Listen, Watch & Sing !

I have decided to start a monthly linky to share my resources in exposing Xav to learn Chinese, the activities which I have been doing with him. If you do have any activities, classes, resources, methods used to expose your little ones to start learning Chinese, please do add your links !

To note, I am not an educator nor an expert in teaching Chinese, I am just a mom who is looking around for ideas and trying my best to expose my kids. Should you feel that there is any point that needs improvement, I am open for any feedback !

To start with, since Xav was a baby, I told myself, he will be exposed and be learning English first, at least for the first three years for fear that he might be confused if he learns both languages together. Hence, our main communication starts with baby sign language and speaking to him in English.

After the age of one, I normally do not allow him to watch television programmes unnecessarily. Only when I'm cooking in the kitchen, I will play the vcds as shown below for him to watch and listen to the songs.

As he reached the age of 2, I bought the Wink to Learn DVDS for Xav for exposing him to word recognition. I find it pretty good though as it shows the words spoken in Mandarin coupled with beautiful real-life images to relate the words to the children.

The DVDs consist of 2 cycles of flashcards (pictures/video, words) and a musical reward at the end after the whole cycle.

Learning Chinese can be dry but for little children, I believe in learning through the fun way of singing and dancing. So below is the collection of Sing to Learn Chinese DVD which has a collection of Children's songs with animated animals.

To train his memory, Xav was also exposed to reciting the Three Character Classic at the age of 3. By 3.5 yrs to the age of 4. He was able to recite the Three Character Classic without the audio resources.

The student's code of conduct was introduced to him when he was about 4.5 years old.

What I like about the discs shown below are the tunes are very catchy and Xav easily got the tune and could recite in no time ! These are easily available at popular bookstores. Look for the "Shuo Shuo Chang Chang" series. At times, there may be a mini screen playing the samples of these discs.

The above are basically the audio resources which I first exposed Xav to What and how did you start your little ones with ? Feel free to share and link up with my monthly linky :