A Year of Bilingual Fun with 8 Bilingual Parenting Tips to Engage Your Children in the Target Language Every Day Wishing you and your family a healthy, happy, and joyful New Year filled with bilingual fun! As we enter the New Year I want to share 8 tips to better structure your family’s target language learning in the New Year. 1. Daily Breakfast Booster: Listen to the songs, music, or podcast in your target language. You can
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Winter Solstice Chinese Dōng Zhì Festival – World Culture for Kids Winter Solstice Winter Solstice is Dōng Zhì Festival! Happy winter Solstice – Dōng Zhì 冬至! Winter Solstice is 冬至 Dōng Zhì in Chinese. 冬 [Dong] mean winter. 至 [Zhi] means extreme, or arrival. 冬至 [Dōng Zhì] literally means the “extreme of winter.” Dōng Zhì is also known as Winter Festival – 冬節[Dōng Jié] for Chinese. Dong Zhi marks the shortest day and the longest night
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Teach Kids Chinese Song Turkey in The Straw! Got turkey? I mean got a turkey plush toy? Where is the turkey? Kids asked. Good question! This month the pet turkey is the star and kids will learn how to sing Turkey in The Straw in Mandarin. Turkey is also the leading character in many of the stories. A popular kids’ song, Turkey in The Straw is a story. When kids learn this song they will get to
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Chinese Literacy for Fall Season Celebrate Autumn with Culture Around Us From September to December, there is a lot to celebrate in autumn – the season, the colors, and the cultural holidays and celebrations. As we are guiding children to build literacy in the target language (Mandarin) we also need to feed children the background knowledge in their native language. That way they can better connect with the content that we want to share with them. Here
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Chinese Halloween Literacy Activities and Resources | Halloween Activities | Chinese Activities for Kids The last quarter of the year is packed with teaching topics that are seasonal, festival, and cultural. The season change is visible. The festivals and celebrations are loved by children big and small. The cultural essence and stories are connecting, inclusive and global. Playing with purpose is the design of each of the resources included here. Literacy building is a part of learning
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First Mandarin Sounds is my debut book. I wrote this book to assist families who are learning Mandarin Chinese together. It’s for parents who are learning Mandarin to guide their children to explore the Chinese language with a purpose. You and your child will learn and grow from the first sounds, first words, to first sentences, and more. “Fun” is a simple word. It’s also an important word in learning and living. When you embed fun in
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First Mandarin Sounds an awesome Chinese word book Big News! A debut children’s picture word book by Amanda Hsiung-Blodgett “Miss Panda” is now available worldwide! There are two versions to choose from to fit your need. Traditional Chinese. Pinyin, English edition Simplified Chinese. Pinyin. English edition Keep reading…there is also BONUS material. The first step to early Mandarin Chinese literacy is learning the first words and sounds. “First Mandarin Sounds” provides you with a fun introduction
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Counting up and adding up What you do every day with your child adds up. It does not just apply to the target language but all learning. In the last month of the year, what do you do? Are you counting down or are you counting up? When you count up you add up all the things you have done with your child every day. When you count up you see the progress from Day 1
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How do you stay on the path of raising a bilingual child? The answer is simple. Daily practice. Do it every day. Rain or shine. Do it anyway even if you feel like taking a day off. Even if it gets challenging. Never stop. Some days you will have the flow with your child. Other days you will get stuck. You are not looking for perfection. Building up a language takes time. Patience. Sometimes you need to
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Teaching is about togetherness Who did you teach? “My mom is learning Mandarin with me.” said the sixth-grader. Big smile. I looked at him and I saw the joy in his eyes. “My dad and my sister were so good…I taught them some expressions I’ve learned.” said a third-grader. More hands raised on the screen. Waving at me. I saw the excitement on their faces. This is a summer camp that created for distance learning at
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