December 2004. Keeping a diary while visiting Arizona
August 2005. Yiran's impression of Stonehenge. She did not have orange color on the trip, so she wrote it in words, and filled it after coming back home.
December 2004. Keeping a diary while visiting Arizona |
August 2005. Yiran's impression of Stonehenge. She did not have orange color on the trip, so she wrote it in words, and filled it after coming back home. |
Perhaps because Yiran reads so much, she possesses a large vocabulary and is an awesome speller. For the birthday card from her class to the Principal, Yiran suggested a sentence that contains the word “therefore”. Her teacher recommended that the sentence be omitted because other kids in the class don’t know what it means. It has become a common practice in her classroom that if anyone doesn’t know a word, s/he will ask the teacher only if “even Yiran doesn’t know it”. The teacher tells Yiran that she is ready for college.
Well, of course we know her teacher is joking. Just a few days ago at bed time, Yiran proudly reported, “Mama, I already had my vitamin! It’s pink, to be pacific [specific].” One day on the piano bench, she asked, “Am I sitting popularly [appropriately]?” And another time she tested her brother, “Do you know that frogs cloak [croak]?”
More than a year ago during her first semester of Kindergarten, Yiran was a reporter for the school newspaper and needed to stay at school for an additional hour every Monday. Once mommy asked, “What did you write today?” Yiran replied, “I wrote ‘Native Americans have many languages’”. Mommy: “You wrote only ONE sentence for the whole hour?” Yiran: “NO! I didn’t finish it yet! I was waiting for Ms. Farinella to help me spell the words but she’s busy helping other kids.”
After a trip to Arizona during Christmas 2004, Yiran became a pen pal with Adele, a dear friend of ours. Here is an email that Yiran wrote to Adele:
From:
Yiran
To: Adele
Sent: Friday, June 24, 2005 2:11 PM
Subject: Re: Kindergarten Carnivel
Dear Adele,
At The Carnivel,I pantid my face, got a bubble ring,and made a neakles.
Thailand is next to Burma. Australia is under the Eqator. New Zealand is two
islands! Fiji is so small! India is huge! Belgem has Brusseles as its capital.
How many contrys have you been to?
Love,
Yiran
Nowadays, with great confidence, Yiran can spell words such as language, ocean, revolution, museum, science, furniture, enough, and exercise.
For Chinese, she handwrites one character a day and is making big progress in her pinyin, which she has been practically teaching herself through observing how Luran uses it to input Chinese on the computer.
But what about college? The moment she heard that college students live in dorms and don’t see their parents everyday, she burst into tears. She’s not going, she decided. And mommy is just as far from ready. Years ago, when thinking about the possibility that the kids will go to college in a different town, she had determined that she would take a little airplane to fly to their town, and live right next to their school.
