聖誕倒數日曆 shèng dàn dào shǔ rì lì (advent calendar)

With all the excitement this time of the year, you can't not to take the advantage of it! Advent calendar is a great thing to make for big and small.

For older children, we recycle the "left over" sweets from Halloween and the egg carton, turn them into the advent calendar.
For younger children, we recycle again. We use the Christmas cards from last year and turn them into something beautiful and fun for children to create.
Not single one of them complain about writing numbers from 1 to 24!

Halloween 2014 - The Scream by Chinese painting

I was thinking about art and craft activity we can do for the Halloween this year. Then the famous The Scream painting came into my head. I thought it should be very doable to paint that in Chinese painting. I searched the internet but couldn't find any so I have to try it out myself. It turned out great I thought and children love it too.
Here're some from my Wed's class.

孔子kǒng zǐ (Confucius)

28th Sept is teachers' day in Taiwan since 1950s. Teachers’ Day has been changing in China. Last year the Chinese government released a draft amendment proposing to shift the day to September 28th (widely held to be the birth date of Confucius). I told stories about 孔子 Confucius to children this week and how important Confucianism is to us. I would love our children to learn kindness, respectful to others and filial to their parents. They loved this presentation and video.

Video on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ximqppmkfc4

Dublin School of Mandarin Chinese Online Registration 2014/2015

Day of classes	Time	Classroom	Material	Teacher	Fee per class
Monday	1500-1600	GET Busy Kids Greystones	Happy Chinese	Evan	7 euro
Wednesday	1530-1730	Bray	Living Mandarin 3	Evan	7 euro
Thursday	1530-1730	Bray	Living Mandarin 1	Evan	7 euro
Thursday	1530-1730	Bray	Living Mandarin 2	Shuping	7 euro
Saturday	0900-1000	Kildare	Living Mandarin 1	Sage	10 euro
Saturday	1030-1130	Kildare	Living Mandarin 2	Sage	10 euro
Private lesson	available upon request
extra curriculum	available upon request

Online registration by Friday 5th Sept on first come first serve basis. (please spend a few minutes, thank you very much)

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/11uA0L870cQKLN1dN1HTMGv2XqeC-ZgvYM-PVegH6FM4/viewform?c=0&w=1&usp=mail_form_link

Certificate 獎狀 jiǎng zhuàng

Giving exams, correcting papers, collecting data, grading pupils, give parents reports and printing certificates are not fun at all. But hey, it means the summer holiday is coming soon!

Chinese puppets 布袋戲 bù dài xì

These puppets are great assets to our school as children loved playing with them. They enjoyed the stories and practice lines for their puppet show.  

Thank you all very much for coming to celebrate Dragon Boat Festival with us. I hope you enjoyed the food, games and chat.

Special thanks to Jessica Bird, Jane Byrne, Nell Lin, Yafen Tsai, Amy Hsu for making delicious food. Also, thanks to Emiel Brennan, Mandy Reilly and Denise for helping me to make 200+ Zongzi. Mission accomplished!!
I also need to say thanks to all the volunteers who serve drinks, food and games. Thank you all!

Please do share your photos with us on our Facebook page. Thank you and see you next year!!
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152488370732437.1073741830.191107337436&type=3

杯子歌 bēi zǐ gē

我  拿了 我    的 車   票      要      遠  走

wǒ ná le wǒ de chē piào yào yuǎn zǒu 

可樂  兩       瓶   來   跟   著  我

kě lè liǎng píng lái gēn zhe wǒ

我   肯    定     想       要  你來 陪   我

wǒ kěn dìng xiǎng yào nǐ lái péi wǒ 

我    明     天    離開，你說呢

wǒ míng tiān lí kāi    nǐ shuō ne

當     我   走了

dāng wǒ zǒu le 

當     我   走了

dāng wǒ zǒu le 

我  走  了 你   將    會      想   我

wǒ zǒu le nǐ jiāng huì xiǎng wǒ

你會     想      念    我的髮

nǐ huì xiǎng niàn wǒ de fà

你會    想      念     我一切

nǐ huì xiǎng niàn wǒ yī qiē 

我  走   了  你 將    會      想我

wǒ zǒu le nǐ jiāng huì xiǎng wǒ 

你好！

我們的學生在愛爾蘭國家兒童電視台教小朋友說中文！
Our pupils taught Irish children some Mandarin Chinese words on RTE junior national TV. April 2014.

