This is part 2 of the Learn Chinese for Kids Series. How to set up your bilingual home and teach your kids Mandarin Chinese
I am helping to review the Chinese ThemePack on 'Manners' Homeschooling materials prepared by FortuneCookieMom. So today I printed the ThemePack of 38 pages in color, it cost 12.80 Euros (as per A4 piece is 0.64 Euro cents) For a start, my daughter Hedi is a 4-year old and she has recently started on Nursery 1 in an International school. This theme pack was tried with her on a normal after school day. Before she arrived home, I did build up some excitement about the 'New Card Game'. She was very happy to try them. I introduced two new characters: Big 大 and Small 小 And I spoke to her totally in Mandarin (during this time). She was very receptive and began to repeat after me when I showed her briefly which is big and which is small. Then she had her turn to assign the big pictures into the 'Big' box, while the small pictures into the 'Small' box respectively. For the greetings words, I gave her a preview of the words by saying for example: Good morning 早安，she repeats after me: 早安 and then I reinforce once again 早安. Then I moved on to the next ones. The entire set was well sequenced and she was happy to complete 'reading aloud' with me while looking at the colourful characters. Then I cut them for the 'Puzzle' segment. We also did the 'Shapes' segment with coloured whiteboard markers. I read out the shapes, for example, 椭圆形 for Oval, and she repeated the words 椭圆形. Then she said to me 'It's an Oval!' :) She likes the colours segment very much. And she could relate with them as she knows the colours in Mandarin. As we read through it, she wants me to write with the whiteboard markers the characters and watched with envy. I don't think she's comfortable to trace the shapes yet. She tried the triangle and there after, she said to me '我不知道‘。She meant she didn't know how to use the marker yet. She was in fact using Mandarin to give this feedback (which is very impressive). Since she's not writing yet, she tried the counting for the first two sets of Math segments, but stopped and moved on to the next pages. For this I supposed it was 'too much' for her. She was like 'wow' at the Page with all the numbers 1-10 and I think she really like that it is very colourful! We stopped for a while. And later she reverted to the arrangement of sizes from smallest to biggest, and she said to me that she wants to play with that. I said ok, and she was speaking by herself '这是小吗？' and continued with the arrangement of the sizes. I did spent about 10 minutes to prepare (cutting/choosing the pages of) these materials and I think they're really good and effective! Truly Hedi enjoys working with it. Here I enclosed the links where you can find more Chinese ThemePacks at FortuneCookieMom's TeachersPayTeachers storefront. This entire digital product contains: Matching Game Penmanship practice sheet Matching Activity Word Puzzles Sorting exercise Vocab Clip Cards Chinese Number Clip Cards Puzzles Color Matching Shapes Tracing Size Sorting Writing Numbers Size Sequencing Patterns Addition Subtraction Coloring pages Read more about this method
This list of Chinese YouTube channels includes live storytelling and performances with real people speaking and singing Mandarin Chinese.
Lately I've been seeing all sorts of great ideas on Pinterest for multi-sensory activities that help kids practice writing letters, reading, and spelling by giving them fun, creative, and different ways to learn. Multi-sensory learning involves tactile (touch), kinesthetic (movement), visual (what we see), and auditory (what we hear). There are oodles of sensory activity ideas circulating on the web (Really...Go to Pinterest and search for "sensory spelling" or "sensory alphabet." Look at those great ideas!) Multi-sensory isn't just a Pinterest trend, there's some real science behind it: In 2008, two University of California researchers found that multisensory learning has found to be more effective for learning because it better approximates natural settings. Read more here. And then I began to wonder... Here are some multi-sensory ideas for practicing Chinese characters: 1. Form characters with your body. Form simple characters like 大 (dà, big) or 人 (rén, person) using your own body. For a challenge: Partner with friends to form characters with more stokes. How many characters can you form? 2. Sidewalk chalk characters. Practice writing characters of all sizes on the sidewalk or a blacktop driveway. sì (four) Make it a game: Partner with a friend to practice characters. If you chalk the beginning strokes, can your friend finish it? 3. Paint characters with water. Pretend you are practicing calligraphy in a beautiful park in China, and paint the characters with water and a big paint brush on blacktop. If it's raining outside, practice inside on a blackboard. nǚ (woman) Turn it into art: trace over chalk characters with paintbrush dipped in water to give the characters a painted effect. 4. Write characters in a salt tray. Pour salt on to a cookie tray (I found these cute trays at the Dollar Store) and write the character with your finger or a chopstick. xiǎo (small) Note to parents: Salt can scratch your table's finish (yikes!)--so take this idea outside or cover up your pretty table first. 5. Form characters. Form the character using play dough "snakes," wiki sticks, pipe cleaners, yarn--or if you're hungry, pretzel sticks licorice laces, etc... The possibilities are endless here. shēngrì (birthday) zěn (how) Helpful Hint: Print out a large version of the character to practice shaping around. Then, as a challenge, try it without the template. 6. "Hide" characters by them on paper with a white crayon. Then paint over the hidden characters with watercolor paint. Watch as the characters magically appear! We found that the characters were easier to see if we painted over them with dark colors. zuò (sit) Make it a game: Write a secret message to your friend in Chinese and then let your friend magically decode the message with watercolor paint. 7. Rainbow color characters. Trace over the character with crayons in all colors of the rainbow. zuò (sit) For a challenge: tell your child (in Mandarin, of course!) how many colors or which colors to use. 8. Decorate characters with cotton balls, plastic gems, beads, stones, anything that will help you remember their meaning. tiān (sky, heaven, or day) 9. Trace characters on a friend's back or palm of their hand. Or draw it with your finger in in the air. Practice with 2 or 3 characters. Can they guess which character is being traced? 10. Storytell characters. Ask your child to make up a story about the character and then draw the story on the character in order to bring it to life. zǒu (walk) For inspiration: check out The Pet Dragon, a cute book in which graphic designer Christoph Niemann brings Chinese characters to life through his illustrations. Click here to read a review I wrote about this book on my old blog: Rice and Pasta, Please! What types of multi-sensory activities help you practice Chinese characters?
Your starter kit to teach kids Mandarin Chinese at home, including basic Chinese printable materials to use on your language learning journey.
I’m not an expert. I didn’t grow up speaking Chinese. But if you’ve followed @oaxacaborn on Instagram or @oaxacaborn on YouTube for any length of time, you’ve heard my daugh…
Looking for fun ways to teach Chinese? Hands-on Chinese activities are key to building a well-rounded, curious, and enthusiastic child who loves Chinese!
We had fun learning more Mandarin Chinese these past few weeks. We found an awesome curriculum.
Watch Miss Panda Chinese for songs and stories designed for young learners. Miss Panda Chinese youtube channel has songs, stories, everyday Chinese and...
I’m not an expert. I didn’t grow up speaking Chinese. But if you’ve followed @oaxacaborn on Instagram or @oaxacaborn on YouTube for any length of time, you’ve heard my daugh…
Teach your child Chinese with these simple Chinese characters for kids! Tips and advice on how to teach simple Chinese characters, and printable materials.
Children need real photos and realistic pictures in their books. Here are the best English and Chinese books for babies and toddlers!
Sagebooks is an excellent curriculum that uses spaced repetition and short sentences to teach kids how to read 500 Chinese characters.
Shopping, cooking, eating, learning: our laminated food flashcards are one of the most used Chinese and Korean learning toys in our home!
Chinese Story Time for Kids is featuring Good Night, Gorilla Chinese edition. Join Miss Panda's Reading Playground and read Chinese stories together!
