Fire! Fire! The news was on. The heavy smoke. The beautiful historic buildings. The people who were watching. The emotions. Fire! There was a big fire. When I asked my students if there was anything big happened. One of the students told me there was something big happened at home. It was a big event. There was a roasted turkey and a big party with family and friends. It was a celebration. He did a good job
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Slow process results in fine work is a Chinese saying. The original expression in Chinese is 慢工出細活 màn gōng chū xì huó 慢工出细活 literally means slow work produces fine products. I was finishing up a class with first graders and I started singing the Goodbye song. That was probably the 68th time they heard me singing it. I stopped two sentences in, they looked at me and thought maybe I forgot the lyrics so the kids continued
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“Long long time ago…” is the beginning of a story. It is a signal to kids. “Hi, It’s time for a book or a story.” They are inviting words. Hěnjiǔ hěnjiǔ yǐqián 很久 很久 以前 is Long Long Time Ago in Chinese. It is a universal way to begin a story. “It is story time! Are you ready? Long long time ago, …” as soon as I said it, kids started to giggle and they repeated “long
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Be like water Be like water. It is a Chinese saying 滴水穿石 “dī shuǐ chuān shí.” It literally means dripping water penetrates the stone. Four simple words with a powerful message. It is persistent and it is perseverance. Drip, drip, drip. Little by little. Remember when your child spoke her first word? It usually takes about a year for us to hear our babies’ first word. Remember the excitement? First word! Then, one word after another. One
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Start and Bond with Your Child Today is a good time to look at what you have worked on for the past several days, in the previous weeks or months. Then, have a simple plan for the remaining of the week or for next week. What do you want to add to your child’s Chinese language learning? Do you want to add more Chinese children’s songs, craft activities, or simple Chinese stories to the daily Chinese routine?
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Raising Bilingual kids is a journey and it is an exciting one. It needs planning and you can start with setting up a bilingual home. What is it like to raise bilingual kids? First, I have a few stories to share with you. “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” – Robert Collier, author Valería walked up to me at a party and shouted, “One more time!” Then we hopped and
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May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. Teaching your heritage language to your children is a way to celebrate your family culture and your heritage culture. For my children, Chinese is their heritage language and I am the only source of Chinese language in our family. Over the years I have noticed that more and more schools and libraries share featured resources with children, parents and educators in the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. When I lived
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This post has affiliate links, thank you for your support. Raising Bilingual Children: Be Strong and Be Joyful. We’ve all heard the adage “hindsight is 20/20.” Looking back on the early days of when we first set out on our family language-learning journey reveals to me how important it is to change things up and to remain flexible with how we approach the process. It’s sometimes easy to forget during rough patches, but I have learned that
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Raising bilingual children in Chinese There are many parents who are raising bilingual children in Chinese and English. As they are on this bilingual journey they share their own family experiences and resources with fellow parents. It takes a village to raise a child and it takes “two” villages to raise a bilingual child as some may say. It is wonderful to see the community of raising bilingual children keeps growing. I want to share four
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Activities for Kids’ Target Language Learning One of the most commonly asked questions about teaching children a new language is how to encourage kids to speak the target language, Chinese on a day to day basis. When busy parents focus on the output, that is to speak the Chinese language, it is very important to look at the Chinese language input that children receive daily. One of the most popular resource articles is: 15 Chinese Cartoons for
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