Week 5 (Saturday Class) Going to School 我去上学 (Wǒ qù shàngxué) Cont.

Hello! Another busy week for our students in Saturday class. We practiced the passage on page 3 this week. You can read along here.

They are now able to read it out even without the pinyin, I'm so proud of them! This week we learnt the different between 穿 (wear, dressed in), 戴 (to put on), and 拿 (to take). Feel free to quiz them and see if they could all appropriately use the term! We had a lot of fun practicing in class. You can also practice the characters with them with the study set.

This week's homework - Please have a go on the writing on page 5 of work book and matching the picture with appropriate words on page 6. I know we are still a few books short and they will arrive next week so please bear with us. 

Our Chinese idiom of the week is Blind man and the Elephant 盲人摸象 (máng rén mō xiàng). Here is the story:

Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, "Hey, there is an elephant in the village today." They had no idea what an elephant is. They decided, "Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it anyway." All of them went where the elephant was. Everyone of them touched the elephant.

  

"Hey, the elephant is a pillar," said the first man who touched his leg. 

"Oh, no! it is like a rope," said the second man who touched the tail. 

"Oh, no! it is like a thick branch of a tree," said the third man who touched the trunk of the elephant. 

"It is like a big hand fan" said the fourth man who touched the ear of the elephant. 

"It is like a big bed," said the fifth man who touched the belly of the elephant. 

"It is like a carrot," Said the sixth man who touched the tusk of the elephant. 

They began to argue about the elephant and everyone of them insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting agitated. A wise man was passing by and he saw this. He stopped and asked them, "What is the matter?" They said, "We cannot agree to what the elephant is like." Each one of them told what he thought the elephant was like. The wise man calmly explained to them, "All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all those features what you all said."

Have a good week ahead!