Sunday 23 December 2012

冬至 (dōng zhì)Winter solstice



To celebrate the winter solstice as well as the last class of the term, we have made, cooked & ate 湯圓 tāng yuán (glutinous rice balls) which is still the tradition for winter solstice.  I like my tāng yuán in hot gingery sweet soup when I was a kid and now I love them in savoury soup. Some bigger tāng yuán have sweet filling like sesame, red bean, peanut paste inside which are available in most Asian stores.  The round shape of rice balls represent closures and family reunion and children gain one year older.....I still remembered I was told that I won't be one year older if I didn't finish my rice balls when I was a kid!

Younger children enjoyed our workshop of making the tang yuan and spring rolls.  Pity that only some of them like eating the tang yuan.  Older children were making dumplings.  We also did a Chinese painting workshop with older children and I was impressed with their art works!!
Pity that I didn't get to take more photos but these two.



Tuesday 11 December 2012

聖誕卡 (圣诞卡) shèng dàn kǎ Christmas Cards

We always look out for different arts and crafts ideas for different occasions and to suit different age groups too.  The outcomes are fabulous and children can never had enough time for crafts!  Here're some photos we have so far and more to come later on this week.

The younger children learn to say 聖誕快樂(圣诞快乐)shèng dàn kuài lè which literary translated Jesus's birthday happy (Happy Christmas).  They coloured in the words and decorated their cards.



The older children learn to write 聖誕快樂 and made the waterfall cards.





Wednesday 28 November 2012

Only 27 more sleeps until Christmas (聖誕節shèng dàn jié)

This is the exciting time of the year for children.  We have so many ideas of advent calendars for children of different ages/classes this year.  We will be learning the Christmas songs in the next few weeks and really looking forward to the last class which we will be having varies workshops and the usual end of the term party.
Here's the first advent calendar children made, they wrote the numbers from 1 to 24 all by heart! They can counting down the days with one little treat inside the cone a day.  The treat can be a sweet (which we have got plenty of left overs from Halloween), a sweet message for someone, a Chinese word they will learn, a activity/game they want to do/play and etc. More pictures to follow from other classes (if I remember to take photo of them!).


The older children made this advent calendar with their own creative ideas by using different shapes of papers.  I was too busy to take photos of their brilliant work and here's the one I made.


Santa's advent calendar was a great success last year so we have it again for the younger children. Santa will grow his beard bit by bit each day and by the time Santa grow all his beard, it's Christmas!
Here's Max's work!



Saturday 27 October 2012

Never enough time for crafts!

Would you like to make spider web by paper cutting or the vampire origami? Children shouted "Can we do both please?".
So to avoid the disappointment, we did both.
Sorry the home time was delayed! 

Wednesday 24 October 2012

萬聖節快樂 wàn shèng jié kuài lè Happy Halloween!


Are you dare enough to eat these tea eggs (茶葉蛋 chá yè dàn)??We have got plenty if you dare!Tea egg is a traditional snack and still very popular in Asia. You can find them in many street vendors in China, Chinese herbal shops in HongKong and 7-11 convenience stores in Taiwan.

Halloween in Mandarin is literally translated - ten thousand saints festival and I guess because this is used to called "all saints' day" and ten thousands covers "all"??!!




Wednesday 3 October 2012

Song - What is your name? 你叫什麼?nǐ jiào shén me


你叫什麼?你叫什麼?

nǐ  jiào shén me       nǐ  jiào shén me

你幾歲?你幾歲?

     suì            suì

我叫Evan,我叫Evan

wǒ jiào                    wǒ jiào

我三十八歲,我三十八歲

wǒ sān shí bā  suì        wǒ sān shí bā  suì


Tuesday 25 September 2012

中秋節快樂 zhōng qiū jié kuài lè Happy mid-autumn festival



中秋節快樂 zhōng qiū jié kuài lè Happy mid-autumn festival

We have the first class tasted the moon cakes (月餅 yuè bǐng) today - most of them tried but some wanted more! Due to the very limited supplies I have, I can not offer more, sorry kids! I shall order more next year!

We enjoyed watching the animated story about the moon festival and the colouring afterwards.

Friday 21 September 2012

Mid-Autumn Festival

We are so delighted to have so many children enrolled this Sept. Welcome! 歡迎 huān yíng!

We've had busy two weeks to get to know everybody and make every child feel welcome.
Next week will be an even more exciting week  for us as we are planning some interesting activities with children to celebrate one of our big festivals - Mid Autumn Festival, 中秋節 zhōng qiū jié.
Here're some youtube links about the festival.  Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXczHYZcRvo&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYu2ksKOMIE&feature=related

Culture Teacher at EAIE 2012

What a start of a new term! I was delighted to be invited to the EAIE 2012 exhibition as a culture teacher and very proud to be part of the team of 19 exhibiting universities from Taiwan.
I had fun in those three days demostrating the Chinese art - caligraphy, painting and paper cutting.







Here're some photos to share.

Tuesday 21 August 2012

Enrolling for Sept. 2012


Is now enrolling for Sept 2012. Please send us an email for application form.

The class for 1st year younger children will be hold on Tuesdays 15:30-17:30 and the class for older children will be hold on Thursday 16:00-17:30PM

Please note that the text books we carefully selected are approved by both Dept of Education and the Overseas Compatriots Affairs Commission in Taiwan and are sponsored by OCAC for this coming academic year.
The advantage of these series of books is they include both traditional and simplified Chinese characters as well as the homework books. I always wish my children can learn both systems and these series turns my dream into a reality! More info can be found here.

Living Mandarin (Mon, Tue and Wed’s class)
http://www.skymandarin.org/living-mandarin.htm

Speak Mandarin in 1000 words (Thur’s class)
http://media.huayuworld.org/lang/medium/ch_1000/index.htm

Friday 13 July 2012

More photos from our 2nd week of summer camp!


Thank you so much for the encouragement and the opportunity to make our first ever Chinese summer camp possible!

We had a great time and a very successful summer camp!  We’ll be doing this every summer!
























We had fun at our 1st week of summer camp! Here're few photos from our fun summer camp!