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

If you like my Chinese Fun Class, please like the facebook page "learn the fun way" for more updates.
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

Are you a tiger mum?

Relax......
and watch this, do you see any resemblance of yourself in the video? Haha, just for laugh!


Learning can be easy, teaching can be stress free!

Fun Class: P for Potato

She had been asking for fun class for a few days and finally I delivered to her.....

We started the fun class after singing the Greeting Song.

She traced the upper and lower case letter P.


We listened to the phonics sound and song of letter P, which went like this:
Puffing.... Panting..... p, p, p,
P is the sound of P!

She took out the pictures of objects spelled after letter P from an envelop, she would say out the name of the objects before pasting them on the A4 paper.
She labeled the pictures after spelled the words.


Her letter P pictures:


I prompted her to spell "Potato"


As "Potato" is pretty simple, I prompted her to spell one more word "Pumpkin"


The first craft work was potato printing. This was an interesting activity for Chloe as she had never done it, and she didn't even know how does a potato looked like!

I showed her the real potato before cutting it into half, when I explained it to her and told her the potato can be used to make her favourite french fries, she was very amazed.


I cut the potato into half, and use a small engraving pen which I bought from Daiso to engrave some patterns on the potato.


We put some paint on the potato and print it on a piece of paper.


Look at her smiley face, she was very excited to get her hands dirty.....


This was her finished product:


The second art craft was to paint the oval shape that looked like a pumpkin, and paste the eyes, nose and mouth. She has improved on her colouring skill nowadays and she is able to colour within the outline of the picture.


She pasted the eyes, nose and mouth after done with the painting.


We watched the "One potato, Two potato" rhyme to end the lesson.

If you like my fun classes, pls like the Facebook page "Learn The Fun Way"

The lesson plan:
1) Greeting Song, click here
2) Introduce letter P, kid traces capital and small letter P
3) Kid listens to phonics sound and song of P
4) Kid takes pictures of object starting with letter P, names and pastes the pictures on an A4 paper.
5) Kid labels the pictures.
6) Prompting
7) Colour the phonics sheet (optional)
8) Craft work
9) Summary
10) Closing song

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)

I attended my phonics lesson for mummies here.

List of my fun classes:
1) A for Ant
2) A for Apple
3) B for Bubbles and Bear
4) C for Crocodile
5) C for Cake
6) D for Duck and Dog
7) E for Egg and Elephant
8) F for Frog
9) F for Fish
10) G for Goat
11) H for Horse
12) H for House
13) I for Insect
14) I for Indian
15) J for Jelly
16) J for Jack-in-the-box
17) K for Kettle
18) K for Kangaroo
19) L for lollipop
20) L for Leaf
21) M for Monkey
22) M for Mummy
23) N for Necklace
24) N for Net
25) O for Octopus
26) O for Orange

Chinese Fun Class: Basic Lesson 2

Before the start of lesson 2, I did some revision on lesson 1 with her.

The words she learned from lesson 1 were:
大(big)， 小(small)， 人(human)， 头(head)， 哭(cry)， 笑(smile)

The sound:
大(da4)， 小(xiao3)， 人(ren2)， 头(tou2)， 哭(ku1)， 笑(xiao4)

These words are easier to be visualised, she thus has no problem in memorising the words.

We played a game where I showed her the word cards and she did the action according to the word cards, her daddy would guess the words from her actions. I would ask her whether her daddy had guessed correctly. It was very fun to play and all of us had good laugh from it.

Lesson 2
The words she learned in this lesson were:
鼻(nose), 口(mouth), 耳(ear), 目(eye), 眉(eyebrown), 手(hand)

The sound:
鼻(bi2), 口(kou3), 耳(er3), 目(mu4), 眉(mei2), 手(shou3)

I arranged the pictures in front of her, let her familiarised with the pictures first.


I arranged the word cards beside the corresponding pictures, as I find it easier to explain the words to her:


When I explained 口(mouth), I told her:
这是口，你看mummy的口开得大大的，是不是跟这个字很像？
(You can open your mouth widely and tell her that it looks like the word 口(mouth).

