How the Learning Happens
Not a syllabus — a living framework built on four commitments: Mandarin immersion, Reggio-inspired inquiry, daily outdoor learning, and cultural depth.
The Language That
Runs Through the Day
Mandarin is the medium of daily life, not a subject with a scheduled hour. Children who arrive with no Mandarin absorb it the way they learned to speak: by needing it.
For families new to Mandarin
You don't need to speak or reinforce it at home. Optional home resources if you want them.
What this looks like over time
Early weeks are listening. Words arrive in context before conversation. By preschool age, Mandarin is a thinking language.
A Day at Spring
The four commitments are not blocks in the schedule. A question raised inside becomes an investigation outside, and comes back in to be drawn and documented.
- Arrival. Children move into self-chosen work — loose parts, picture books, yesterday's project — greeted by name in Mandarin.
- Morning circle. The group gathers around whatever is alive that morning: a question from yesterday, something noticed on the way in. The adult listens and writes it down. The direction comes from the children.
- Outside. The question moves to the garden. Light and shadow, collected materials, an idea from the morning tested — hypothesising, measuring, comparing.
- Afternoon circle. The group shares what they found, with songs chosen to match the morning's topic. The question doesn't end today. It grows into tomorrow.
The Classroom
Without Walls
Outdoor time is curriculum, not recess — and it runs in Mandarin.
- Garden tending. Plant, water, observe, harvest. Seeds planted in November are dug up by the same children in spring.
- Nature investigation. Insects, weather, shadows, soil — one child's observation becomes the question the group works on.
- Child-led play. Running, digging, building. Negotiation and risk assessment come from play adults don't direct.
Thinking Across
Disciplines
STEAM is a lens, not a period. A question about shadows becomes physics and geometry; a garden observation becomes biology; a building problem becomes engineering.
- Integrated, not isolated. Children rarely meet these as separate subjects.
- The arts as language. Drawing, clay and loose parts let a child represent an idea before they have words for it.
Culture as Living Experience
Chinese traditions here are not a unit in the calendar. Festivals, stories, music, calligraphy and food are lived, not studied. Families are invited to bring their own traditions into the program — a food, a song, a language.
How we guide behaviour
Grounded in positive discipline and in the Reggio view of the child as capable — which takes years, and an adult willing to go first.
- Kind and firm at once.
- Respect and clear limits. Neither one works without the other.
- Behaviour is communication.
- A bite or a meltdown is usually something a child can't yet say: tired, wanting something, a skill that hasn't arrived. We teach the words they needed instead.
- Connection before correction.
- An overwhelmed child learns nothing from a lecture. We help them settle first, and talk about it afterwards.
- Co-regulation comes first.
- A young child cannot calm down alone. We stay close and stay steady until they can.
- Encouragement, not praise.
- Not “good job,” but you worked hard to solve that. Praise teaches a child to look up for approval; encouragement teaches them to look at their own work.
Nobody is shamed for a spilled cup or a conflict with a friend — those are the moments the skills are built in. We don't use rewards, punishment or fear, and food is never either. California prohibits corporal punishment, humiliation and isolation as discipline; we hold to a line above that one.
The words for feelings, in Mandarin
Children learn the Mandarin for waiting, for wanting, for that was mine, for asking a friend to stop and for making it up afterwards — learned where they are used, in a real disagreement over a real shovel.
Teachers use English when it is needed: for safety, for a child's emotional understanding, and for talking with you.