Home Chinese Preschool - Day 3

Day 3 of home Chinese preschool.

I started to have a sore throat this week and this morning I woke up by my cough and couldn't sleep since 5. I was worried that I might wake up my husband with my cough but gladly he slept through. Then my oldest E missed his school bus because he was really slow, and so I had to huddle my three boys into our van to drive to school. I really cant complain, because most parents drive their kids to school every day any way, I lucked out that I don't have to do that every day. And then since we were out so we went and got groceries, by 9:30 I felt like I've been up forever. I'm sure you understand that ;) So since I felt really tired and kind of sick, I decided that today's preschool is going to be a game day. That's a nice thing about homeschooling I guess, you make your own schedule with no guilt.

Good thing we have a trampoline, so I made the boys go outside and jump on the tramp for a good 20 mins.

They were trying to compete who jumps higher

My two year old P brought me books to read. I cant say no. We have tons of Chinese books, every time we went to China, we brought back lots of books. Here is a list of Chinese children's books that we reviewd, we still have lots of them that we haven't gotten time to review, but stay tuned. We will get to it. If you have any good books that you wanted to share with us, please feel free to send us a message or comment. We are always open to new books!

There are a lot of games that you can play to practice Chinese, our favorite three games that we like to play with our kids are "spot it", "Uno", "Rock, paper, Scissors" (Click on the link to see the posts about games), because they are English games but you can also play them in Chinese.

M playing Spot it 

I printed out some coloring pages from our free coloring book, I am sure though you can easily find free Chinese coloring pages online to print out as well. My boys generally loves anything related to writing, coloring, cutting, tapping and painting... But it could be totally boring for your kids to sit down and color. If that's the case, I'd recommend playing with some Chinese games on ipad, or smart phones. We have a good list of apps and games, that you can find here.

There is another thing I like to do with kids when they are tired, grumpy, or if I am just plainly out of patience, I let them watch chinese videos or tv shows. You can always make a playlist on youtube for your favorite chinese nursery rhymes, videos, tv shows. I even like to cut my boys nails while they watch Chinese nursery rhymes/tv shows, it saves me from wrestling with them.

Home Chinese Preschool - Day 2

Today we had preschool Day 2.

For Chinese, we learned the characters for "Person, head, eye, mouth, ear, hand, foot, big, small, more, less". In chinese they are "人，头，眼，嘴，口，耳，手，足，大， 小，多，少”. Refer to the <ZhongWen> (Mandarin Chinese Language) course materials lesson 2.

Today we played a game called "follow the instructions", or "follow the leader" in English, but simply "听指挥" in Chinese. I gave out the order and M executes it. Orders like "stand up", "sit down", "turn around", "touch your nose", "cover your eyes","blow kisses", "touch your belly button"... They were all spoken in Chinese of course, “ 站起来”，“坐下”，“转圈”，“摸鼻子”，“盖住眼睛”，“飞吻”，“摸肚脐眼”， etc. If you do not speak Chinese yourself, here is a good video to show you different body parts:

M pointing to his nose

M wanted to be the leader and led me all the hard poses and movements. I felt like I just had my exercises for the day! 

M being the "Leader" and one of his poses

We also sang the "if you are happy and you know it" song, "幸福拍手歌", you will see the video on the collection of songs that we like to sing to our kids. 

M stumping his feet during the song

Those are the pre-activities before the lesson to get his wiggles out. The actual lesson is anywhere from 10-20 mins long. M is semi-easily bored from all the listening and learning, so I try to keep it short. When he shows signs of getting bored, I just call it a lesson and gave him homework to do. By "Homework", I mean just practicing writing characters. I know it's debatable if its worth it for kids to practise writing, but at our house, we make our kids practice. And don't worry, we are not tiger parents, we are something in between where we call it a "happy medium". We push our kids, but not to the extreme. We are not saying that you should do the same, I think everybody decides for themselves, what's a good fit.

Home Chinese Preschool- Day 1

Today I started home preschool my 4 year old and 2 year old. My 4 year old M was in a English preschool co-op last year where each mom took turns teaching once a month, he really misses his classes this year. My two year old P is too young to really learn to read or write but he had fun participating circle time. All in all, it was a success. 

Before I get into today's preschool, I wanted to talk about the curriculum I used for today's Chinese lesson. I used <ZhongWen> (Mandarin Chinese Language) course materials. 

For today's Chinese lesson, I started out with circle time and animals. We played a game where everyone closes their eyes and one person would run around the circle with an animal in their hands until the music stops. When the music stops they put the animal behind someone's back, and then everyone opens their eyes if they have an animal behind their back. If so, it's their turn. Every time we sing different Chinese songs. They both loved this game and played over and over again and even played again when my oldest got home from school. 

Here's a collection of songs we like to sing

And here's more of our posts about music

After the circle time, I taught the first lesson of writing from 1 to 10 in mandarin chinese, plus 100.

