Chinese Learning: My Family 我的家人

It's still really hard to gain their interest in Chinese. It can be very disheartening when they reject the activities I planned for them once they see the materials in Chinese. Many times, I wanted to give up and just enrol them in a Chinese enrichment class. But my husband has been encouraging me to keep on trying and we are holding off the classes.

To look on a bright side, from totally not speaking Mandarin to being able to converse in Mandarin now, it's an improvement. Another improvement is accepting Chinese books. They are able to sit through long Chinese stories now. Come to think of it, I was still feeling very down and was complaining to my husband few weeks back when they refused to accept any Chinese books during story time. Thinking through, I think it's because I'm more fluent when I read in English. So, I picked out a more interesting book that I think they will like and practice reading it a few times before reading to them. It helped greatly. The story engaged them and they were more willing to accept other books from the same series.    

They are showing interest in reading but only English words. They will spell the words and ask me how to read the word. I'm hoping they can show the same interest in Chinese words and was trying to do more words recognition in Chinese with them. For this purpose, I have prepared some activities with the theme, My family, 我的家人 in mind.  I wouldn't say it's very successful as Y refused to participate in most of the activities.

Family Tree
First, I did a family tree to illustrate to them the relationship between each people.

Make Your Flashcards
Then I printed some photos of our family members and let them make a set of flashcards.

Matching Game
A matching game where we have pictures of family members on one side and words on the other side attached with velcro.

Hoola Word Game
Another word game we played with Twister Hoola Game. Got this from the Toy r'us clearance sale at $16 with very badly damaged packaging.

I don't know how much learning is done but there's sure a lot of laughter there. I almost got mad at Y for being the trouble maker but decided to take it easy. He didn't want to participate as he didn't want Chinese and kept distracting K.

This is how I play the game

(1) Put the word card on the floor and get the child to read, after he read, let him place the hoola over it.

(2) After placing all the word cards, say a word and the child find and stand on the word.

Didn't work with Y as he started taking away the hoola and putting it over his head. K thought that's super funny and joined in. Since it didn't work, I changed the game.
 
(3) Collect the hoola - Get the child to read the word, if he can read correctly, he collects a hoola and he can put it over his head.

Paper Plate Bingo
Got this paper plate game idea from No Time for Flashcards. Write the words on the paper plate, cut it and the child fold the correct word down when you call it out. So far, only managed to do this with K, my "I don't want Chinese" Y ran off once he saw the Chinese words.

 I have no idea why Y rejects Chinese so badly but I'm starting to hear him communicating in Mandarin. So, hopefully he can accept it more readily as he build up his confidence in the language.

Chinese Learning - 国学 - Three Character Classics 三字经

I'm using Three Character Classics, 三字经 as part of our Chinese Learning Curriculum. I chose 三字经 because it teaches them Chinese history and moral values. This was used to teach young children in the past. There's a story behind each verse and it makes it easier to teach them and let them understand the morals behind the words and stories.

We recite the verse together informally. It's hard to get them to do anything with Chinese. It's a losing battle to get them to sit down to read. So, I do it very casually. But I read from the book, pointing to the words and they will sit beside me sometimes to look. Read with a bit of rhythm so it sounds catchy and they will soon recite together with you.

The video below shows how we recite the verse on an evening, in the midst of some prohibited sofa jumping. After a few sessions, K could memorize the first page of the book. Y, having adverse reaction with the Chinese language could also recite a few verse on his own.

This was a huge achievement to me, for a language that they have been rejecting for the past few months. So, I'm now very motivated!! Being very ambitious, I also started on a reading program called 四五快读 but it was a bad start so I decided to shelf it after the first lesson. More on that in another post. 

Here are the materials I used for our Three Character Classics, 三字经 curriculum:

I like this book for the clean layout. It comes with 2 CDs. 

This book covers the stories behind each verse. 

I try to cover the following: 

- Reading each verse and read about the meaning behind the words
- Read a story behind the verse
- Watch a video on the story behind each verse
- Learn a word from the verse
- Do a craft or activity related to that verse

I hope the boys will be more interested in the Chinese culture and history from this.

Chinese Learning - with dots

Chinese is one area that I thought I made the most effort in with the least results. I have been trying my very best to speak to them in Mandarin since birth but their first words were still English and once they became verbal, it was almost impossible to speak to them in Mandarin. I was determined to improve things when I hear the singing accent when they try to speak Mandarin.

Other than trying to speak to them in Mandarin as often as I can, I now try to conduct our activities in Mandarin and do more crafts in the Chinese learning.

On this day, we were revising Chinese numbers 1-4. We did dot painting with cotton swabs on the Chinese characters and they didn't reject the activity like how they reject Chinese books. This is a good start. They normally screamed "No!!!" when they see me with something Chinese, especially Y.