When I explained 目(eye), I told her:
把这个字倒着看，是不是很像眼睛？
(this word looked like the eye when u let it lie down side way)

When I explained 眉(mei2), I told her:
眼睛（目）上面有撇东西是什么？
(What is above your eye? and point to the eye brown)

I mixed the cards and let her arranged it to the correct pictures:

She got a few wrong, I explained to her again and told her to try.

This is what she had arranged the second time:


I pointed to the words and she read the words:

Obviously she couldn't remember the words yet.

The words in lesson 2 are more difficult to her. I tried to show her few times throughout the week. I do not intend to make it a formal lesson for her, and meanwhile we continue to read some simple stories in Chinese. I shall post on her reading in Chinese soon.

Source: 二三快读

If you like my Chinese Fun Class, please like the facebook page "learn the fun way" for more updates.
Do refer to the labels on the right hand side for other English fun classes.

Development age: 2 years 11 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 Clases:
1) Basic lesson 1

Fun Class: O for Orange

She learned O for Octopus in the previous lesson. I did the first Chinese Fun Class with her before this second lesson for letter O.

In this lesson, she learned O for Orange, which was pretty simple for her.

She sang the Greeting Song to start the lesson.

We started the lesson by revising the objects learned in the first lesson. This is the picture she had done in the first lesson:


We listened to the phonics sound and song of letter O, which went like this:
Oscar Otter, O, O, O....
O is the sound of O



I prompted her to spell the word "orange", for prompting technique, you may refer to here.


I printed some worksheets from the Starfall.com website, and starting from this lesson, she would learn to write in the second lesson of each alphabets.


The craft work for this lesson is to brush paint the picture:

I forgotten to buy orange, if not I would let her peel an orange after the lesson :(

We sang the closing song of Open Shut Them together to end the lesson.

If you like my fun classes, pls like the Facebook page "Learn The Fun Way" to get more updates.

Lesson plan:
1) Greeting Song, click here
2) Revise letter O by showing kid the alphabet and the pictures done in first lesson for letter O.
3) Kid listens to phonics sound and song of O
4) Kid learns to write letter O by completing the worksheets from starfall.com
5) Prompting
6) Craft work
7) Summary
8) Closing song


Development age: 2 years 11 mths
(every kid learns on his or her own pace, this is just a milestone of my girl as a guideline)

I attended my phonics lesson for mummies here.

List of my fun classes:
1) A for Ant
2) A for Apple
3) B for Bubbles and Bear
4) C for Crocodile
5) C for Cake
6) D for Duck and Dog
7) E for Egg and Elephant
8) F for Frog
9) F for Fish
10) G for Goat
11) H for Horse
12) H for House
13) I for Insect
14) I for Indian
15) J for Jelly
16) J for Jack-in-the-box
17) K for Kettle
18) K for Kangaroo
19) L for lollipop
20) L for Leaf
21) M for Monkey
22) M for Mummy
23) N for Necklace
24) N for Net
25) O for Octopus

Chinese Fun Class: Basic Lesson 1

Basic lessons are suitable for toddlers of 2-3 years old.

I had my first Chinese fun class with my girl and I decided to make it a informal lesson, where we had the lesson on our bed just before sleep :)

The words she learned in this lesson were:
大(big)， 小(small)， 人(human)， 头(head)， 哭(cry)， 笑(smile)

The sound:
大(da4)， 小(xiao3)， 人(ren2)， 头(tou2)， 哭(ku1)， 笑(xiao4)

She arranged the word cards on the bed and I explained the words to her one by one.


I tried to visualise the words by making the corresponding actions when I explained them, e.g. when I explained 大(big), I would stretch my hands on both side and open my legs wide, so that I looked like the character 大.

You may also explain the words by giving more examples, e.g. 大苹果(big apple)的大, 大人(adult)的大，你是小孩，妈妈是大人(you are a kid, mummy is an adult).

See her acting with the characters:
Can you guess what character is this? It is 大, does it look like 大?


What about this one? This is.......人!


Look at her eyes, same like the pair of eyes in the word 笑 right?


She was trying to do 小, but she looked like a little puppy with the tongue out :P


I then mixed the word cards and told her to get a particular card for me. This is to ensure she knows the words:


I took out another set of graphic cards which were corresponding to the words. I explained each graphic to her, and she matched the graphics to the words.

By Matching the graphics to the words, it enhance their memory of the words.