一  二  三 四 五 六 七 八 九 十  百 

Circle Time

This is what the lesson looks like

Practice sheets I bought in China 

M's practice sheet

My preschool will always be bilingual, meaning that I will also be teaching English lesson as well. For today, we learned the letter A and all kinds of shapes. 

M hard at work

Play "Spot It" in Chinese to learn colors, shapes, & numbers

"Spot It" is one of our favorite children's games. There are several different versions of spot it, but we prefer the letters, shapes, and numbers version to play with our kids.

Spot it, numbers, shapes, colors

There are several ways to play, but no matter how you do it it's all about matching. We think it's fun because it's very fast paced. There are 31 cards, and every card has one number or shape that matches another number or shape on another card. They are also color specific. We put all the cards in the middle, and everyone gets one card. Then, if you find what matches on your card with the cards in the middle, you add that middle card to your own pile. You keep on playing until all the cards in the middle are gone, and whoever got the most wins.

This game is really easy to play in Chinese, and it's great for teaching colors, shapes, and numbers! Just make your kids say the match they found outloud in Chinese, and before you know it they will have mastered colors, numbers, and shapes.

Here is our kids playing it:





If you're new to Chinese, no problem! Here's the words you need to know to play this game:


Red 红色 Hóng sè
Yellow 黄色 huáng sè
Orange 橘色 (or 橙色) jú sè（chéng sè）
Green 绿色 lǜ sè
Blue 蓝色 lán sè
Purple 紫色 zǐ sè
Square 正方形 zhèngfāngxíng
Circle 圆形 yuán xíng
Triangle 三角形 sānjiǎoxíng
Rectangle 长方形 chángfāngxíng
One 一 yī
Two 二 Èr
Three 三 sān
Four 四 sì
Five 五 wǔ
Six 六 liù
Seven 七 qī
Eight 八 bā
Nine 九 jiǔ


What other games do you like to play in Chinese?

Rock, paper, scissors in Chinese

Lately we've been playing rock, paper, scissors a lot with our 5 year old and our 3 year old. We taught them how to play it in Chinese, which has been fun because they've been able to play it with their Chinese grandparents and other family in China.

In Chinese, Rock Paper Scissors has the exact same hand signs, with the same rules. There are a few differences, however. In Chinese, they actually say "Scissors, Wrapping cloth, Hammer" (剪子包袱锤 Jiǎnzi bāofú chuí).

Comparing the differences again:

• In English, we say "rock", but in Chinese they say "hammer" 锤 
• In English we say "paper", but in Chinese they say "wrapping cloth" 包袱
• In English, we say "scissors" last, but in Chinese they say it first 

(EDIT -- Since publishing this, someone from a different part of China told me that they say 石头，剪子，布  Shítou, jiǎnzi, bù [rock, paper, cloth] -- I guess there are a few ways to play it in Chinese!)


Play this with your kids in Chinese, and the next time the see a native Chinese speaker they will be able to have lots of fun playing with them. Here's a picture summary:

Also, I thought I would show you all my 5 year old son's modification of rock paper scissors that he made up in Chinese.... :-)

Have fun playing!

Play Uno in Chinese

There are lots of games you probably already play with your kids that are easy to also do in Chinese. Uno is one of them. Uno is a great game because it teaches colors, numbers, and advanced concepts like skipping, reversing directions, and basic strategy. You will probably be surprised how easy it is to talk to your kids about Uno in Chinese and get everyone speaking in Chinese.

My kids playing Uno with their Chinese relatives

We are visiting family in China now, and we brought Uno. Our 5 year old son pulled it out and started explaining in Chinese to his extended family how to play. Within 20 minutes everyone was gathered around and having a great time playing. They had all never seen a children's game like this and all quickly caught on and joined in the fun.

For parents that don't speak much Chinese, here are the terms you need to know to play Uno in Chinese:

Yellow -- 黄色 huáng sè 
Red -- 红色 hóng sè 
Blue -- 蓝色 lán sè 
Green -- 绿色 lǜ sè 
Skip card -- 跳过卡 tiào guò kǎ
Reverse card --  回转卡 huí zhuǎi kǎ 
Wild Card -- 全能卡 quán néng kǎ 
Draw 2 cards -- 抓两张牌 zhuā liǎng zhāng pái 
Draw a card -- 抓一张牌 zhuā  yī zhāng pái 
Draw 4 cards -- 抓四张牌 zhuā sì zhāng pái 
It's your turn -- 轮到你 lún dào nǐ 
My turn -- 轮到我 lún dào wǒ 
I win -- 我赢了 wǒ yíng le
I lose -- 我输了wǒ shū le
Say Uno -- 说UNO shuō UNO

The following video is probably hard to follow, but I thought it was fun, showing my son directing everybody how to play UNO



If you don't have UNO, buy it here!


I hope you have fun playing with your kids! Let us know how it goes!