School Jobs

In LanLan's classroom each child has a special job they do for the week.  At the beginning of each week the jobs change so every child gets a chance to do all the jobs. Some of the jobs are: Line Leader, Pledge, Teacher's Helper, Calender, Prayer Warrior, Wastebasket, etc.

We were asking her what her favorite job was and she answered "Line Leader! No, Prayer Warrior! No!! Line Leader!! NO! . . . . Calender Girl!"

School Days

While in China LanLan has been attending school for the past 2 years and had almost completed Kindergarten. But being that it was all in Chinese and for New York law she is too young for 1st grade, we have decided to send her to Kindergarten this year. She is doing well but I feel that it is a little easy for her and she might be a bit bored. I asked her one day: "Is Kindergarten hard or easy?"

"It's easy . . . . and hard."

"Oh really, what's hard about it?" I asked.

"Raising my hand."

元宵节 (Yuan Xiao Jie - Lantern Festival)

Yuan Xiao Jie is the last holiday celebrated for the New Year. Translated, yuan xiao jie is called The Lantern Festival. It falls 2 weeks after New Years day when there is a full moon. On this holiday you eat yuan xiao which look like a full moon.

LanLan celebrated at school by getting to dance with her classmates in a dragon/lion costume. I wish I could have been there to see that, it sounded fun. They also made yuan xiao together.

LanLan described the process like this . . .
First you take rice and mash it down with your hands.
Next you take some black stuff and put it in the middle.
Then you roll it up into a ball and then you roll in some flour.

She was very proud of her Yuan Xiao and wanted to eat them right away. I was very impressed with them and excited to see how they turned out but I told her she needed to wait till daddy came home. When daddy did come home he had bought some yuan xiao at the store and so we cooked them and ate them for dinner.

I love yuan xiao! The outside is a glutinous rice dough and then inside is a delicious bean paste that tastes like peanut butter. Yum YUM!! (I believe that they make them with all different kinds of fillings.)

Happy Yuan Xiao Jie!!

Math Class

This Friday we were invited to come to LanLan's Preschool to observe a math class. It was interesting to see what she is learning (as a 4 year old in a Kindergarten class in China). A few weeks ago LanLan came home with a sheet of math problems saying that she had to finish it before going to school the next day. We worked on simple addition problems (all numbers adding up to 5) for 30 minutes past bedtime. Another day we were practicing counting at home and she asked to count by 100's. Other than that I had no idea what her teachers were teaching at school.

When the class began the teacher pulled out these visual adds to help with counting. I was a little surprised that they are learning to read numbers in the 1000's. I remember working with these things when I was in 1st or 2nd grade, and here my 4 year old daughter is learning it.

After going through and identify which represented 1's, 10's, 100's, & 1000's the teacher pulled out papers with different numbers on them and the kids worked on pulling the proper bead sets to represent the numbers.

At the end of the class the kids split up in groups and the parents got to participate with the students.

It was great to see LanLan's teacher in action and LanLan in the classroom setting. Her teacher said lots of great things about my little Orchid, plays well with the kids, excels in everything especially drawing but is a bit behind in math. She is probably a little behind mostly because we don't reinforce these math concepts at home, I haven't thought about doing it since she is only 4. She also does struggle with the language. We will probably start to practice these concepts and numbers in Chinese at home so she can keep up with the class.

"加油" (JiaYou)

LanLan's preshool had a mini field day for the school, the parents were invited to come and cheer on the children. My little orchid's class had a relay race, competition bouncing a basketball and got the parents to compete jump roping. We jump at any opertunity to go to LanLan's school as we don't really know too much of what actually goes on. Because there is a language & culture barrier I don't get too much information and because of security reasons I'm not allowed into the school very often (this is good & bad - I feel that my daughter is safe but sad that I can't go in anytime and observe class time). So this means that we have to relai on our 4 year old to tell us what happens at school.

This past Thursday when I picked my little orchid up from school I was given an announcement saying there was going to be a field day the next day. (Also very cultural to not tell people in much advance of activities or special advents. I remember when we were teachers coming into school and finding out that that day parents were coming to observe classes! Or, better situations, was when we arrived to find out that we weren't teaching that day b/c we were going on a field trip.)

It was a lot of fun to cheer "加油兰兰!" "JiaYou LanLan!"(pronounced jiayoh - which literally means add more gas, like in a car) as she bounced the basketball and ran. It was exciting to see how she interacts with the other children and her teachers. It is also fun to see other parents there cheering on their kids, so excited to see their child's accomplishments. At the end of the activities everyone who participated got "你真帮!" "Ni Zhen Bang!" stars (translation: You're Great!). Even mommy got one though I can't say I was very great at jump roping 20 weeks pregnant.