Teaching your child a world language can be difficult, especially when it is a language that is not heard of or practiced every day. It is necessary to be creative when exploring ways to help kids learn a new foreign language. Our Summer Story Pack can surely pull up a fun and interactive environment for your kids during the summer. Here are 5 fun activities that you can do with the Summer Story Pack, keep your kids engaged in Chinese over the summer!
Know more about Better Chinese Summer Story Pack(see below on how to select the right pack for your kids)
Get access to our Online Learning System and over 1400 stories from our Online Stories Library for the summer*. With these materials, kids will be able to practice their 听说读写 skills with the Online Learning System and learn about Chinese Zodiac, songs and festivals, like 中秋节, in a fun and engaging way.
1. Watching Videos/Movies Dubbed in Mandarin
Children love videos and movies. The use of videos and movies great ways to ease into language exposure through fun content and easy to follow animation. As our homeschool blogger, Eva, mentioned in her previous blog, that occasional exposure to "Screen Time" or "Movie Time" are low stress ways this summer to create a natural environment for second language learners to absorb the dialogues and practice their speaking and listening skills. Eva suggests starting from the movies children have been watching as toddlers. Kids can learn how to conduct conversations in Chinese and understand easily without getting lost in translation because of English subtitles and the content they are familiar with already. The dubbed movies all come with Mandarin Chinese conversation AND optional English subtitles, or vice versa. If you are looking for shorter videos, you can start with the Chinese idioms series, The Three Kingdoms series and Greek Mythologies from our Summer Story Pack.
2. Learn about the Story of 嫦娥奔月 and Play "Shooting the Moon" Game
Moon Festival, or Mid-autumn Festival, falls on the 27th of September this year. Through the Summer Story Pack! You can watch series of animated video to learn the traditions and the stories behind the festival with your children or your students. Here are 5 other fun activities you can do to celebrate Mid-autumn Festival. Here is an example of the online story:
3. Read along Storybook (For My First Chinese Words and I Love Chinese only)
In Lesson > Read Along, you can enjoy reading and singing along to the fun, animated stories! Here's a short demo video.
4. Practice Chinese Character Writing
On our Online Learning System, go to Tools > Writing Pad to practice your writing! You can be creative and add some decorations to your writing, you can also save them onto your computer and see how much you've improved at the end of summer!
5. Practice Tones with Fun Stories
Eva pointed out in her previous article that correct pronunciation is crucial in learning Mandarin because the five tones can change the meaning of a word. If your children or students have had enough practices in writing and reading, let them practice speaking and listening instead! Besides the read along activity you can practice as we mentioned above, there are three more ways you can exercise speaking/listening skills with our Summer Story Pack: play an online story, carefully listen to the tones and try to repeat after the story. You can also learn the pronunciation through a session called "Pinyin for Everyone," where all pronunciations and tones are presented in 24 short and fun stories. After all the practice, you can navigate to Lesson > Homework section of the curriculum to give yourself a small assessment.
Get access to our Online Learning System and over 1,400 stories from our Online Stories Library for the summer*. With these materials, children will be able to practice their 听说读写 skills with the Online Learning System and learn about Chinese Zodiac, songs and festivals, like 中秋节, in a fun and engaging way.
Need help on selecting the perfect level for your children?
Pre kindergarten to lower elementary level children, and you want
*The subscription will be activated upon purchase and will expire on September 15, 2015.
Show us what other ideas you have for keep your children engaged in Mandarin over the summer! Share to Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest and encourage your friends to share other activities they have designed!