Chinese Fun Class: Basic Lesson 3

I do not schedule any lesson plan for her Chinese fun classes, I also do not make it a 'lesson' for her, in fact, every time when we start the lesson, I will tell her "let's play a game".

Some children are very resisting to Chinese, probably because they are not introduced to Chinese language since young, and parents and teachers are still teaching Chinese using lots of writing exercises, as such, the children associate Chinese learning to hard works, and a difficult subject.

This is part of the reasons why I do not want to make my Chinese lesson a formal one, I want her to learn this language "unintentionally" and stress-free. We should try our best to cultivate and reserve the interest in learning especially for young toddler.

The words she learned in this lesson were:

妈妈(mother), 爸爸(father), 爷爷(grandfather), 奶奶(grandmother), 哥哥(elder brother), 姐姐(elder sister), 弟弟(younger brother), 妹妹(younger sister), 宝宝(baby)

The sound:
妈妈(ma1 ma), 爸爸(ba4 ba), 爷爷(ye2 ye), 奶奶(nai3 nai), 哥哥(ge1 ge), 姐姐(jie3 jie), 弟弟(di4 di), 妹妹(mei4 mei), 宝宝(bao3 bao)
Take note the second word is 轻声 (softer sound), do not pronounce the 2 words in same tone although they are the same words.

This lesson is more difficult to her, the words are not easy to guess and difficult to associate with. Example in the guideline it says the word 爸 looks like father smoking using tobacco pipe, but her father is not smoking and she has never seen a tobacco pipe!

So what I did was to read and explain the words to her, surprisingly she picked the words up after a few lessons. The easiest word to her is 弟弟, as I told her 弟弟 (her younger brother) has no much hair (a fact tough....) thus only 2 hairs on the word 弟弟, haha!

I also told her 哥哥 (I refer this word to my babysitter's son who she calls him GoGo - the dialect for 哥哥) is very noisy, he has two mouths in this word (i.e. 口 which is mouth, refer to lesson 2)

The only word she still can not pick up now is the word 妹, as I seldom show her this word since she doesn't have 妹妹 or anyone that I could refer to.

After lesson 3, we revised the words she learned from lesson 1 and 2. I showed her the cards and she got to act or pose to the words.

It was very fun and I really laughed out loud, see her funny expressions here:










She was so happy playing and posing with the cards.


After 3 lessons, these are the words that she can recognise now. The cards are piling and she is happy and excited every time she could recognise the words in any Chinese materials like newspaper, magazines, or my books.


Some parents emailed me and told me that my girl is more behaving or obedient than their kids, and their kids will never listen to their instructions. If you've read my first phonics fun class post, you would know that she did not sit down obediently for the lesson and was not concentrating. It took her few lessons to settle down and follow my instructions.

She is still the same mischievous her till now, don't believe? See what she did when I told her to pose for the Chinese characters:


Some commented that my girl is smart while their children not as smart, well, I do not think she is smart and she is just an ordinary kid. I would advise that don't give yourself any stress when you see other kids can do something but your kid cannot do it. Do not expect immediate result from the effort you've put in, example some expect the kid to know spelling after sending the kid to phonics lesson, or some expect the kid to read after teaching the kid ABC. To me, most importantly is whether the kid enjoys what he or she is doing.

Give your kid more time, and give yourself a rest! Don't compare, don't expect anything, just do the Right thing at the Right time, very soon you'll see satisfactory result!

Source: 二三快读

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Do refer to the labels on the right hand side for other English fun classes.

Development age: 3 years 0 mths
(every kid learns on his or her own pace, this is just a milestone of my girl as a guideline)

List of my Chinese Fun Classes:
1) Basic lesson 1
2) Basic lesson 2