中文幼儿园 - Mandarin Preschool - Bilingualism the Easy and Natural Way

We learned about Chinese New Year from a picture book. A red bag was made for kids to contain money from parents (if they follow the custom). Some toy money was prepared to award kids if they made effort to learn new words and the song “xin nian hao”. Kids were very very happy to earn “ya sui qian” even though they were not real at all.
The song goes like: xin nian hao ya, xin nian hao, zhu yuan da jia xin nian hao; wo men chang ge, wo men tiao wu, zhu yuan da jia xin nian hao.
Most important words are: red bag - hong bao; new year money - ya sui qian; new year greeting - bai nian; dumpling - jiao zi; new year eve dinner - nian ye fan.

We made a Christmas tree with kid’s preferred colour, and decorated it with shining shapes. We wrapped a gift for each kid to put next to their tree. A story about Christmas was told and all Christmas words were introduced in Chinese version. The jingle bell song was sung in Chinese. Words are sheng dan jie - Christmas; sheng dan kuai le - Merry Christmas; sheng dan lao ren - santa; li wu - gift; sheng dan shu - Christmas tree. Have a look of one of our sheng dan shu:

We build two streets with color sticks and put various shape of buildings (cardboard boxes) off the streets. The buildings are labeled with Chinese characters and pinyin: xiao xue - primary school; you er yuan - kindy; tu shu guan - library; yi yuan - hospital; shang chang - shopping mall; jia - home. Little dollies are used to do the role play. The conversation drill is “where are you going? I am going home (or other places). Ni qu na li? wo hui jia.” The practice was related to children by calling dollies in their names and talking about where their home is.

I produced and filmed the video below on the advice of some parents. The inspiration went further once filming started, to record story-telling, craft-making, projects and other kid’s performances. I am making DVDs containing about 30 min of live Mandarin learning programs along these lines, which would be of most value for non-Mandarin speaking families, targeting ages 2-5. Should you wish to know more, please contact me.

We dressed up as pirates and used a map to find the treasure box full of toys. Firstly we read Dora the Explorer in Chinese to get the idea of being pirate actors. The map told us to climb a mountain and cross a river to get to the treasure box. There was a set of code to tell at each step, mountain and river. At the mountain, the code was rock, scissors, cloth - chui2 zi, jian3 dao1, bu4; at the river, it was xiao3 ju4 zi ju4, xiao3 chui2 zi chui2, xiao3 chan3 zi chan3, xiao3 lao3 shu3 du du du du pa2 shang4 lai2.

The words are Hai dao -pirate, Mao zi -hat, Jian -sword, Tou jin -head wear, Wang yuan jing -telescope, Di tu -map, Bai bao xiang -treasure box, He -river (yi tiao he – one river), Shan -mountain (yi zuo shan – one mountain)

Shapes were put together on a piece of cardboard paper. They are yuan2 - circel; san1 jiao3 xing2 - triangle; zheng4 fang1 xing2 - square; chang2 fang1 xing2 - rectangle; xing1 - star; xin1 - heart. Different shapes were used to build house and garden in paper. Then we looked for shapes in real life - kitchen, balchony, backyard. Typing took place at last. Character is xin.

We had toy food to learn about eating. They are mian4 bao1 - bread; dan4 gao1 - cake; shu3 tiao2 - chips; bing1 qi2 ling2 - ice cream; bi3 sa4 bing3 - pizza; niu2 nai3 - milk; guo3 jiang4 - jam; cha1 zi - fork; shao2 zi - spoon; dao1 zi - knife; pan2 zi - plate.  The sentence pattern is ni3 chi1 shen2 me - what are you eating? and wo3 chi1 xx - I am eating xx. We had the sentence pattern drill during the “tea time”.

We made cardboard body parts and jointed them by split pins so all parts could move a bit. While we making the body, we constantly talked about the names for our body parts. They are tou2 - head; bo2 zi - neck; ge1 bo - arm; shou3 - hand; du4 zi - tummy; pi4 gu - bottom; tui3 - leg; jiao3 - foot. Later, we started to type characters on the computer. In the process of typing, we learned pin yin and recognition of characters. This part of learning helps 5 year olds and above to gain reading skills.

Moon festival was 3rd of Oct this year. To hornour this traditional festival, we told the story of the moon lady while drawing the images. It was about this lady had both of her husband’s hard earn golden pills, instead of sharing. One pill was supposed to provide ever-lasting life, two pills made this lady fly. She flew into the air and couldn’t stop it until landed on the moon. There was only a rabbit living on the moon then. This selfish lady had to lead her ever-lasting life so lonely with only a rabbit next to her. Then we made lanterns. Even though moon cake is a big issue of this festival, we didn’t eat one because they are so rich that I don’t like them. We had a good look at them on the computer screen. Some extra time allowed us to start making a kite. The words are yue4 liang - moon; zhong1 qiu1 jie2 - moon festival; deng1 long - lantern; yue4 bing3 - moon cake; feng1 zheng - kite; zhu2 zi - bamboo. The character is Feng - wind.

We made dumplings. Kids watched and helped throughout the whole process. We made the dough and roll the small pieces into round pastries. The words are rou2 - knead; mian4 - flour; jiao3 zi pi2 - dumpling pastry. Then we prepared the filling by mixing beef mince - niu2 rou4 xian4, Chinese green - xiao3 bai2 cai4, rice wine - mi3 jiu3, soy sauce - jiang4 you2 and salt - yan2. Stir the filling well. Last step of making is to wrap the filling with the pastry, without any leakage. Parents may use the description as a recipe. Kids made most dumplings with opens everywhere and some were more of pies than dumplings, therefore we couldn’t boil them, instead we pan-fried them. They are still jiao3 zi, but alternatively called guo1 tie1.
The character was nian2 and we talked about nian being a monster Chinese people used fire works to scare away.