YCIS-SV Community Connection

Dear YCIS Families and Teachers,

Thank you all for your invaluable participation in last week’s parent-teacher conferences. These conversations are essential in building a shared understanding of each student’s journey, highlighting their unique strengths, and fostering growth together. The collaborative spirit shown by our families and educators truly exemplifies the heart of our community.

As we enter this season of giving, we are proud to share that our Kindergarten students are already making a difference with their philanthropic project, designed to help our local community. They’ve created thoughtful, inspiring videos about their efforts, and we encourage you to take a look—these young leaders remind us of the power of compassion.

At YCIS, we are always striving for excellence, offering professional development for staff and parent education opportunities to support our growth as a learning community. For our students, learning with joy and purpose is a constant goal, and your support helps make this possible. Sibling applications are now open, and we warmly invite siblings to join us and experience the YCIS community!

Mark Your Calendars for Giving Tuesday!
We’re excited to kick off our Giving Tuesday campaign for the YCIS Annual Fund on Tuesday, December 3, 2024. Our goal is to raise $88,000, part of our overall target of $125,000 for the year. Join us in supporting the programs that make YCIS exceptional—stay tuned for details!

Please consider contributing to our annual school fundraising efforts; together, we can continue to expand and enrich the YCIS experience for all.

Thank you for being such an integral part of this journey. We are grateful for each of you and all we accomplish together.

Warm regards,
YCIS-SV Senior Leadership Team (Kevin, Vivian & George)

We are thrilled to announce our next Open House on December 14, 2024! This is a wonderful opportunity for families to meet our teachers, tour our facilities, and explore the unique Mandarin-English bilingual education that YCIS offers. Current families are encouraged to attend or share this event with friends and family who may be interested.

Open House Details:

• Early Childhood Education (Preschool & TK): 9:30 - 11:30 am
  Location: 199 East Middlefield Road, Mountain View
• Kindergarten - Grade 8: 2:00 - 4:00 pm
  Location: 310 Easy Street, Mountain View

Making Bilingual Education Affordable and Accessible
At YCIS, we believe bilingual education should be accessible to a wide variety of families. To support this, we offer a 20% sibling discount for each additional child after the first is enrolled.

Current YCIS families have priority for sibling applications for the 2025-26 school year. To take advantage of this, please submit your application by January 4, 2025. Priority applications ensure that siblings can learn and grow together within our YCIS community.

For more information or to start the application process, visit the Admissions Portal at YCIS Silicon Valley Admissions or contact our Admissions Team at admissions@sv.ycef.com or 650-903-0986.

We look forward to welcoming more members of your family into our YCIS community!

We want to express our gratitude to the ECE team for participating in our recent professional development session. Your active engagement and contributions were invaluable in fostering a collaborative learning environment. By sharing your expertise and working together as a team, we can create even richer learning experiences for our young learners. Thank you for your dedication to professional growth and your commitment to providing wonderful learning opportunities for our students. Thank you families for giving us this time to learn and grow together, which enables us to support your children even more.

Rainy days offer a perfect opportunity to embrace indoor play and explore new materials in the gym. A friendly basketball game can ignite excitement and teamwork, while our large imagination playground inspires creativity and problem-solving skills. By providing diverse play options, we can ensure that our young learners stay engaged, active, and happy, even on the cloudiest of days.

What is philanthropy? How can we, as kindergarten students, help our community through acts of kindness and giving? Let our kindergarten students tell you—and invite you to join them in making a difference!

Kindergarten A's video

Kindergarten B's video

We welcomed Kathleen Jalapour to our K-8 campus for an engaging session on the importance of visual learning in math. Kathleen discussed the key differences between traditional and modern approaches to math education and shared insights into Singapore's method for teaching math, emphasizing the importance of conceptual understanding. She also provided valuable tips on how parents can support their children’s math learning.

Here is a video recording of the session. Thank you to all the parents who attended for your participation and engagement!

The recent field trip to Cupertino Village and Ranch 99 offered our 4th graders an enriching opportunity to explore the diverse cultures within their community and experience cultural traditions firsthand. This excursion complements their broader learning goals, particularly in science, where students are studying food preservation methods. They are experimenting with mold growth in terrariums and using a dehydrator on various foods to collect and analyze data, focusing on factors like mold amount and moisture levels. The field trip also supports their upcoming cultural perspectives presentation, where they’ll use their observations and photos to highlight cultural diversity and history, further enriched by their upcoming visit to Sutter’s Fort in Sacramento.

The 5th grade class has been diving into the culture of Vietnam as part of their study of the novel "Inside Out and Back Again". The novel is a poetic account of a young girl's experience fleeing Saigon and moving to the United States as a refugee.

Pho is one of the national dishes of Vietnam and is one of the great recipes brought to the United States through the refugee wave. To celebrate Vietnamese culture and the completion of the novel, the 5th grade students worked together to make over 20 servings of pho for themselves, staff, and even the other middle school students in 6th and 7th grade! Nothing beats hot soup on a chilly day!

Each class enjoys its own hands-on activities while also taking part in many teamwork opportunities and entire YALP collaborations. Kinder B students recycled bottles and materials to create a life-sized human figure for Halloween games, first-grade students guided kinder students making a giant rubber bubble on the playground. Every Friday, kindergarten and first-grade students join mixed sports teams for field games, building team spirit and excitement. Two second-grade girls laughed with joy after designing their own Halloween treats during a cooking activity, while third through fifth-graders enjoyed team games on the field.

Laughters are in our classrooms and on the playground or fields, whether during activities, snack times or recess. We’re dedicated to fostering strong bonds across all of YALP!

We are excited to announce the 2024-2025 YCIS Spelling Bee Competition.

Students in Grades 1-7 will participate in a classroom spelling bee before our December break. The top two from each class in Grades 1-3 and 4-6 group will advance to the all school spelling bee in January. Our school bee champions will be invited to an online test to qualify for the San Ramon Valley Rotary Regional Spelling Bee.

Here are some study lists if your child would like to prepare for the classroom bee:

First Grade Study Words

Second Grade Study Words

Third Grade Study Words

Fourth Grade Study Words

Fifth Grade Study Words

Sixth Grade Study Words

Seventh Grade Study Words

Students who master the study list for their grade level and difficulty level will want to move on to the full 2025 School Spelling Bee Study List.

The 2025 Words of the Champions PDF is optional for students who have mastered the full school-level list and wish to get a head start on studying for the next level of competition.

🤝ECE - Thursday, November 21st Parent Social 4-5pm

🥗K-8 - Friday, November 22nd Thanksgiving Potluck 11:20am-12:20pm

🥧Thanksgiving Break November 25-29th (Both Campuses CLOSED)

Visit ycissvpo.org and stay connected with our community!

Again, please take a few minutes to leave a positive review of YCIS and share your unique experience! These reviews will help prospective families learn more about YCIS and the experiences within our community. Thank you!

For our Early Childhood Education (ECE) program:

Leave a review for the ECE program here

For our K-8 program:
Leave a review for the K-8 program here