Little Fingers, Little Work

Lan Lan received this kit for her fifth birthday from a friend. Looking at it I thought there would be no way that she would be able to do it by herself or that she would have the attention span to work on it long enough to get anything done. But being the crafty person she is she was very interested in at least trying so, I sat down with her the other day and taught her how to do it.
There is a lot of work involved in doing this project, there is a pattern to follow that reminds me of counted cross-stitch. This pattern consists of little blocks representing different pegs either 1, 2, 3 or 4 pegs long. Once you determine the length of the peg to use, and find the location you poke it into the peg board. After hours of pegging what do we have . . . Snow White's face!! She is just about 1/4 of the way down with this project. In the end it will be Snow White & Ariel standing next to each other.
Just like in counted cross stitch it can be easy to lose your place so I taught Lan Lan to highlight the places she has finished. She is doing an amazing job! I'm so proud of her, this is a lot of work but she sits there, works hard, is diligent and gets the job done. There have been a few times that I have had to go back and fix mistakes (and they weren't all hers). But I think she is learning a lot from this little birthday present. I can't wait to see the finished product

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.

A Big Reward

My Little Orchid has been working on filling up her behavior chart with stickers. Over the course of many months we were work on many different things to encourage good behavior. Things that we have worked on and she received stars for were obeying right away, saying "Yes mama" and then doing whatever mama asked, if told no instead of being upset and throwing a tantrum she would say things like "OK" or "that makes me sad, but alright", sharing, eating without having to be reminded to take another bite, being helpful, etc.

After filling up her chart we told her we would take her to the nearby toy store and she could pick out any toy she liked. After carefully looking at all the toys available she told me she wanted this Barbie kitchen set. It was a bit more money than I had originally thought we would spend but my husband reminded me how hard she had worked and that it took several months (plus I don't very often buy her toys).

LanLan was anxious to open her new prize and place it in her doll house her dad built. She and I had a lot fun playing with the new toys. We made mac & cheese, smoothies, tea and washed the dishes. Of course before Barbie could cook my Little Orchid had to do her hair. (I have to brag for a minute) LanLan is really getting the hang of doing hair! Braiding is still a bit hard for her but she will pick it up quickly.

Hooray for LanLan for completing the behavior chart!!

"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.

Muddy Buddies

Living in China we often can't get some things that are so easy to pick up in a local grocery store anywhere in America. It makes making some favorite recipes almost impossible to make. My very kind sister brought over two large suitcases filled with fun food just for us when she came to visit this summer. In it where two key ingredients for Muddy Buddies - Chex cereal and chocolate chips. Today we made this yummy snack.