kirchara

Even though they're 4.5 years apart, I have been teaching J and M Mandarin at the same time. Ideally, I should have had M learn Mandarin the moment he turned four, but I started teaching him reading (in English) instead.

We use Better Chinese's My First Chinese Words because they are targeted to non-Mandarin speakers. In contrast, SageBooks (Hong Kong publisher) require the students to be Mandarin/Chinese speakers. (SageBooks are like BOB books in that they teach children how to read).

I try to do Mandarin two, three times a week. I read one sentence and each child repeat after me. We do two 8-page picture books each session. M usually has the attention span for one picture book but not two.

So far we have done six sessions. In between sessions, I have J independently listen and repeat after the included CD.

M often acts silly and intentionally gives the wrong answers (e.g. "This is my grandfather" instead of "This is my father.") Usually I end up focusing on J when M has the sillies.

As expected, M's pronunciation is just beautiful. Being older, J has a harder time with pronunciation. (When J was four, his Mandarin accent was practically perfect too. Once he started kindergarten, we got busy with reading/writing/spelling/poetry/etc. and stopped doing Mandarin).

I was afraid that J, who just turned nine, would find the books boring because they’re a bit childish, but he has been motivated so far. Earlier today, he asked me to do Mandarin.


06/50 learning moment ☆ 06/100 moments in multiples of 50 words

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There are 36 books in total; the following is my tentative lesson plan (also on Excel). If we do this three times a week, we should be done in a year; two times a week, a year and a half.

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I told J that in Shakespeare, comedies mean happy endings, and therefore there’s always a wedding in Act V. I gave him the example of Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Me: "How about Twelfth Night? Who do you think get married in Act V?"

J: "Olivia and Cesario."

Olivia/Cesario's Willow Cabin speech must have made quite an impact on him ;-)

I have been using Ken Ludwig’s How To Teach Your Children Shakespeare with J since summer 2015 (he was seven). He has learned passages from MND and Twelfth Night (Orsino's "If music be the food of love," Viola's "Conceal me what I am," and the willow cabin speech.) The book also provides summarized plot of the plays for context.

J did memorize several poems before we dove into Shakespeare. Both of us knew that he was perfectly capable of memorizing entire poems, including long ones.

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04/50 learning moment ☆ 04/100 moments in multiples of 50 words

I came across June Oberlander’s Slow and Steady Get Me Ready in a blog post about making room time CDs for little ones. We had the opportunity to try out one of the activities* earlier today.

Instead of making a cardboard egg puzzle, we simply used colorful plastic Easter eggs. I set one egg on a "wall" (a heavy book standing on its side), then made the egg fall and come apart while singing this rhyme:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Could not put Humpty together again.

My two-year-old M quickly took over, making the eggs fall and "break" and putting them together again. When the eggs fall, he would exclaim "Oop!" because M is one dramatic toddler.

For extra verisimilitude, you/your kid can decorate the plastic egg with goggly eyes/sticker eyes and mouth.

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ETA 04/13/15: M put playdoh in one end of the plastic egg to make it a wobbly egg. After Humpty fell and broke, he said "egg!," and gave it to me to "eat." X-D

* Age 2 - Week 1

02/50 learning moment ☆ 02/100 moments in multiples of 50 words