Useful website for Chinese teaching

 

It is not easy to find ideas and worksheets online in teaching Chinese language. This may because most of the Chinese parents prefer to buy workbooks from bookstore rather than prepare themselves as what Western countries did. Home schooling seems not that common in Malaysia, most of my friends decided to send their kids to nursery school or kindergarten since age of three. I am very impressed on homeschooling or tot school in Western Countries. Kids are not force to study but enjoy to study.. no pressure in doing home works, interesting study methods and materials. I do appreciate the way they teach English, Geography, Bible study, Art, Music, etc, but still feel that mathematic subject are better to teach in Chinese as what I learned in my school time.

There are not much materials or printout available online for Chinese and Mathematic (in Chinese)subjects, but gladly found some website that are quite useful and interesting:

1. 学乐 （小学华文教材数码教学资源）

http://xuele.moe.edu.sg/xuele/slot/u107/index.html

Created by Singapore’s Ministry of Education, Chinese lessons according to their primary and secondary school syllabus. Having articles and songs which you can choose to read for you or read it yourself.

2. e知识网

http://www.ezhishi.net/index.asp

Also according to Singapore syllabus.This is a online study website that encouraging home based learning, provide supplement study materials. If you want to have full access then you will need to pay some price, however there is free trial that allow you to view and access part of the materials. It is more computer based study, utilising animations as  teaching tools.

It looks good, however, I personally do not hope my kid put too much time in front of the computer, especially when she is still a toddler, and animations can be improved.

3. 教育资源吧

http://www.edu888.net/

Lots of teaching plan and materials on teaching all sorts of subjects and animations of stories and words writing. There are many advertisements in the website, so have to be patient in searching for the download button.

4. 悟空识字

http://gongfubb.com/

Learning Chinese words in interesting and fun ways. Available as Ipad Apps and is totally free of charge. Love the animations .. looks pretty cute and fun. ^_^

5. 康乐华小爱心图书馆 & SJK(C) Peay Min

http://e-library-sjkctc.weebly.com/kssr.html

http://peaymin.blogspot.com/2010/08/1-bahasa-cina-i-httpwww.html

These are two Malaysia primary school website. In the link above, it contains lots of useful links but some links are no longer available.

6. 儿童文化馆

http://children.moc.gov.tw/garden/

This website is to promote arts and culture to children, provide some lovely pictures books to read online (in animation) and games. Highly recommended

Two or More Languages in Early Childhood

I was once wondering whether I should teach Debo bilingual or just simply one language… and what I found from books and websites are convincing me that absolutely no problem !! Well, I am a Malaysian, a multiracial country with multi languages and cultural, and looking back our childhood, my mother tongue is Cantonese, but I know how to read and speak Mandarin, English and Malay when I was a child…

So, what are the most important languages in the world? Search in google, you can find lots of websites rating for it, and what I have concluded the top languages in majority as below (listed in random order):

• English
• Mandarin
• Spanish
• French
• Russian
• Arabic
• Japanese
• Portuguese
• German
• Hindi

We can teach our baby for up to four languages, or even more depending on the child, parents and environment. According to Glenn Doman, baby are linguistic genius as their brain are ready to absorbs as much knowledge as they get to receive. As Doman’s theory, golden age for kids to learn are from 0 to 3 years old, second period from 3 to 6 years old and after 6 years old the learning speed will gradually slowing down. This is why usually difficult for adult to learn a new foreign language than a kid. Doman’s Flash card is a very good way in teaching children words and knowledge. By flashing cards, child can memorize words in just few times of flashing.

I started using Doman’s Flash card when Debo age about 6 months, and she did able to point out the correct cards when I asked her…. been stopped for sometimes currently… yeah.. a bit lazy …Ooppps… is a bit busy in preparing others study materials. However, I do find that Debo can learn words quickly. Now she is about 22 months old and able to recognize all alphabets and read out alphabets from A to Q… while R to Z still in progress ~~  for Chinese words, recently I show her a sentence card with word “爸爸” (daddy), and surprise me that Debo called out “Ba Ba” (how she call her daddy) !!

For Debo, currently my hubby and I speak 3 languages with her: English, Mandarin and Cantonese. These three are the major language in our house, but there are still some languages can be find at our environment where Debo can learn by listening: sometimes parent-in-law speak in Hokkien, I play kids songs including: France, Germany, Japanese and of course Chinese(Mandarin) and English kids songs randomly. For others languages, I am not going to emphasize in teaching but just to create an environment for Debo to “familiar” by listening, so she will be able to master it rapidly. Maybe will teach foreign languages after Debo able to handle well basic level of English and Chinese language.

Howsoever, words of God are the most important “language” to learn for kids since they are born, thus we must not forget to include Bible study in their learning schedule… ^_^

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.(Proverbs 9:10)
敬畏耶和華是智慧的開端, 認識至聖者便是聰明 (箴言9:10)



Resources:
http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/earlychild.html
http://linguistlist.org/ask-ling/biling.cfm#twolangs
http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/reprints/weber/rep-weber.htm
http://www2.ignatius.edu/FACULTY/TURNER/languages.htm
http://www.altalang.com/beyond-words/2008/10/27/the-10-most-useful-languages-to-learn/
http://blog.dinolingo.com/2011/05/15/doman-glenn-children-are-linguistic-geniuses/
http://parenting.stackexchange.com/questions/67/what-are-some-strategies-for-raising-a-bilingual-child