聖誕及新年快樂 shèng dàn jí xīn nián kuài lè

Thank you so much for your continuous support. Only 4 little white socks to take down before Santa’s visit. Dublin School of Mandarin Chinese would like to wish you and family a merry Christmas and happy new year.

14 weeks fly by and I hope your child/children enjoyed the classes. We will see you back in Jan 2012!

The Chinese New Year is coming early next year – the year of Dragon is landing on Monday 23^rd Jan. 2012! The school is “thinking” hard to have more creative activities to entertain our children and make learning fun!

Apparently wearing red and black consider “lucky” for the year of dragon.

聖誕鈴聲 Jingle Bell shèng dàn líng shēng

雪 花 隨 風 飄 (Snowflakes in the air)

xuě  huā  suí  fēng  piāo  

花 鹿 在 奔 跑 (reindeer is running)

huā   lù        zài   bēn   pǎo      

聖  誕 老 公 公 (Santa Claus)

shèng   dàn   lǎo   gōng   gōng

駕 著 美 麗 雪 橇 (Riding the beautiful sleigh)

jià      zhe   měi      lì   xuě   qiāo

經 過 了 原 野   (over the field)

jīng   guò    le   yuán    yě   

渡 過 了 小 橋 (over the bridge)

dù    guò      le   xiǎo   qiáo  

跟 著 和 平 歡 喜 歌 聲(following the peace & happy sound)

gēn   zhe   hé   píng   huān     xǐ    gē shēng   

翩 然 地 來 到 (happily arriving)

piān   rán   dì       lái   dào  

叮 叮 噹   叮 叮 噹   鈴 聲  多 響  亮  (bell is loud)

dīng  dīng  dāng  dīng  dīng   dāng    líng  shēng  duō  xiǎng   liàng  

你 看 他 呀 不 避 風 霜  (look at him regardless the snow)

nǐ        kàn   tā   ya       bú     bì     fēng   shuāng  

面 容 多 麼 慈 祥 (his face is kind)

miàn  róng  duō  me   cí   xiáng

叮 叮 噹   叮 叮 噹   鈴 聲  多 響  亮(bell is loud)

dīng  dīng  dāng  dīng  dīng   dāng    líng  shēng  duō  xiǎng   liàng  

他 給 我 們 帶 來 幸 福  (He’s bringing us happiness)

tā     gěi     wǒ     men   dài   lái      xìng fú  

大 家 喜 洋 洋 (everybody is happy)

dà jiā xǐ yáng yáng

http://www.56.com/u80/v_MjgxODc3MDE.html

Seasonal Song - Silent Night 平安夜 píng ān yè

平安夜

píng ān yè

聖善夜

shèng shàn yè 　

萬暗中

wàn àn zhōng

光華射

guāng huá shè

照著聖母

zhào zhe shèng mǔ

也照著聖嬰

yě zhào zhe shèng yīng 　

多少慈祥

duō shǎo cí xiáng

也多少天真

yě duō shǎo tiān zhēn

靜享天

jìng xiǎng tiān

賜安眠

cì ān mián 　

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBwgx7r8cz8

Arts and Crafts project for Christmas 2011

Our first arts & craft activity in this term – Christmas advent calendar.

I thought it’s not only a great way for the children to learn to write dates and month of December in Chinese but also wonderful for them to recap them when counting dates down.

Children loved making stuff and this just couldn’t be better instead of those chocolate sort of advent calendar in the shop.

This cute stocking advent calendar can be hanged on the door, by the window or on the tree if you have one up early. I didn’t want to make it too long so we have 12 tiny stockings that has 1^st day to 12^th on one side, then 13^th to 24^th on the other. You take down the stockings one a day for the first 12 days (don’t throw this away just yet). You hang them all up again once 12^th was off and now you can throw them away one by one starting from 13^th. Hope you will like it!

Other simple advent calendars we made for other classes.

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

Ireland has Halloween on 31st Oct.

Taiwan have a holiday to fete the departed spirits of the underworld : Ghost Festival, a popular occasion celebrated on the 15th July in lunar calendar.
Historically, families offer sacrifices of the newly harvested grain to departed ancestors on this day.
In Taiwan, Ghost Festival is passed by slaughtering a pig and sheep, competition on their sizes in some towns, together with a prodigious table of wine, meat and fruits on offer to ancestors and
ghosts from the underworld.

Week 6 - Song: What is that? 那是什麼？

Survey for Dublin School of Mandarin Chinese Saturday Class

首先，謝謝大家的支持與鼓勵。都柏林中文學校在2009年成立至今已三年。感謝台灣華語社余社長的指導與台北辦事處的幫忙，僑校要正式上路了！

為了回饋及服務僑胞及在愛爾蘭推廣中文，僑校想先做一份問卷調查，敬請廣為宣傳推薦給親朋好友參加。您的時間及分享將會成為僑校成立的基準，也會給未來的僑校種下美麗的種子。

First of all, thank you all very much for your support and encouragement. It’s been three years since Dublin School of Mandarin Chinese was established in year 2009.

A special thanks to Dr. Boris Yu’s guidance and the support from the Taipei Representative Office to make the overseas Chinese school in Dublin from a dream to a reality!

Dublin school of Mandarin would like to ask for your opinions and advice in order to understand the needs so it can possible tailor made the school to suffice.

