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Learning Chinese for Young children Including Preschoolers and Toddlers

Native Speakers for Teaching Chinese

On method for those households that don’t have a native speaker is hiring of a nanny who speaks Chinese. The NY Times had an article noting the increase in au pairs from China. It is also possible to arrange play dates with other children who are learning Chinese as well as finding a Chinese speaking babysitter. Local universities will often have spouses of Chinese working on Masters and PhD’s who are looking for extra income. Another option is finding a local nanny, and there are a number around. If you are in public service, please remember Zoe Baird on the requirements for legally hiring a nanny. Truth to be told, there is a large population of people in the US from China who don’t have papers who work as nannies, so be careful. Nannies are also taking care of your children, so picking the right person is extremely important, especially if they live with you. Friends of ours have gone through multiple nannies and it was not a good experience.

Online Programs for Teaching Chinese

There are also programs to expose Children to Chinese at a young age. I am not aware of any that are online for English speakers at this time. There are online programs for adults learning Chinese as well as native speakers.

Private Chinese Schools

Traditionally non-public Chinese Schools in the US start teaching children when they are old to sit still and copy characters. Most schools are still using traditional teaching rote teaching methods still used in Taiwan and China. For the most part with children in the US, it does not work due to culture classes. There is a huge amount of independence in children in the US and using boring teaching methods that do not capture the interest of the child so they want to go to school without a lot of parental pushing will end up in failure. With the child being forced to go to school and often treating it as just babysitting, and not learning Chinese.

An alternative is finding a school that uses more of a Montessori Method or what is used in ESL where there is a lot of conversation. I was pleasantly surprised by my daughter’s public school language teacher who spoke of using this method in the classroom, instead of the traditional focus on grammar in learning many foreign languages. At a young age, I would suggest programs that teach using a lot of singing and other fun activities.

Summer Camps

Going to a summer camp in a full immersion environment is a great way to learn Chinese! Each year ChildBook publishes the largest list I have found of Summer Chinese Programs. These range from weekend programs in the US to programs that include a boarding school to programs in China and Taiwan. I favor the full immersion process as a great way to Learn Chinese.

Chinese Learning Products

CD’s for Learning Chinese

CD’s come in two different types. One is products that are 100% Chinese of Chinese Children Songs or stories only in Chinese. Some products include a book of lyrics in Chinese, and other’s don’t. Other products are designed to teach Chinese and have a booklet with lyrics in English, Pinyin, and Chinese Characters. The teaching Chinese products are both from from the US (the majority) and a series from Singapore. The products for Teaching Chinese are bilingual, so the songs are sung in both Chinese and English. What I like about the CD’s is they give a parent a chance to be part of the process where they can Sing Happy Birthday in the Teach Me Chinese CD and Book in both English and Chinese (this series focuses on popular songs in Chinese and English). The other series have specially written songs for Teaching Chinese. The Teach Me Chinese Series has Teacher Guides available. The Sing & Learn Chinese CD & Book includes a track of the songs without words (like Karoke). Let’s Sing Chinese is a 3 product series from Singapore that has both familiar songs and new ones. 3 is the most I have seen of any series of Cd’s for Teaching Chinese to Children.

Video’s for Learning Chinese

Video’s such as from Mei Mei use more of a hands on approach teaching basic Chinese vocabulary and she currently has five video’s in her series. From the first one that teaches counting and parts of the body with songs through an approach that children love to later ones that progress such as her Play and Learn Chinese with Mei Mei where an actual Chinese Kindergarten is visited. What is great about this video is it gives your Child the chance to compare their experience and see the differences between their school and the one in the video. From lunch to PE to naps. To select the right video for your child, I recommend reading the reviews (both good and bad).

books for Learning Chinese

A great book for those just beginning to Learn Chinese is I Won’t Bite. It’s a touch and feel book that has Pinyin, Chinese Characters, and English. The challenge of using a book is often you need to know how to read Chinese, in order to teach from it. A fun book for exposing Children to Chinese Characters is Long Is A Dragon by Peggy Goldstein A selection of books for Learning Chinese Character

Software for Learning Chinese

Any day some Software should arrive that has been highly recommended by customers.

About the author

ChildBook.com for over 10 years has been helping Children in the United States learn more about Chinese Culture and Language. They do this by selling Chinese children\’s books, Music, and Video’s in both Chinese and English. ChildBook.com was started in 1998 due to the frustration of the owners in finding good Chinese Language Learning material to bring their daughter up bilingually.

Sesame Street – Big Bird in China $12.89 …

Together $6.99 Director Chen Kaige moves from the epic sweep of Farewell My Concubine to a small, intimate story about a boy and his father–but creates just as rich an emotional impact. Liu Cheng (Liu Peiqi) takes his 13-year-old son Xiaochung (Tang Yun) to Beijing in the hope of finding a teacher who will foster the boy’s talent on the violin. The adolescent boy soon becomes infatuated with one of their n…

Little Dragon Tales: Chinese Children’s Songs $14.52 Little Dragon Tales: Chinese Children’s Songs is a collection of 12 classic Chinese Children s songs with a modern twist. This exciting CD has been produced by the electronic music group The Shanghai Restoration Project and features the voices of the Yip s Canada Children s Choir….

