Week 4 (Saturday Class) Going to School 我去上学 (Wǒ qù shàngxué)

After the hustle and bustle of Chinese New Year fun in the last two week, we finally open our text book and explore new lessons. Today's class we talked about what to bring or wear going to school. The key words are 穿 Chuān (wear, dressed in), 戴 Dài (wear, put on), 拿 Ná (take), and what they can be used with. We had fun playing word matching and word search, I was really quite impressed how quickly the children manage to recognise the words.

As well as learning about everyday items such as hat, school bag, shoes and socks (page 2 in text book), we also practice reading the passage on page 3 as well as learning about the 4 tones in Chinese Pinyin.

You can find the flashcard for Lesson 1 HERE.
The word search games worksheet is HERE

We also revisited numbers this week as some of our new students have not been introduced to it. 

1 一 yī
2 二 èr
3 三 sān
4 四 sì
5 五 wǔ
6 六 liù
7 七 qī
8 八 bā
9 九 jiǔ
10 十 shí

You can read along counting to 10 here 

This week we have also started our story segment. I have introduced a Chinese idiom 成語 (Chengyu) stories series. Chéngyǔ (Traditional Chinese: 成語; Simplified Chinese: 成语, literally "to become (part of) the language") or Four-character idioms are widely used in Classical Chinese, a literary form used in the Chinese written language from antiquity until 1919, and are still commonly used in Vernacular writing today.The first story today is 

半途而废 (bàn tú ér fèi) meaning do things by halves, give up halfway. Here is how the story goes:

During the Warring States Period (475-221BC), there was a man called Yue Yangzi in State Yue. Yue Yangzi felt that he should go out and visit scholars to enrich his knowledge. So he set off.  A year later, he came back home suddenly."Why have you returned?" asked his wife in surprise, "You've only spent one year studying with scholars.""I come back because I missed you very much."
Without saying anything, his wife took a pair of scissors and went to the loom at which she had worked. Pointing at the half done brocade, she proclaimed : "This brocade is woven from the finest silk. I wove one strand after another to produce the brocade. Now if I cut it, all my previous work will be wasted. It's the same with your studies. You can acquire knowledge only through diligence. Now, you've stopped halfway. Isn't it the same as cutting the brocade on the loom?"　　 
Yue Yangzi was moved by what she said. He again left home to visit scholars. Several years later he became a learned man.

Have a lovely weekend!