Your time in this survey and your comments are highly appreciated and will become the foundation of the overseas Chinese school in Dublin. Please feel free to forward this to your friends and family. I am grateful that we can plaint this beautiful seed together!

Click here and help us with our survey. Thank you very much.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SY79QFQ

Confucius

Confucius was born on 28th Sept, 2500 years ago and he was the greatest teacher in history! Some countries in Asia have marked today 28th Sept as teacher's day. Children enjoyed watching the video of a special dance ceremony at the Confucius temple in Taipei.
They are plenty of animated short film that told great stories and words of wisdom from Confucius.

Song - week 3 星期歌xīng qī gē Song of the week

星期歌
xīng qī gē
Song of the week

Song - week 1

十個印地安人shí gè yìn dì ān rén
 (10 little Indians)

有一個 有二個 有三個印地安
yǒu yī gè yǒu liǎng gè yǒu sān gè yìn dì ān
有四個 有五個 有六個印地安
yǒu sì gè yǒu wǔ gè yǒu liù gè yìn dì ān
有七個 有八個 有九個印地安
yǒu qī gè yǒu bā gè yǒu jiǔ gè yìn dì ān
有十個印地安小孩
yǒu shí gè yìn dì ān xiǎo hái



上課了shàng kè le
（In the class）

圓圓的 轉呀轉 是眼睛
yuán yuán de zhuǎn ya zhuǎn shì yǎn jīng
彎彎的 笑呀笑 是嘴巴
wān wān de xiào ya xiào shì zuǐ bā
短短的 動呀動 是小手
duǎn duǎn de dòng ya dòng shì xiǎo shǒu
眼睛眼睛 看老師
yǎn jīng yǎn jīng kàn lǎo shī
嘴巴嘴巴 閉起來
zuǐ bā zuǐ bā bì qǐ lái
小手小手 放腿上
xiǎo shǒu xiǎo shǒu fàng tuǐ shàng
長長的 掃呀掃 是掃把
chǎng chǎng de sǎo ya sǎo shì sǎo bǎ
方方的 擦呀擦 是抹布
fāng fāng de cā ya cā shì mò bù
美美的 忙呀忙 是媽媽
měi měi de máng ya máng shì mā mā
掃把掃把 來掃地
sǎo bǎ sǎo bǎ lái sǎo dì
抹布抹布 擦桌子
mò bù mò bù cā zhuō zǐ
媽媽媽媽 謝謝你
mā mā mā mā xiè xiè nǐ

中秋節快樂 zhōng qiū jiē kuài lè

Happy mid-autumn festival everyone!
The mid-autumn festival is also called “moon festival”. It’s the 15th of Aug in lunar calendar and is landing on today 12th Sept in year 2011.

中秋節快樂 zhōng qiū jiē kuài lè
Here’re some links for animated stories about the mid-autumn festival.

中秋节的由来zhōng qiū jiē de yóu lái (Story of mid-autumn)
http://www.baobao88.com/bbstory/dhgs/11/031255.html

節慶的故事 - 中秋節jiē qìng de gù shì - zhōng qiū jiē (Story of mid-autumn)
http://etoe.mlc.edu.tw/materialf/1555/year5.htm

吳剛伐桂wú gāng fá guì （Animated story）
http://edu.ocac.gov.tw/biweekly/608/a2.htm

嫦娥奔月cháng é bēn yuè （Animated story）
http://edu.ocac.gov.tw/biweekly/609/a2.htm

Enrolling for Sept. 2011

Dublin School of Mandarin Chinese for Children

Is now enrolling for September 2011

Mondays
14:45-15:45 - Dalkey Primary School

Tuesdays
15:30-17:30 - 1st year students (Bray)

Wednesdays
15:30-17:30 - 2nd/3rd year students (Bray)

Please send me an email if you have any queries.
Thank you.

Chinese Calligraphy and Painting

We had Chinese calligraphy and painting workshop for children and parents on the first half of our last class before the summer, follow by the dumplings making workshop.

The artworks and the dumplings made were taken home afterwards. I should certainly have more workshops like this as we all had a great time.

父親節快樂，爸爸我愛你！fù qīn jiē kuài lè ，bà bà wǒ ài nǐ ！Happy father's day, I love you dad!

Say no more..... they love their dads of course but children enjoyed arts and crafts just as much.
I hope they will remember to give the cards to their dads on Sun.

We had a 粽子 zòngzi workshop to celebrate our 端午節 Duānwǔ Jié!

It's also called Dragon Boat Festival in Taiwan!
I won't bore you with the festival history as you can find them online here or just google it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duanwu_Festival

We introduced the festival with story and video. Some questions children had were hilarious!

The year of Rabbit - 2011 xīn nián kuài lè

Learning, learning, learning.....work time, work time, work time.

Children like to play and make things instead so I always plan something fun for the class so they don't realise that they are actually learning and working.

During the Chinese New Year, we have learnt the song Gong xi gong xi, we have made some Chinese arts & crafts, caligraphy and wrote our own spring couplets to decorate the house, we have watched some videos about the story of Nian monster, lantern festival & the tradition of Chinese New Year animated short films, we have learnt how to make Yuan xiao, we have tasted some homemade yuan xiao, dumplings & etc. and we had a CNY party!

Here're some crafts we made.