I pointed to the words and she read the words:


She likes the lesson and she seemed excited when we did the action. She could remember the difficult words like 笑 easily but more confused about 大 and 人. I guess it is probably the word 笑 really looks like someone smiling while 大 and 人 are very similar except for a stroke missing in 人.

Toddlers can easily memorise something but can also easily forget something, thus do practice the words with your kid.

Source: 二三快读

Development age: 2 years 11 mths
(every kid learns on his or her own pace, this is just a milestone of my girl as a guideline)

Teaching Young Children Chinese - The Must Read Guide

Children change in every learning stage, thus our teaching methods need to be changed accordingly.
The following are the helpful guidelines in teaching young children Chinese, which are more appropriate for toddler or preschoolers who just started learning Chinese:

1) Learning through plays
Young Children has short focus span, in order to get their focus and interest, you will need to let them play and learn at the same time. This has been my methodology since I started teaching my girl when she's 28 months old, and this apply in teaching Chinese too.
Some parents told me, they couldn't make their children sit down and learn, they asked me how do I make my girl sit down and listen to me. The answer is, I have never made my girl sit down to learn from me, when I show her something interesting, she would come over and listen to me.
"Interesting" is the key point here, you need to catch their attention and sell your stuff to them before their attention went off.

2) Understand the Chinese Characters
Chinese characters are Logograms, unlike English words which are Phonograms. This means, it is easier to tell the meaning of a Chinese character, than to pronounce it, while for English, you might be able to read the word, even though you do not know the meaning of it. I thus strongly disagree with the method of teaching Han Yu Pin Yin first without teaching the Chinese characters.
You need to understand the difference of Chinese and English, in order to teach your children effectively. When teaching English, we start with alphabets and phonics, but when teaching Chinese, we should emphasize on words recognition and the meaning.
Chinese characters can be very fun and meaningful, e.g. 日(sun) is evolved from the shape of sun, 口(mouth) looked like the shape of mouth, 月(moon) is similar to a crescent moon and etc.

3) Make your lesson interesting and interactive
As mentioned in point 2, Chinese characters are very meaningful, when teaching Chinese, we should make it fun and interesting by elaborating the meaning of the word, instead of forcing the kids to memorise the meaning of the word, which could be very dry and boring.
E.g. when teaching 人(human), we can use our body to make the shape of this word by putting our hands down and stepping forward. You can tell the kid,"all human are 人, do I look like the word 人?"
E.g. when teaching 哭(cry), we can ask the kid what will come out from the eyes when you are crying? If the kid says "tears", you can tell him "yes, tears, look at the word哭, does it look like someone crying with a drop of tears below the eyes?

4) Not necessary to teach the simple words first
Some parents thought they should start with easy words or words with lesser strokes first, but this is not the case. Simple or tough words are the same to our little ones, they memorise the words through its graphics, some simple words might be more confusing to them. E.g. 三(three) and 川(river), they might think these 2 words are the same.
Difficult words like 美(beautiful) can be broken down into 羊(sheep) 大(big), which you can explain like "a big sheep is considered beautiful", 一只大大(big)的羊(sheep)是不是很美(beautiful)? A story can make the kid memories the word easily.

5) For multiple sounds or meaning characters, teach the most commonly used one first
Some characters have more than one sound or meaning, we should teach the commonly used one first. E.g. 好(for meaning of "good", it is pronounced as hao3; for meaning of interest i.e. 爱好, it is pronounced as hao4), we should teach the kids 好 means "good", if you are behaving yourself, you are 好宝宝(good baby). After they accepted this word, we can introduce them to other meanings of the word.

6) Use proper pronunciation
It is common to speak local Chinese in our country, we are especially lazy in pronouncing the 翘舌声母like Chi, Shi, Zhi and long sound ended with "ng". We should speak proper language when teaching young children, as it is easier to pick the language up at young but it will be very difficult to correct it after they grow older.

7) Teach the words that they can see and understand first
It is easier to learn words like 头(head), 手(hand), 口(mouth), 爸爸(father), 妈妈(mother), 生气(angry), 开心(happy) than words like 很(very), 的(adverb), 哪里（where).
We should start with words that the kid can visualise or understand first.

