Fingers
We have started learning the names of our fingers. It was very cute hearing the students say, “Daddy finger, Mommy finger…” when I was expecting to hear “Thumb, Pointer finger…etc.” Ask your child if they can tell you the names of their fingers in Chinese, and if they get stuck, ask them which finger has the “funny” name; we are learning the proper names in Chinese for the fingers, including the interesting fact that the “ring finger” is called 無名指 (WuMingZi) or “No Name Finger,” which the students found very funny. We are also learning how to do magic and turn our fingers into animals. This seems to be a favorite in all classes and we hope to show you some of it during our upcoming Spring performance.
Extending Learning for Twos
For our youngest class, we are learning colors, the word “Pig”, Big (Da)/Small (Xiao), and counting to three. For those who asked for advice on extending Chinese learning outside of school and into your homes, I recommend finding cartoons that your child loves dubbed in Chinese – Peppa Pig and Octonauts to name two. This method will allow for a more natural learning environment where they may not even notice that they are listening to Chinese because they can contextualize what is going on in the cartoon by the character’s actions. I hope this helps! For the Two’s class, we are having fun acting out the characters for the Chinese numbers as we work on connecting the visual with phonetic part of language learning.
Extending Learning for Threes & Pre-K
For the Three’s and Pre-K class, I wanted to take that visual connection a bit further and while we focus on the spoken/listening part of Mandarin at IPR, I used this opportunity to serve as a short introduction to how much fun the written part of the language can be. The written language is built upon 200 radicals and most of these radicals are pictographs (visual representations of objects or concepts). For example, the word木/Mu (Wood) evolved from the picture of a tree. So if you know the word 木 means “wood”, can you guess what this is: 森林? Think: Where would one find A LOT of wood? Answer: Forest. Yes, it is the word (made up of two characters) for forest. Isn’t learning Chinese fun?
The overall focus for March is on the Spring theme. We are talking about the weather as well as reviewing our colors and numbers.
Xiexie,
Ms. Suzy
We have started learning the names of our fingers. It was very cute hearing the students say, “Daddy finger, Mommy finger…” when I was expecting to hear “Thumb, Pointer finger…etc.” Ask your child if they can tell you the names of their fingers in Chinese, and if they get stuck, ask them which finger has the “funny” name; we are learning the proper names in Chinese for the fingers, including the interesting fact that the “ring finger” is called 無名指 (WuMingZi) or “No Name Finger,” which the students found very funny. We are also learning how to do magic and turn our fingers into animals. This seems to be a favorite in all classes and we hope to show you some of it during our upcoming Spring performance.
Extending Learning for Twos
For our youngest class, we are learning colors, the word “Pig”, Big (Da)/Small (Xiao), and counting to three. For those who asked for advice on extending Chinese learning outside of school and into your homes, I recommend finding cartoons that your child loves dubbed in Chinese – Peppa Pig and Octonauts to name two. This method will allow for a more natural learning environment where they may not even notice that they are listening to Chinese because they can contextualize what is going on in the cartoon by the character’s actions. I hope this helps! For the Two’s class, we are having fun acting out the characters for the Chinese numbers as we work on connecting the visual with phonetic part of language learning.
Extending Learning for Threes & Pre-K
For the Three’s and Pre-K class, I wanted to take that visual connection a bit further and while we focus on the spoken/listening part of Mandarin at IPR, I used this opportunity to serve as a short introduction to how much fun the written part of the language can be. The written language is built upon 200 radicals and most of these radicals are pictographs (visual representations of objects or concepts). For example, the word木/Mu (Wood) evolved from the picture of a tree. So if you know the word 木 means “wood”, can you guess what this is: 森林? Think: Where would one find A LOT of wood? Answer: Forest. Yes, it is the word (made up of two characters) for forest. Isn’t learning Chinese fun?
The overall focus for March is on the Spring theme. We are talking about the weather as well as reviewing our colors and numbers.
Xiexie,
Ms. Suzy
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