This week we had special visitors from the University of Iowa Confucius Institute give a wonderful presentation about Chinese New Year at Wellman Elementary School for the 3rd, 4th and 5th graders.

Thank you to the Confucius Institute for this great learning opportunity that the students and teachers really enjoyed!

Thursday evening approximately 50 students and parents welcomed in the Chinese "Year of the Horse" at Wellman Elementary School. 

The participants enjoyed Chinese snacks, games, coloring, scrambled words, watching a story, singing songs, and making horse puppets.   

Thank you to everyone who helped.  新年快乐！ Xin nian kuai le!  Happy New Year!   

This was a busy week for the Mid-Prairie Chinese program!

Below - Washington Township kindergartners did a great job of learning to use chopsticks to pick up Cheerios and marshmallows, and also read fortune cookies to discover more about their potential futures. Their place mats showed the Chinese zodiac.  The year that just started is the Chinese Year of the Horse!

Below - Wellman 5th graders practice using chopsticks to pass Cheerios and marshmallows from one teammate to the next in a race to see which teams can get their morsels of food inside the bowl at the end of the race--without dropping!

Below - Wellman 2nd graders cheer each other as they master the skills needed to use chopsticks. Each student in the groups of four had two 30-second turns to put Cheerios in their bowls. After they finished, they counted in Chinese the number of Cheerios. The winning groups had about 70 Cheerios in their bowls!