Chinese Fun Class: Lesson on Body 我的身体

For your information, I've sold away my set of 二三快读 (Er San Kuai Du i.e. Chinese Fast Reading for age 2 and 3), so I will not be posting my Chinese lessons using the materials from this set anymore. It is a good starter set for young children to pick up Chinese words, but I sold it because I have other ideas for my girl.

In this lesson, I intend to do a summary on the body parts in Chinese with her. She had learned it from the previous lessons and also from her school. I searched the Internet for relevant worksheets but I found the resources are very limited. Thus I created it for her, you may download it by clicking the picture below:

You may print the image out, cut the words and let your kid label the picture.

To start the Chinese lesson, we sang the song 早安你好 by changing the word “早” to “好” as the lesson was conducted at night.
The lyrics go like this:
“老师好（早），同学们好，我们开始上课了”

I asked her to name the body parts in Chinese. I then gave her the worksheet above, she was excited to see her favourite Barbie doll picture and asked me how to say "Barbie doll" in Chinese. she read the words one by one and pasted them on the picture.

She labeled the picture with the words that I had cut out from the worksheet above.

Her barbie doll picture labeled with the body parts in Chinese:

After completing the first worksheet, I gave her the second worksheet which is the nursery rhyme of 两只老虎 (Two Little Tigers). You may download it here:

There are 3 blanks to be filled up which have a matching picture. Cut out the words below the worksheet and let the kid paste them on the correct blanks.

The worksheet done:

We read the worksheet one time and sang the nursery rhyme. Learning Chinese words through singing nursery rhyme is really a very good way.  Kids will find it easier to recognise the words and they also find it interesting.

Lastly, she did a craft on tiger mask. The materials are as follow:

All you need are just a paper plate, two rubber bands, some cut out of the stripes and ears.

She pasted the stripes on the paper plate:

 We decided not to paste the ears so it is as described by the nursery rhyme “一只没有耳朵”， haha!

 The mask done and she quickly put it on to scare her younger brother.

 We had fun with the mask and sang the nursery rhyme a few times.

Note: Although this post is written mainly in English, the lesson was conducted in Chinese and she was speaking only Chinese during the lesson. I against speaking a mixture of more than one language in a sentence.

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 10 months
(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
3) Basic lesson 3

My Fun Class: A - Z Upper and lower case letters

There are quite many readers asking me for the upper and lower case A - Z letters which I printed on an A4 size paper for my girl to use it with the A - Z pictures. If you're interested to get one you may download it from the link here:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0Jop-U2bqVAV2hQaWlJbDgzaWc/edit?usp=sharing

A sample page of the document used:

You may let your kid colour or trace the letter. After the kid is introduced with the letter, let the kid paste the pictures of objects spelled after the letter. The pictures can be downloaded here.

Do refer to my A to Z fun classes here:
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
27) P for Potato
28) P for Pig
29) Q for Queen
30) Q for Quilt
31) R for Rabbit
32) R for Rainbow
33) S for Snake
34) S for Star
35) T for Tiger
36) T for Tortoise
37) U for Up and Under
38) U for Umbrella
39) V for Vegetable
40) V for Vase

41) W for Worm

42) W for Whale

43) X is a Cross

44) X for X-ray

45) Y for Yolk

46) Y for Yacht

47) Z for Zebra

48) Z for Zoo

Chinese Poem - 春晓 - 孟浩然

This is the 3rd Chinese Poems that she can recite:



When choosing the poems for her, I try to choose those easier and popular ones.

The poem in Chinese:
春眠不觉晓
处处闻啼鸟
夜来风雨声
花落知多少

The English translation I found from Internet:
In spring I sleep aware not morning is here,
From far and near, trilling songbirds I hear.
In the pitter patter of wind and rain last night,
How many blossoms fallen? Know not, I fear.

Do note that this English translation is just for your reference. So far, most of the translations I found from the Internet are just translating the words without really giving the meaning of the poem, so I do not encourage teaching your child the English translation.

Other Chinese poems that your kid might like:

1. 静夜思 - 李白
2. 相思- 王维

Development age: 3 years 10 months
(every kid learns on his or her own pace, this is just a milestone of my girl as a guideline)

If you would like to get more updates on her fun learning, please like the Facebook page "Learn The Fun Way".

Art Fun! 2 - Chinese New Year Drawing / Greeting Card

As Chinese New Year is approaching, we did a drawing of plum blossom which can be used as a greeting card.

The materials are very simple, just a piece of white card, paints and a few brushes.

To start, we need to 'blow' the brunches of the plum blossom out, believe me, this is a very interesting activity for your child :)
You can use a brush to put a few drops of the colour on a white card, alternatively you can also use a straw to do this.

Chloe was blowing hard to create the brunches. Do note that the colour must be watery enough, if not it is very hard to blow the brunches out.

The brunches should look something like this:

We then need to print the plum blossom on the paper. I asked her what colour should I mix to get pink, and we referred to the first lesson on the colours combination.

