Our 1st Field Trip --- San Francisco annual Chinese New Year Parade

We had our very first field trip to San Francisco on the March 7th for the annual Chinese New Year Parade. It was fun to witness this event together with all our club members (and their supportive families)! Thank you for all the parents who put effort into this and made it happen! I can 's say enough how much your support is appreciated!  Unfortunately, I forgot to take a group picture with you guys.  :(   Please remind me to at least take one group picture when we do our future field trips, as a way to preserve our beautiful memories and to document our life-experience learning.  

Here I can only share some pictures that I took that evening, about what we saw...... Enjoy them! (Please share with me if you have some good ones, especially the ones with any of "us" in it. ~_^)

After this field trip, some of the kids were so excited seeing the lion dance and the dragon teams that they were proposing at one of our club meetings: "Can we make our own lion costume?  That looks really cool." I have to agree; it is really cool. Although we had no experience making stuff like that before, it's not a bad idea to try new things, right? I actually liked this idea and the students' passion behind it. I'll definitely keep that in my mind/agenda, and with this group of kids, I'm sure we can try this DIY craft project in the near future.

 

 

 

 

Craft Project: Chinese Paper Cutting

It was believed that paper was one of the "Four Great Inventions (四大发明)" of China. No wonder paper cutting is one of the most famous traditional Chinese fork crafts, and is often seen around New Year, weddings and other celebrations and feasts. It can be a good project for practicing not only the students' fine motor skills, but also their planning, drawing and design skills, especially when the complexity of the project increases over time. 

One of the common use of the Chinese traditional paper-cuts is to decorate doors and windows around New Year time, as referred to "chuang hua (窗花)，" meaning Window Flower.  Similar to making snow flakes, cutting chuang hua seems fairly easy, with easy folds, no fixed pattern to follow but unexpected beauty at the end! Thus it became our first attempt when Chinese paper cutting was introduced to our club members in late Feb.  Look what we made!

 

  

 

 

 

Feb Theme: Chinese New Year Celebration

As part of the New Year celebration, we made and tasted some traditional Chinese food, such as the rice crackers and Shao Mai (soy-sauced rice dumplings with meat and veggies).

 

We played a chopstick game, where you pick up glass marbles using chopsticks as much and as fast as you can! Guess who won?

 

 

And, of course, we got to sing Chinese New Year celebration songs and were rewarded for our hard work...... Gong Xi Fa Cai, Hong Bao Na Lai!   (May you be happy and prosperous; please give me the red packet!)   ; P

Ink and water painting / calligraphy practice

About two weeks ago, we had some painting fun at our club meetings! As part of the Chinese New Year celebration, as well as a cultural experience, we were introduced to the Chinese traditional ink-and-water painting, 水墨画.  In the first session, we painted the symbol of the year of 2015: 羊 （pronounced as "yang", meaning goat, ram, or sheep, you name it! ^_~） It's actually not easy to master the skills of using a traditional Chinese brush, 毛笔. How you hold it is unlike any ways of hold a contemporary pen. But the students put effort into it and was trying their best to follow my instructions.  Look how hard they are working and how beautiful their products are! Aren't those kids talented artists?! 

At the second session, we practiced the Chinese character Love, 爱，or,  愛, in its traditional format with a "heart (心)" in the middle (what a sweet metaphor. Who can "love" without a "heart"?!) Thanks for all the Peregrine teachers who shared their classroom supplies with us, to make this activity possible! That was fun. 

A Field Trip Proposal - San Francisco 2015 Chinese New Year Parade

We had a great time today at our club meeting, singing the newly learned Chinese Zodiac Animal song, playing Bingo and Memory Matching games, and discussing some Chinese New Year celebration ideas! Our kids have shown great enthusiasm for the San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade that happens annually, and close enough to us for a possible one-day field trip. So I did some research and here's what I found:

http://www.sanfranciscochinatown.com/events/chinesenewyearparade.html

For this year, the parade will be happening on the March 7th, about two weeks after the Chinese New Year day (2/19) and perfectly scheduled on a Saturday evening. I think I can make it and it would be great if you can make it too (with families of course)! We may gather together right before the parade starts or as early as at lunch on that day and have some cultural exploration together in Chinatown. This is just my proposal. If it sounds an interesting/fun idea to you, please kindly drop me an email so we can plan it together. I wish we can make it!   

Jan Theme: Chinese Zodiac Animals

To celebrate the forthcoming Chinese New Year, I decided to introduce the Chinese Zodiac in our Jan meetings.  The Chinese Zodiac, known as 生肖 （sheng xiao），or 十二生肖（shi er sheng xiao) is based on a twelve year cycle, each year in that cycle related to an animal sign. These animal signs are the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and pig. It is calculated according to Chinese lunar calendar, which makes the Jan and Feb birthdays a little tricker to find out which animal that person "is."  For example, this year, babies born before or on Feb 18 (on the western calendar) would be little horses, instead of sheep (or goats），even though you may find the year of 2015 is the year of sheep (or goat 羊年）. 

Starting on this Tuesday, after reviewing the animals that we have already known, we identified the twelve zodiac animals and learned a song that contains all of them in the right order.

To find out which animal is our zodiac sign, each of us made a "Zodiac Wheel." By turning the "wheel window" to the year of your birthday, it shows the animal of that year! What a cool and fun craft.  

We made flash cards and played Bingo games, which all helped us memorize the new vocabulary. 

Few More Videos We Recorded Last December

I wish you had a great holiday season! Happy New Year, 新（xin）年（nian）快（kuai）乐（le）!

Today, I uploaded four more video clips that were recorded before the winter break. Good job, Alex and Isabella! Hope you all are having fun watching these and at the meantime reviewing what we've learned lately!

I'm looking forward to seeing you all next week! Welcome back to our Chinese Club!