kirchara

July 4th weekend (but we didn't do anything thematic)

Five kids again this week. This week's playgroup was a bit heavy on character recognition and writing, so the other six-year-old lost interest. (She hasn't had any formal Chinese instruction yet.)

1. SONGS:
1a. 我的朋友在哪里 (Where is My Friend?)
Show/remind them the ASL gestures for 我的 (My), 朋友 (Friend), 在哪里 (Where) and 在这里 (Here).
1b. 小白兔，白又白 (Little white bunny)

2. INTRODUCTION:
Introduce themselves by their Chinese name. Explain the meaning. "我叫NAME. 国王的王. 生日的生." etc. I modeled the introduction by writing my name on the whiteboard and explaining the characters' meaning. Brooks introduced himself: ( Read more... )

3. READ-ALOUD:
3a. Read 先有蛋 (xiān yǒu dàn)/先有鸡 (xiān yǒu jī). First the Egg/First the Chicken by Laura Vaccaro Seeger.
3b. Read 红花红花几月开？(When Will The Red Flower Bloom?) from MyFirstChineseWords (#16)
3c. River asked me to also read 你在做什么? (What Are You Doing?) (#25) because he finds the deformed illustrations hilarious.

4. SHOW AND TELL:
"这是OBJECT."
One or two additional sentence about the object's color/size/physical characteristics.
Ask follow-up questions as appropriate.

River shared 这是我的耳机. 我的耳机是红色的. This is my headphones. My headphones are red. ( Read more... )

5. ACTIVITY #1:
Guess which character I'm writing.
One child write on the whiteboard one stroke at a time, pausing in between strokes to give the other kids chance to guess the character.

We cut the playgroup short at 30 minutes because the kids were vibrating more than usual this week.

6. REFRESHMENTS:
Bing & Rainier cherries 樱桃 Trad. 櫻桃 (yīng táo) etc.labeled with their Chinese names.
My mom made a plate of 饺子 Trad. 餃子 (jiǎo zi), which immediately disappeared.
There were also some sunflower seeds 葵花子 (kuí huā zǐ)

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There was another playgroup in-between at V's house, which for the purposes of this blog will be called #V1 and so on.

Plans for Playgroup #4: ( Plans for Playgroup #4 )

We 'circled' the character 去 because both kids would sometimes mispronounce this character. And they both mispronounce it exactly the same way. They probably took one look at the pinyin qù and kept on wanting to pronounce it "u" like in chū (出). Thankfully other than 去, so far pinyin has not confused them.

( Whiteboard writing )

Q: 你去过PLACE吗？
A1: 我去过. Or
A2: 我没去过.

( 你去过PLACE吗 questions )

Q: 你去不去PLACE/ACTIVITY?
A1: 去. Or
A2: 不去.

- 你去不去游泳? etc.

Other than circling, I read two BetterChinese books* and have them read only the character 去 whenever it appears while I read the rest of the sentence. (I covered the pinyin qù with washi tape so they won't mispronounce it.) I wanted to glue the sound and the character together in their brain.

* 18. 我的家 and 29. 我去上学

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Focus on Character Introspective:

- This time I did 'circling' individually with them. On the plus side, they focused more; on the flip side, the energy (and silliness) was not there.

- The questions were rapid fire so their answers were mostly rapid fire too. It was great to see them showing instantaneous, mostly-accurate comprehension during this session.

- I didn't let them write qù in their Chinese homework because I didn't want to reinforce their mispronunciation. I just quietly wrote qù in both their homework before turning it in to their teacher ;-)

(I'll edit this post when I find and/or think up more activity ideas.)

Adaptable to any of the books: Hanzi hopscotch (Chalk Academy).

(Adaptable) free Chinese character board game at Stickiemama.