She took red and white and mixed to get pink:

After getting the pink colour, I demonstrated to her how to use the index finger to print the petals of the plum blossom. It should be 5 petals in each flower but she printed it everywhere on the paper without constructing the structure, never mind, the result was still quite satisfactory.

I helped her to write the Chinese words "福到人间" on the card, which means "good fortune or blessing". She written her name at the bottom of the drawing.

 

A picture of her with her drawing that full of 'blessing', ha!

 

I pasted the  drawing on my feature wall in the living hall, it is rather small, I should have use a bigger paper :(

A closer look on the drawing:

If you like my Art Fun!, please like the Facebook page "Learn The Fun Way" for more updates.

Lastly, a very happy Chinese new year to all!

Development age: 3 years 10 months
(every kid learns on his or her own pace, this is just a milestone of my girl as a guideline)

List of my Art Fun!:
1) Fun with colours

Do also visit my A to Z fun classes.

Chinese Poem: 相思 - 王维

This is the second video of her reciting the Chinese poem.



Her pronunciation is still very heavy with English accent, but it is much better than her first video clip.

She got the poem after a few attempts, when she's in her mood, she would keep trying until she got the lines, she would also stop me from telling her the next line; but if she's not in her mood, she would tell me she doesn't like the poem, for which I would just let it go.

The poem in Chinese:
红豆生南国，春来发几枝。
愿君多采撷，此物最相思。

The translation I got from Internet for your reference:
“When those red berries come in springtime,
Flushing on your south land branches,
Take home an armful, for my sake,
As a symbol of our love.”


Points to note:
Although I've given the English translation above, you do not need to explain the poem in English to your kids when reciting the poem to them.  Reciting of poem is just like singing a nursery rhyme, the kids do not need to understand the meaning of the poem word by word, they will get to understand it when time comes by.

Other Chinese poem that your kid might like:

1. 静夜思 - 李白

 Development age: 3 years 10 months
(every kid learns on his or her own pace, this is just a milestone of my girl as a guideline)

If you would like to get more updates on her fun learning, please like the Facebook page "Learn The Fun Way". 

Chinese Poem - 静夜诗 - 李白

There are some arguments on whether kids should recite the Chinese poems (those classical type e.g. from the Tang  Dynasty 唐诗, Song Dynasty 宋词, or Yuan Dynasty 元曲), I'm more pro towards the arguments that classical Chinese poems are beneficial to the kids, but I would not force her to memorise the poems, the choice is still hers.

I try to recite the poems to her at night before sleep (so in another words I got to refresh my memory on these.....haha!), sometimes she would recite after me, sometimes she would ignore me and sing her nursery rhyme.

So the first poem she can memorise is the 静夜诗 from 李白. A video of her:


The poem in Chinese:
床 前 看 月 光，疑 是 地 上 霜。
举 头 望 山 月，低 头 思 故 乡

I found the English translation of this poem here, although I do not think it has fully translated the meaning of this beautiful poem written in the Tang Dynasty by Li Bai, it can be a reference for those who do not understand Chinese.

"So bright a gleam on the foot of my bed
Could there have been a frost already 
Lifting my head to look, I found that it was moonlight.

Sinking back again, I thought suddenly of home."

I would upload more videos of her reciting the Chinese poems, but if she is not interested, I would just stop here.


Development age: 3 years 10 months
(every kid learns on his or her own pace, this is just a milestone of my girl as a guideline)

If you would like to get more updates on her fun learning, please like the Facebook page "Learn The Fun Way". 

Art Fun! 1 - Fun with Colours!

As she had finished her fun classes, I intend to let her have some art lessons during our free time. So I thought it might be good to expose her to the colours first.

I created the following colours worksheet, you may download it if you find it useful:

The purpose of the worksheet is to expose her to different combinations of the colours, not to force her to memorise the results.

For example on the first combination, I would ask her what colour will it be if I were to mix red and yellow together. Maybe she had not done it before, she would tell me black, pink, red and etc. I let her guess a few times, and told her to mix the colours and observe the result.

She was very excited when she saw the colours changed after mixing together.

She was eager to find out what were the other colours combinations. She did a good job that she had got all the colours right!

Whenever there was any combination that she did not know, she would say "let's mix and find out!".

After she had done all the colours combinations, I prompted her to spell the colours, and helped her to write them down beside the colours. For technique of prompting, you may refer here.

She helped me to wipe the brushes clean after the lesson, I think it would be a good habit for her to keep all the stationery and materials after her art lesson.

Points to note:
The objective of this lesson is to expose the kid to colours, let the kid understand what are primary colours, and not to force the kid to memorise the outcomes. It is very important that the kid enjoy what he or she is doing, if not all the efforts will go into waste.

Development age: 3 years 10 months
(every kid learns on his or her own pace, this is just a milestone of my girl as a guideline)

I would update other Art Fun lessons here. If you like my lesson, please like the Facebook page "Learn The Fun Way" for more updates.