RTE Jr.

We are so proud of you guys! Our pupils taught Irish children some Mandarin Chinese words on RTE Jr.

復活節 fù huó jiē Easter

I hope children were sharing those chocolates eggs they hunted.  They enjoyed the egg hunt where most of them have no problem follow their clues without realize I was giving them a mini test!!

Before we have some fun, we work them hard!  We made the cute little box and we learned how to write Easter in Chinese - 復活節 fù huó jiē!

中文四子棋 zhōng wén sì zǐ qí Chinese Connect 4

I am very proud to invent this game and children wants to play it over and over again!! You have to know every word to win!

團隊玩賓果遊戲 team bingo game

Children love games naturally and that's why we always plan games and activities to make learning fun and engaging.
This team bingo games are ready for the young learners age 4 and 5 at Hedley Park school tomorrow!!

Conversation cubes

Children love the story cubes and I was inspired by it so I invented these conversation cubes.
Great games for the classroom circle time!!

幸運餅乾 xingyun bingan (fortune cookies)

To celebrate the end of Chinese new year.
Children were given a fortune cookie.
One asked: where was fortune cookies came from?
I said: from Lidl!!
Then asked: why it's called fortune cookie?

Out of blue, I must admit I haven't a clue but I said: Chinese people like to go to the fortune teller to seek references for their futures. And I guess that's why fortunes cookies was invented.

Now that I looked up the wonderful Google.

I am so wrong! 

If you remember the character Mandarin in Iron Man 3, he said: true story about fortune cookies. They look Chinese, they sound Chinese, but they are actually an American invention. Which is why they are hollow, full of lies and leave bad taste in the mouth. 

He also said: fortune cookies aren't even Chinese, they are made by American, based on a Japanese recipe.

Here's the piece about fortune cookie. :-)

元宵節 yuán xiāo jié （Lantern Festival)

Yap, Chinese New Year celebration last for 16 days from New Year's eve till Lantern festival althought people would have gone back to work yesterday (Lunar 5th Jan).
If you are interested in the story, please look up the post from 2013.


I love recycling and I always keep boxes, cardboards, toilet paper rolls etc for the arts workshop.  This week, we have a tiny paper cutting work for kids made from the recycled spring couplets (春聯 chūn lián）. Younger childre did the simple lantern and older children made these!

造句 zao4 ju4 make sentence

Learning through games and competitions are our ethos as its great fun for children.
We use word cards with no picture so they have to read both character and pinyin to make out what the words are.
I told them they're allow to look at books and copy the sentences but they were surprisingly creative!!

馬到成功 ma3 dao4 chen2 gong1

Many Chinese characters came from pictures. The word of horse 馬 ma3 is a classic example. We did a combinations of Chinese painting and calligraphy workshop to mark the year of horse.  I am very proud of their work. Hope your like it too!!
恭喜發財! Gong xi fa cai!!

捏麵人 niē miàn rén （Dough figurine)

Dough figurine is a traditional art that originally made of glutinous flour and plain flour which is edible.

I cheated! I use ready roll icing with colouring which I think is called fondant and it's edible too.

紅包 hóng bāo (red envelop) and 壓歲錢 yā suì qián (suppress age money)

These gold and red envelops were packed of lucky euro inside and ready to go to children's home under their pillows!

The money giving to children in New Year's eve is called 壓歲錢 （yā suì qián).

The story was related to a usual monster that frighten children and parents want to keep monster away so they wrap money inside the red paper.  Children then put this beside the pillow on the new years eve.

You probably remember previously that we said Money in red envelops 紅包 hóng bāo is not only givien at the Chinese New Year but also commonly used for those happy family occasions too like for the new born baby and at the wedding etc.

Just like the term "brown envelops" here in Ireland, red envelop can be used in exactly the same terminology!

火鍋 Huo Guo. Fire pot. (Hot pot)

Hot pot dinner is a very typical dinner on the night of Chinese new year's eve.
Over here in Ireland, we enjoy it as often as we want during these winter months.
火鍋 Huo Guo literary means fire pot as traditionally the pot would have been sitting on fire when cooking. I have a electric pot that heat up instantly which is handy.  I love it when the hot steam warms up the room and foggy up the windows.
Looking forward to welcoming the year of horse and thinking hat is on again for the CNY arts and crafts!!