|Working on Color Words in Chinese|
I sit down with two of my children, ages 4 and 5, every night to work on Mandarin for at least 30 minutes. They usually do a tracing page for one character, play a game using characters we have learned so far, and play another character game that I purchased. Sometimes, I have them complete a color by character page or work on a beginning reading book. We also sometimes read other beginning books that I purchased from Better Chinese (complete with a CD and pinyin). You would not believe the difference 30 minutes makes!
As a teacher, I realize that things such as reading to your child before bed, setting a routine for homework, and playing educational games are helpful. But I really don't think I realized just HOW helpful a small investment of time can be until we started working on a foreign language. I have seen such a difference!
As a direct result of our "Chinese class" every evening, my son and daughter already know more than 50 characters! Contrast that with the 4 or 5 they knew (and that's stretching it) before we started. Although they do go to Language Stars, their classes emphasize speaking more than reading and writing (understandable).
My son is becoming more interested and confident. He hasn't complained about going to class lately. He has finally agreed to help lead in the counting (in Mandarin) during calendar time at preschool. AND, he can remember almost ALL of the characters we have covered! Both he and my daughter can READ the simple books I created (edited by Grandma and Great Uncle, of course) for them to use. What a difference devoting just 30 minutes can make!
So, I have added the set pictured above, "Learning Chinese Characters: Color Words," to both my Teachers Notebook shop and my Teachers Pay Teachers store. You can take a look by clicking on the picture below:
It covers 14 different characters which are practiced in 5 different ways: tracing sheets, easy reader books, cut-and-paste pages, a matching game, and color by character sheets. I know my kids are really learning with these, so I hope your students will like them, too! Plus, they're half off (like all of my NEW products) until Thursday, May 17th!
Also, this set comes with a full-color poster! I think I'm about to go a little poster crazy because I just figured out how to print posters! It has made the possibilities endless, both at school and at home! Although I feel like everyone else in the world probably knows how to print posters already, if you need help, watch for a post later this week on how to print one.
As always, thanks for reading!