processes. Before spring break, we have grown Mung beans in three cups. We placed one cup of Mung beans in an outdoor, which provides direct sunlight, we kept one cup of Mung beans indoors. The last cup of Mung beans was placed indoors with a box cover and without any light source. We are experimenting and comparing how light affects the germination process of a Mung bean. We will also explore what the function of the stem is on a plant. We will have a couple of celery and flower with food coloring science experiments. We will continue to observe our strawberry plants.
We are hiking on Earth Day.
Art: We will pick and draw vegetables from our garden. We will learn how to trace leaves that we find.
Social Studies and PSE: We will learn that plant and human lifestyles are interdependent. There are many kinds of plants on earth, which make our world colorful. We need to be more appreciative to the plants and cherish them. Plants have contributed greatly to human and animal habitability since many millions of years ago. We will discover why plants are so vital to human and animal lives. We will learn how we rely on the plants everyday. We will continue to learn the differences between herbaceous plants and woody plants. Wednesday, 4/22 is the earth day. We will be celebrating this meaningful event and picking up trash in our schoolyard and outside street. The children will learn how green can they be and the 4R concepts. (Reuse, Recycle, Reduce, and Raw) We will also learn how to classify different articles of trash. On Wednesday morning, we will take a neighborhood walk to identify herbaceous plants and woody plants that surrounding our community.
Singing: We will learn a new song called “Knowing the parts of the plant/ 认识植物.”
谢谢! Thank you! ☺
Kai Laoshi
Plum Garden / 梅园书栈
We are playing Monopoly game.
梅园报晓 Plum Garden News—No.25
April 6 – April 10
Kindergarten / First grade
Greeting Parents,
Important dates
4/10 Easter egg hunt at Shu Ren Schoolyard.
4/13 – 4/17 Spring Break. Extended day care provided. Sign-up to the Camp is needed at the Administrative Office.
We had Jie (Maya’s mother) come to the Plum Garden last Tuesday to talk to the students about her work. Thank you Jie for sharing her job experience with us.
Friday, April 10 will be Good Friday. Shu Ren School will be holding an Easter egg hunt activity in our schoolyard to celebrate Easter. We will have a party at 2pm on Friday afternoon.
Spring is here! The weather is getting warmer and the air is very dry, and the sun is very bright. For your child, skin safety and not having too much sun exposure is best. I would like to remind you to prepare a hat or apply sunscreen for your child and don’t forget to prepare a water bottle too. They have at least an hour and a half hour of outdoor daily play.
Parents, please email your recipes to me at kai-yao.to@shureninternationalschool.com.
I am collecting the family recipes and I’d like to bind them into a cookbook. If you are willing to provide more recipes, we’d appreciated it very much.
Last Tuesday, each child planted his/her strawberry plant in the garden to celebrate Cesar Chavez Day and they brought home with them a strawberry plant as well. We will be observing how the strawberry plants grow each day. We hope that by the end of the “Plants and Us” theme, we can observe a complete life cycle of a strawberry.
Oscar is planting his strawberry.
Strawberry plant in Shu Ren garden
Our new theme is about 植物和我们 / Plants and Us. Five weeks from 4/8 to 5/26 are the total number of learning weeks. The subject will focus on language, mathematics, science, social studies, personal social education, and the Arts. The central idea is how the plants and human lifestyles are interdependent.
The inquiries are:
* How do plants grow? / 植物是怎么生长的？
* Why do we need plants? / 我们为什么需要植物？
* Native plants are important to their originated environment. / 原生种植物对原生地带的重要性。
* Chinese characters that relate to the plants. / 与植物相关的汉字词汇。
Our classroom sweet potato is growing.
In our first inquiry, we will learn about how plants grow. We have observed our classroom sweet potatoes before last Thanksgiving. We were exciting that one of the sweet potatoes is actual sprouting. It sprouted just in time for the Plum Gardeners to discover the root plant growing process. We will review our sweet potato diary and conclude the sequence of sweet potatoes’ life cycle. We will also start to introduce the parts of a plant.
The Plum Garden weekly subject planners are listed below.
Language: We will review Lesson 5, 悄悄话 / Whispering. This week, we will start lesson 6, Playing games / 游戏. We will learn 课 (lesson, class), 来 (come), 秋 (fall, autumn), 千 (thousand), 溜 (slide, skate), 滑 (slide, slip, slippery), and 真 (genuine, real, true). In this lesson, we will be starting to learn verbs and adjectives. The children will learn how to use verbs and adjectives in their writing sentences. The children will also learn new vocabulary from our weekly inquiry: How do plants grow? / 植物是怎么生长的？
Math: We will continue to learn “分与合 / Separation and combination.” This week, we will get into adding and subtracting within 20. We have worked on word problems to learn how to add and add more process or to subtract and subtract more process. We will continue to learn the sums within 10 and how many ways we can add two numbers together to get the same sum. For Example, 1+9=10, 2+8=10, 3+7=10, 4+6=10, 5+5=10 etc.
Science and Life Science: We will conclude the sweet potato sequence. We will discover a few types of common roots. We will compare their differences. We will grow Mung beans in three ways. We will grow Mung beans in three cups. We will place one cup of Mung beans in an outdoor area which provides direct sunlight, we will keep one cup of Mung beans indoors. The last cup of Mung beans will be placed indoors with a box cover and without any light source. Then, we will explore how light affects the germination process of a Mung bean.
Art: We will use oil pastels to make a vegetable drawing. We will make an Easter basket.
Social Studies and PSE: We will learn that plant and human lifestyles are interdependent. There are many kinds of plants on earth, which make our world colorful. We need to be more appreciative to the plants and cherish them. Plants have contributed greatly to human and animal habitability since many millions of years ago. We will discover why plants are so vital to human and animal lives. We will learn how we rely on the plants everyday. We will also learn the differences between herbaceous plants and woody plants.
Singing: We will continue to learn and sing “Spring dawn / 春晓.” 春晓, an ancient poem from the Tang dynasty written by the famous poet, Meng Haoran / 孟浩然. We will learn a new song called “Knowing the parts of the plant/ 认识植物的身体.”
谢谢! Thank you! ☺
Kai Laoshi
