When Mom Learns Mandarin | Playful Chinese podcast Cathy Hirst is an educator trained in elementary education. More importantly, she is a veteran ex-pat with five third culture children. Cathy has lived in Bahrain and Asian countries including China. Her native language is English and her first foreign language learning experience is Spanish. Her curiosity in foreign languages has helped her to dive into the study of Mandarin when her husband landed a job in a
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Counting up and adding up What you do every day with your child adds up. It does not just apply to the target language but all learning. In the last month of the year, what do you do? Are you counting down or are you counting up? When you count up you add up all the things you have done with your child every day. When you count up you see the progress from Day 1
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How do you stay on the path of raising a bilingual child? The answer is simple. Daily practice. Do it every day. Rain or shine. Do it anyway even if you feel like taking a day off. Even if it gets challenging. Never stop. Some days you will have the flow with your child. Other days you will get stuck. You are not looking for perfection. Building up a language takes time. Patience. Sometimes you need to
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Back To School Back to school now has a new meaning. For some families, it is 100% distance learning but it is happening at home. For some families, it is physically going to school with masks on, and with social distance on the school ground. There are also some families who have the option to have a hybrid style. Summer 2020 had been quite a ride for parents and schools. You followed the admin emails, webinars, discussion
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The First Ten-Run Streak!!! The First Ten-Run Streak!! You and your child did it! You have been listening to a Mandarin learning album 10 days in a row. Your child has been watching a Chinese program for children 10 days in a row. You get the idea. This event has become a part of the daily activity. Parents are always the facilitator for the daily program. What I’ve seen in the families who have been coming
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Home Education Opportunity I ran into a six-year-old boy and his grandmother when I was waiting for my turn to go into a grocery store. The boy had a very cool mask on. I mentioned that to his grandmother who was also waiting in line. The boy heard me and started to tell me everything about his mask.What can we help children learn about the current situation? What can they do to connect with their grandparents who
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Wash Hands And Sing Two Tigers Song in Chinese With the current coronavirus situation, many kids and families are at home. Parents are working at home. Children are at home with or without online schooling. We are here to support families and educators. I have received kind notes from world language educators in China and Taiwan. They want to share with us what they have learned from what is also happening on their side of the world.
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Teach Kids Chinese – Everyday Chinese Play Time “Can we play this game again next time?” the elementary school-age girl told me at a Chinese Story Time. She widened her eyes with a big smile when she saw another storybook I had in my basket. She got more excited and told me what she wanted me to read that book next time. There were more big kids (9-12 years old) in the session. They were chatting about
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Time to Eat Everyday Chinese Expression The best way to acquire a language is to use the target language in everyday life. You can start with something as simple as the daily routine with your child. For little ones who have not started talking yet, they are listening to you. They hear you and they are learning about the sound around them. For the big kids, they are absorbing the new things around them and they have
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Talk with Your Child in Mandarin Even When You are New to the Chinese Language JJ is eager to help out his classmates when they work on their assignments in his Chinese class. Actually, many of his classmates would go to him for help. No one in JJ’s family speaks Mandarin. He is learning Mandarin as a world language at school. He is in the FLES program, Foreign Language in the Elementary School. It is a course
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