Free printable PDF Mandarin flashcards at Semanda.com <-- Nice picture selections, but making your own flashcards allow you to customize them/make them more relevant to your kid(s)

My preferred flashcard configuration is:

[FRONT] Picture + Chinese character/word -->
[BACK] pinyin + English (when necessary) + fill-in-the-blank Chinese phrase/word

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My First Chinese Words' 36 books: ( 1. I Love My Family 我爱我的家 )

CIRCLING* -- DONE 6/8/19

Make a gray mouse out of play doh/clay Draw a mouse on the whiteboard. Have the (computing) mouse ready.

1. Start with the sentence "这是哥哥的鼠标 (shǔ biāo)." ( Read more... )

2. At random, ask these questions:
- YES question: "这是哥哥的鼠标吗?"

- NO question:
"这是哥哥的老鼠吗?"
"这是弟弟的鼠标吗?"

- OR question: "这是哥哥还是弟弟的鼠标?"

- 5Wh + H question:
"这是谁的鼠标?"
"这是什么?"

- etc. following their interest and attention span

I used these index cards at random to prompt myself: ( Read more... )

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Circling Introspective:

- They are (thankfully) easily amused. They would sometimes intentionally give the wrong answer, pick up my shoe and say, "这是妈妈的老鼠," etc.

- River said he did not hear every single thing that I said because he got distracted, but he did understand everything he did hear. And that's the main goal of circling/TPRS**: comprehensible input.

- When I asked Brooks, "英文怎么说," he answered "big brother's computer mouse" instead of "This is big brother's computer mouse." Either he hasn't acquired that "这是" = "This is," or he usually doesn't translate Mandarin into English in his head.

* Here's a pdf from Terry Waltz's website that tells you how circling works.

** TPRS = Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling

Last year I fell into Chinese* fandom via random YouTube algorithm. I ended up chatting with fellow fans online (many of them overseas Chinese with varying degrees of fluency), when I came to a sudden realization:

If I don't teach my kids Chinese culture, nobody else will.

Prior to this, I was resigned to River and Brooks** growing up as Asian Americans who are only Asians in the broadest brushstrokes of the term. We're not a traditional Chinese family, I'm not fluent in Mandarin, and my husband can’t even write his own Chinese name. It's an uphill battle teaching them Bahasa Indonesia; how much harder would teaching them Mandarin be?

( In a way, I see the language as secondary to the culture. )

* It was a Chinese supernatural show that's so bad it cycles back to being great. All the budget goes into the two main characters and the opening theme song, and nothing else.

** Their online handles, not their rl names

*** River knows me well enough to know that complaining is useless.

This year I prepared late for Christmas advent, so I don't have anything planned for the first and second.

Useful resources:

- Mr. P's advent paper strips, for writing out "Read Bible story" instructions.
- The Toymaker's movie tickets printable: Golden "tickets" printed on heavy yellow paper, then cut with wavy line scissors.
- Tiny advent boxes from Mr. Printables' Christmas Advent Calendar Street
- The Toymaker's Christmas crafts, including a Christmas pencil box. Here's her other pencil boxes.

( Inside the advent boxes )

This year my five-(and a half)-year-old will probably be getting three Christmas gifts. (None of the teeny-tiny Advent surprises costs over $1, except for going ice skating.) His 11-m.o. baby brother will most likely be more interested in the wrapping paper *g*

I hope I have enough variety in here and not be too materialistic.

I made the tiny boxes from Mr. Printables' Christmas Advent Calendar Street, black and white on pastel cardstock. I put two of the unusually sized advent treats on The Toymaker's pencil boxes. Should've gone with a Christmas pencil box instead, but I only browsed the website's holiday section today. Ah well, green elephants pencil box is cool.

I wrote the "Read Bible story" instruction on Mr. P's advent paper strips.
The golden "tickets" I printed on heavy yellow paper using The Toymaker's movie tickets printable. I then used wavy line scissors to cut out the tickets.

#17 ticket: Make a gadget (Skip counter) is a Math toy. The trebuchet is cool, but first I need better glue options or putting it together will be an exercise in frustration.

Chocolate = one Lindt truffle.

( What's inside the advent boxes )