Fantasia (Walt Disney’s Masterpiece) [VHS] $3.47 WALT DISNEY’S MASTERPIECE…

Warriors of Heaven and Earth $9.99 …

Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends – Thomas, Percy & The Dragon [VHS] $12.98 Brand New!!! VHS TAPE Sealed (as shown) “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends – Thomas, Percy & The Dragon [VHS]” Fast shipping..(PB-28)…

The Fifth Element (Remastered) [Blu-ray] $7.99 Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 07/17/2007 Run time: 123 minutes Rating: Pg13…

Annie (Special Anniversary edition) $4.67 The story of a plucky red-haired orphan girl who dreams of a life outside her dingy orphanage.Genre: Feature Film FamilyRating: PGRelease Date: 2-AUG-2005Media Type: DVD…

Up (Single-Disc Edition) $14.99 From the revolutionary minds of Pixar Animation Studios and the acclaimed director of MONSTERS, INC. comes a hilariously uplifting adventure where the sky is no longer the limit. Carl Fredricksen, a retired balloon salesman, is part rascal, part dreamer who is ready for his last chance at high-flying excitement. Tying thousands of balloons to his house, Carl sets off to the lost world of his child…

The Magic Brush The Magic Brush is a well-know Chinese classic children’s literature book written by famous children’s writer Hong Xuntao. The story is based on a popular folklore. In a village, there lived a boy named Ma Liang, whose peasant family was not able to send him to school. However, he still loved painting and worked very hard at it. One day, he got a brush,…

Chinese Ghost Stories $9.95 Chinese Ghost Stories is selection of the most entertaining traditional Chinese tales of the strange and fantastic. The perfect companion for readers seeking insights into the traditional Chinese world of ghosts, goblins and demons as well as anyone who just wants to feel a chill run down their spine on a dark, lonely night.

Tales of a Chinese Grandmother $14.95 The Chinese people cherish a folklore tradition as colorful and captivating as any in the world, but the stories themselves still are not as well-known to Western readers as those from The Brothers Grimm, Mother Goose, or Hans Christian Andersen. In this book, Frances Carpenter presents a collection of authentic Chinese folk tales. These thirty classic stories represent the best of the Chinese folk tradition and are told here by the character Lao Lao, the wizened grandmother of the nineteenth-century Ling household. A sampling from a long and proud tradition, these folk tales are sure to delight adults as well as children of all ages.

Reading Development in Chinese Children $140 This text reviews both similarities and unique cultural, linguistic, and script differences of Chinese relative to alphabetic reading, and even across Chinese regions. Chinese reading acquisition relies upon children's strongly developing analytic skills, as highlighted here. These 16 chapters present state-of-the-art research on diverse aspects of Chinese children's reading development. This edited volume presents research on Chinese children's reading development across Chinese societies. authors from China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan, among others, present the latest findings on how Chinese children learn to read. Reading acquisition in Chinese involves some parameters typically not encountered in some other orthographies, such as English. For example, Chinese readers in different regions might speak different, mutually unintelligible languages, be taught to read with or without the aid of a phonetic coding system, and learn different scripts. This book both implicitly and explicitly considers these and other contextual issues in relation to developmental and cognitive factors involved in Chinese literacy acquisition. One of the clearest themes to emerge from this volume is that, across regions, Chinese children, despite lack of explicit teaching of phonetic or semantic character components, learn to read largely by integrating visible print-sound and print-meaning connections. Rather than learning to read Chinese characters by rote, as is sometimes mistakenly believed, these children are analytic learners. Chapters in this book also cover such topics as Chinese children's reading comprehension, cognitive characteristics of good and poor readers, and reading strategies of bilingual and biscriptal readers. This book is a useful reference for anyone interested in understanding either developing or skilled reading of Chinese or for those interested in literacy learning across cultures.

Favourite Bible Stories for Children $4.99 Favourite Bible Stories for Children contains 15 well-known Bible Stories, retold by Maretha Maartens. It represents a variety of stories from both the Old and the New Testament. Each story also contains a short summary and prayer.

The Stories Children Tell $6.99 Whether presenting their versions of real events or making up tales of adventure and discovery, children enchant us with their stories. But the value of those stories goes beyond their charm. Storytelling is an essential form through which children interpret their own experiences and communicate their view of the world. Each narrative presented by a child is a brushstroke on an evolving self-portrait – a self-portrait the child can reflect on, refer to, and revise. In The Stories Children Tell , developmental psychologist Susan Engels examines the methods and meanings of children’s narratives. She offers a fascinating look at one of the most exciting areas in modern psychology and education. What is really going on when a child tells or writes a story? Engel’s insights into this provocative question are drawn from the latest research findings and dozens of actual children’s tales – compelling, funny, sometimes disturbing stories often of unexpected richness and beauty. In The Stories Children Tell , Susan Engel examines: the different functions of storytelling the way the storytelling process changes as children develop the contributions of parents and peers to storytelling the different types of stories children tell the development of a child’s narrative voice the best way of nurturing a child’s storytelling skills Throughout these discussions, Engel presents compelling evidence for what is perhaps her most intriguing idea: that in constructing stories, children are constructing themselves.