给我糖果 (Give me Candy)

We just had fun making a new video. Watch it and see if it doesn't make you smile a little bit and maybe help some kids learn a bit of Chinese!

Sharon's Dynasty 苗苗王朝

I started an online store, selling Chinese Educational Media. It's called Sharon's Dynasty, 苗苗王朝. You will be able to find the website at sharonsdynasty.com. So far my inventory is currently, limited, but I have a shipment in transit from China with over 100 different books, music CDs, and DVDs. In late July my inventory of different products will expand drastically!

Happy Sunshine Friends

We were emailed by the creator of "Happy Sunshine Friends" with some short educational Chinese videos they made. They are pretty well made and we're always glad when people are creating more Chinese content. Check them out!

Chinese Story Time 1 Planning

I've started a chinese story time at my home for families that are interested in keeping up their chinese during summer time. Not sure if this will extend to school year but for now, we aim at the couple months while kids are out of school. I will be writing my story time plans here, will update with photos at the events later.

Hello everybody, welcome to Chinese Story Time.
大家好！欢迎来到中文讲故事时间。

Let's Start by singing "Twinkle twinkle little stars" in English and Chinese.
让我们开始来用英语和汉语唱“一闪一闪亮晶晶”。

First we will start with English:
我们先用英语来唱。




Let's Sing in Chinese:
让我们用汉语来唱





Now we will listen to the song in both chinese and English one more time;
现在让我们再分别用汉语和英语来唱一遍。

Give a shout out to my husband Sam who made the audio track and then recorded my kids' sing along. He did a great job with it. You can also find our original blog with lyrics here .




Let's read our first book today!
让我们来念今天的第一本书。


Dear Zoo
亲爱的动物园


Let's stand up for some music time!





Let's play the music in Chinese:





Time for our second book today:

 Wheels on the go
我最喜欢的车子


Music Time again!









Let's Learn some body parts in Chinese:







Are you ready to sing the song in Chinese? Let's do it!






Time for our last book today:

 The Very Hungry Caterpillar
好饿的毛毛虫


Goodbye Song






We have a little craft today for everybody. We are going to make a little dragon mask!


Here are the print out that I will print and give to each kid at my story time.

Hello everybody, welcome to Chinese Story Time.
大家好！欢迎来到中文讲故事时间。

Let's Start by singing "Twinkle twinkle little stars" in English and Chinese.
让我们开始来用英语和汉语唱“一闪一闪亮晶晶”。

First we will start with English:
我们先用英语来唱。

Now Lets sing it in Chinese.

现在我们来用汉语唱。

小星星

Xiao3xing1xing1

Twinkle twinkle little star

一闪一闪亮晶晶

Yi4 shan3 yi4 shan3 liang4 jing1 jing1

One twinkle, one twinkle, shine so bright;

满天都是小星星

Man3 tian1 dou1 shi4 xiao3 xing1 xing1

All the sky is full of stars;

挂在天空放光芒

Gua4 zai4 tian1 shang4 fang4 guang1 mang2

Hanging in the sky shine the brightness;

好像许多小眼睛

Hao3 xiang4 xu3 duo1 xiao3 yan3 jing1

Look like many little eyes;

一闪一闪亮晶晶

Yi4 shan3 yi4 shan3 liang4 jing1 jing1

One twinkle, one twinkle, shine so bright;

满天都是小星星

Man3 tian1 dou1 shi4 xiao3 xing1 xing1

All the sky is full of stars;