8) Keep your explanation simple and short
Try not to give long explanation on a word, the kid might not be able to absorb all. E.g. when you teach 坐(sit), you may explain it as "宝宝坐在椅子上的坐"(baby sitting on a chair). Tell them something they can understand, instead of confuse them with long winded explanation.

9) Avoid teaching similar words at a time
Words like 鸟(bird), 乌(dark), 枭, look very similar to the kids. They will easily get confused over the words. We should teach them the easy one first, example 鸟(bird), the next time when they see 乌鸦(dark bird i.e. crow) we can explain to them this word 乌 is not bird, it does not have the 'eye' (point to the dot) in it, it means dark colour.

10) Encourage early reading
There are kids who can recognise more than 1000 Chinese words but do not like to study Chinese. Parents should encourage reading in young kids once they are able to recognise a few words. They will only appreciate the Chinese characters when they realise those characters can tell them story when put together. Reading help to cultivate their interest in Chinese and encourage them to find out more about Chinese language.

Do not force if your children are still not picking Chinese up. The above are just some useful tips which might or might not be suitable for your kids. This article is written in English to assist those English speaking parents, but it is more advisable to teach Chinese by speaking and explaining in Chinese.

I hope the above is useful for you :) Do like my Facebook page "Learn The Fun Way" if you like this article and would like to get more updates :)

Learning Phonics at Starfall.com - free programmes!

I've previously posted on free worksheets on www.starfall.com.
Here I would like to show a video of how my girl use its programmes to learn phonics:



She also use the website to learn reading. A very good website indeed, do take your time to explore!

Fun Class: O for Octopus

Chloe has great improvement for the pass few weeks. Firstly, she started nursery at Carpe Diem, secondly, she was able to read some simple sentences.

I will make some adjustments to her fun classes, and I think it is time to teach her writing and Chinese. More sharing will be coming, do check out this blog often :) Alternatively, you may want to like the facebook page I've created under the name of "Learn The Fun Way" in order to get the updates :)

Back to the lesson.

Chloe sang her Greeting song to start the lesson.

I showed her an A4 paper with letter O, and told her we were learning O for Octopus. She traced the letter with a crayon pen.


We then listened to the phonics sound and song of letter O, which went like this:
Oscar Otter, O, O, O....
O is the sound of O


As this lesson is pretty short, I let her colour the phonics sheet:


Previously I would let her paste the pictures in the first lesson of each letters, and label the pictures in the second lesson. But I intend to introduce writing in the second lesson, so in this first lesson of letter O, I let her paste and label the pictures at the same time.


She would take out the pictures from an envelop one by one, name and paste them on the A4 paper which she traced the letter, and label the pictures after spelled the words.


I prompted her to spell the word "octopus":


If you're interested to find out how it works, you may refer to my previous posts on fun classes or here.

The craft work for this lesson:


Cut the shape of the octopus head from a transparency, use black marker to draw the eyes and mouth. Paste the tentacles (cut out from magazines or colour papers) on the transparency. You may do tumb printing on the transparency, but I have forgotten to let her do that :P

See her dancing with her octopus:


If you like my fun classes, pls like the Facebook page "Learn The Fun Way"

The lesson plan:
1) Greeting Song, click here
2) Introduce letter O, kid traces capital and small letter O
3) Kid listens to phonics sound and song of O
4) Kid takes pictures of object starting with letter O, names and pastes the pictures on an A4 paper.
5) Kid labels the pictures.
6) Prompting
7) Colour the phonics sheet (optional)
8) Craft work
9) Summary
10) Closing song

Development age: 2 years 11 mths
(every kid learns on his or her own pace, this is just a milestone of my girl as a guideline)

I attended my phonics lesson for mummies here.

List of my fun classes:
1) A for Ant
2) A for Apple
3) B for Bubbles and Bear
4) C for Crocodile
5) C for Cake
6) D for Duck and Dog
7) E for Egg and Elephant
8) F for Frog
9) F for Fish
10) G for Goat
11) H for Horse
12) H for House
13) I for Insect
14) I for Indian
15) J for Jelly
16) J for Jack-in-the-box
17) K for Kettle
18) K for Kangaroo
19) L for lollipop
20) L for Leaf
21) M for Monkey
22) M for Mummy
23) N for Necklace
24) N for Net