Read a classic Chinese poem with kids in the National Poetry Month.
Young kids enjoy singing, rhyming, and poems. As children sing songs, recite rhymes, and listen to the reading of poems, they hear sounds, rhymes, and language patterns. They are all great ways for literacy building.
Classic Chinese poems are short with limited word count. The 5-word poems have twenty Chinese characters. Here we are looking at Quiet Night Thought written by one of the most well-known Chinese poet, Li Bai 李白 in Tang dynasty.
Quiet Night Thought is pretty much the very first poem that every Chinese kid hears and knows by heart. The words are simple. The meaning is profound. It is talking about how the traveling poet mistakely thought the moonlight in front of her bed was the white frost and it tiggered his thoughts for home.
For the interpretation of this poem, there are different variations for the word 床 bed. Back in the Tang dynasty over 1300 years ago at the time poet, Li Bai was writing the poem – what was he referring to when he wrote the word 床? It can make a good discussion with older children and you can connect history and art with this poem.
For young learners we are looking at a simple and basic interpretation. That is why “床 bed” is used in the translation. It is a common Chinese word that children can use daily.
Young children who has not started reading can look for the word, moon 月 yuè. This Chinese charaacter,
moon 月 yuè can stand alone as a word. It also serves as a radical that is similar to the function of roots in the Romance language. Ask the kids: How many moon 月 yuè do you see in the poem below?
From the title to the poem, moon 月 yuè has appeared five times. moon 月 yuè – also has the meaning of “month.”
Read a classic Chinese poem with your child. see what she says about the sound. See if can find the moon character in text. With old child, find three greastest poets in the Tang dynasty in China. Use Pleco app or online dictionary like arch Chinese and to see the meaning of each character.
Listen to the singing and reading of Quiet Night Thought with this video.
From target language (Chinese) to community language (English), is there a poem about moon that you enjoyed as a child in English? Share it with your child and compare the meaning, the pattern and the sound.
Traditional Chinese & English Translation
Simplified Chinese and pinyin