幸福拍手歌

Xìng fú pā shǒu gē

如果感到幸福你就拍拍手

rú guǒ gǎn dào xìng fú nǐ jiù pāi pāi shǒu

如果感到幸福你就拍拍手

rú guǒ gǎn dào xìng fú nǐ jiù pāi pāi shǒu

如果感到幸福你就快快拍拍手呦

rú guǒ gǎn dào xìng fú nǐ jiù kuài kuài pāi pāi shǒu yǒu

看那大家都一齐拍拍手

kàn nà dà jiā dōu yì qǐ pāi pāi shǒu

如果感到幸福你就跺跺脚

rú guǒ gǎn dào xìng fú nǐ jiù duò duò jiǎo

如果感到幸福你就跺跺脚

rú guǒ gǎn dào xìng fú nǐ jiù duò duò jiǎo

如果感到幸福你就快快跺跺脚呦

rú guǒ gǎn dào xìng fú nǐ jiù kuài kuài duò duò jiǎo yǒu

看到大家都一齐跺跺脚

kàn nà dà jiā dōu yì qǐ duò duò jiǎo

如果感到幸福你就拍拍肩

rú guǒ gǎn dào xìng fú nǐ jiù pāi pāi jiān

如果感到幸福你就拍拍肩

rú guǒ gǎn dào xìng fú nǐ jiù pāi pāi jiān

如果感到幸福你就快快拍拍肩呦

rú guǒ gǎn dào xìng fú nǐ jiù kuài kuài pāi pāi jiān yǒu

看到大家都一齐拍拍肩

kàn nà dà jiā dōu yìqǐ pāi pāi jiān

头肩膀膝盖脚趾歌

Tou2 jian1 bang3 xi1 gai4 jiao3 zhi3 ge1

Head Shoulder knees and toes

Head-Tou2 头

Shoulder-jian1 bang3 肩膀

Knees- xi1 gai4 膝盖

Toes- jiao3 zhi3 脚趾

Eyes- yan3 jing1 眼睛

Ears- er3 duo1 耳朵

Mouth-zui3 ba1 嘴巴

Nose-bi2 zi 鼻子

Stream Chinese and Taiwanese programing with Sling TV

Sling TV has advertised itself as a way for "cord-cutters" to take back TV. For many people, it's a legal, paid way to watch sports without subscribing to cable TV. Now, it's also a way to watch Chinese programming!

Sling TV offers a Mandarin package (on checkout the name changes to Great Wall TV)

They also offer a Taiwanese package.

Prices start at $15 a month for ~15 channels. That's a pretty good deal! There is also a promotion where you get a free Roku 2 if you prepay 4 months. Again, a pretty good deal! You can do a free trial for 7 days for either one.

You can broadcast these Chinese channels directly to your TV, not just your computer. Sling TV is compatible with Roku, amazon fire TV, apple TV, Windows, iOS, Chromecast, Xbox One, and androidTV.

As far as programming for the kids:

I tried a trial of the Mandarin package, and unfortunately it did not have any children's programming that I could find. Nonetheless, if you as a parent like watching Chinese TV, there is no doubt your kids would benefit and learn from being exposed to the stuff that you watch.

I also tried the Taiwanese packages. There are several different Taiwanese packages, and as far as I could tell the only TV channel that caters to children is 东森幼幼, which you can get on the Taiwanese Mega package ($25/month) and the EETV package ($15/month).

Bottom line:

It might not be the greatest deal if you just want children's programming, but sling TV offers a legal, easy way to stream Chinese televesion on your home TV.

Our kids watching a Chinese Kids cooking show 

宝宝故事 podcast: Chinese "Baby Stories"

Podcast name: 宝宝故事 (Baby stories)
Podcast level: Chinese Immersion, Advanced (recommend for parents who speak Chinese)
Cost: Free
Description: This is a Malaysian podcast entirely in Mandarin Chinese made for young children. There are hundreds of episodes, and each episode is a story about 5-8 minutes long. Some are fairy tales, some educational nonfiction stories, and so on. All are pretty cute and fairly professional and accompanied by music. It's a great resource! If your kids are not very fluent, they might find it difficult to understand and get bored. This is probably a podcast suitable for kids of parents who also speak Chinese. Try letting your kids listen to it in the car and see how it goes!. I recommend listening to the same episode over and over again so your kids and have more of a chance of understanding.

For starters, I recommend trying out the episode about why elephants have big ears. It seems a bit more basic than some of the others and might be easier to understand. (It's called "趣味小百科》地上跑的12-为什么大象的耳朵特别大")

iTunes link: https://itunes.apple.com/sg/podcast/bao-bao-gu-shi-xi-ma-la-yafm/id905715149?mt=2
Direct podcast feed (paste into your podcast program): http://www.ximalaya.com/album/270279.xml