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 is a simple starter list of cultural celebrations with resource links you can start with for the fall season.
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Hispanic Heritage Month
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Rosh Hashanah
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Filipino American History Month
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Indigenous Peoples’ Day
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Dia de Los Muertos
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Diwali
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Veteran’s Day
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Thanksgiving
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Hanukkah
Early Literacy Activities for Autumn
1. Learn how to use the season words in sentences, color a poster, or create one your own
2. What do you see in the picture? Use these coloring pages to learn meaningful words. Here is a list of tools you can use if you need assistance with Chinese words or phrases.
3. Learn about Thanksgiving expressions through a Story. It is never too early to start having fun and learn about festivals, culture, and target expressions. Here is the story video of What Do You Eat on Thanksgiving?”
Storytime: Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you all have fun finding the turkeys,
Storytime: The Little Red Hen! Do you want to help out the Little Red Hen?
4. Reading fun books! Here are the books you can start with.
First Mandarin Sounds: an awesome Chinese word book
is an interactive children’s picture book. It is written for non-native Chinese-speaking readers and heritage learners. It is designed with the Montessori approach. Readers will read, play and learn essential Mandarin sounds and first Chinese words. There are complimentary online audio support and play pages.
A Colorful World
is a fun word book and a perfect read for every season. The vibrant pictures connect readers with the objects around them. Online audio support is provided.
My Colors Workbook
is a Chinese character practice book for children who are 6 and up. This is an activity book for words, phrases, and muscle memory for following character strokes.
5. Level up with the reading- and number-focused premium resource with activities! In this teaching unit, Chinese color sight words are one of the features. From word wall posters, playdough cards to roll, read and dot the words, children will see, touch, and get active in working on each section.
What do kids see around them in the fall?
There are Chinese commonly used words for the fall season with interactive activities. The word cards are created with two folds. You can show the picture, pinyin, and English together or separately as your children advance in the learning process.
Two Chinese Mini Books
are included in this resource. One has an apple theme and the other has a leaf theme. Teaching Chinese with stories is effective, engaging, and fun. As you guide children to build early literacy, the number of words in a book matters. When the new word introduced is limited children are comfortable reading along. The sense of fun and calm is there. This process is similar to the levels of books that kids read from an early age in English.
When we look at the word count of Chidlren’s books (see below) we can easily visualize and understand why less is more when we introduce books and reading materials to children in Chinese or any target language.
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Board books: wordless to about 100 words.
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Picture books: 250 words to about 1000 words
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Early Reader books: 1,000 to 2,000 words
The short stories included in the two mini-books of this teaching resource can be used to introduce simple sentences.
From words to phrases, from phrases to sentences, we want to see kids level up and see the possibilities of what they can do with the language they are learning. Here is a world language graph shared by Shelby County Schools breaking down from the ACTFL proficiency guidelines.
There is also a numbers and math problems section which is a fun part to use with the Chinese language. Every math question is like a little story. You will see how kids can use Chinese to work on Ten Frame up to 10 and add up to 1o in the number section.
Roll and Dice and Dot the Word
is a section that kids can use the dice template and make their own with color words on them. Cut, fold, paste and create! Roll one dice or both then use the dot markers to dot the word shown on top of the dice on the word sheet. You can use it as a bingo sheet as well.
Chinese literacy for the fall season
List of Activities Included:
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Color word posters/ playdough cards
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Color dice templates
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Roll and color
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Roll, read, dot the color the sight word
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Roll, read, trace and color the sight word
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Mini-Book: What Does Bei Bei Like?
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Mini-Book: Who Likes Leaves?
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Fall word flashcards
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Circle and trace fall words
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Puzzle: cut, mix, and match fall words
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Ten Frame Up to 10: Using Manipulative
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Number Practice: Fill in Ten Frame
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Odd & Even: Sort, Count
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Spot It & Count It
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Let’s Make 10! Read, Add, and Answer!
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English-pinyin-Chinese Support Pages
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There are Teaching Notes in each section with tips and Sentences You Can Use for a comprehensible input guide!
For mini-books
Total Chinese characters in Apple reader: 58
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Unique Chinese characters: 20
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There are repetitive sentence patterns as practice for young readers. High-frequency words in this reader: to be, to have, to like, and color words.
Total Chinese characters in Leaves reader: 61
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Unique Chinese characters: 18
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There are repetitive sentence patterns as practice for young readers. High-frequency words in this reader: There is/are, to like, of/’s, and color words.
Total pages of this Fall Season Literacy & Numbers: 82
There are four versions available:
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Traditional Chinese with pinyin and English support version.
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Simplified Chinese with pinyin and English support version.
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Traditional Chinese 2-1-1 bundle (Traditional Chinese with pinyin and English support version and Simplified Chinese only version)
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Simplified Chinese 2-in-1 Bundle (Simplified Chinese with pinyin and English support version and Simplified Chinese only version)
Chinese literacy for the fall season