Free montessori video clip from expertvillage (by Tami Elliot: Tami Elliot is the owner and a teacher at the Northstar
Montessori Preschool.)

Preschool Language Activities in Montessori
Preschool Montessori Activities
Montessori Methods & Activities
Montessori Math Methods
Montessori Counting Methods
Montessori Language Activities
Montessori Sensory Activities
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My daughter loves to read Cinderella story, I’ve lost count how many times I’ve read that book to her. And every time I finished the first page (we read the Disney/Scholastic edition), she always ask what song Cinderella sings every morning. Today I asked her back, “what do you think she’s singing?” And she answered “Yi Er San Si Wu Liu Qi?” (= Wo de peng you zai na li?)

Now, that song was the first Chinese song she can sing completely by herself And that was within a few weeks after she attended her Chinese preschool class. Currently she already attended the class for 5 months (73.5 hrs). She only attend twice a week, 1.5-2 hrs each.

I’ve posted the list of her favorite Chinese songs here. She has not learn any new song from her school yet (I think they don’t do much singing during the hours she’s there), there was this one song about ‘ma yi’ that they sang while marching to the restroom, but since I’m not familiar with it and she still could not remember the complete verse, she just stopped singing to that tune Anybody know this song?

As far as the Chinese spoken language, sometimes she blurted out sentences in Chinese like “ni zuo shen me?” But she still speak mostly Indonesian. It’s interesting though that she would choose the easier to pronounce words to name things such as: She would always say ‘cao mei’ rather than ’strawberry’ and ‘xi gua’ instead of ‘watermelon’. But for other things, she use different languages at different times like ‘apple’ & ‘ping guo’

We borrowed ‘Signing Time’ dvds from the library as we begin signing with my son (currently 8.5 mo).
It’s amazing how fast my daughter is picking up new signs and she really like to use them now. We did sign with her when she was about 10 month old but stopped since she started talking. She still remember some of the signs we did and very eager to learn new signs.

Posted by:
Grace
www.earlylearning-chinese.com

Things have been very hectic lately.

Baby boy (now 8.5 mo) is now crawling well and get into more forbidden places / things. He often get frustrated as he learn to cruise and burst into tears.

Our days often flies very fast and even though we have less time reading books/craft, my daughter still learns a lot. She also learn how to entertain her baby brother. They fight over toys a lot but she’s learning to give him other toys to replace the one she snatched out of him

I’ve not update www.earlylearning-chinese.com as often as I think I should. I often felt guilty for not being ‘productive’, but hey… I’ve cooked, cleaned, dealt with potty training accidents, baby proofing our home, refereeing my kids all day long so I think I deserve a break.

So for those who use my Chinese flashcards / Chinese character worksheets / coloring page and feel that I’ve not update as frequently as expected, be patient. I’m still working on it

Posted by:

Grace

www.earlylearning-chinese.com

I have been working on http://www.earlylearning-chinese.com for 3 months now. I’ve been monitoring the website statistics to see what resources are useful and what keywords are used in search engines. Based on my observation now is time to reorganize the website, cleaning up the navigations etc. So for those waiting for new coloring pages, worksheets, flashcards, etc, please be patient. I am singlehandedly creating the resources and managing the website, while ‘homeschooling’ a very active preschooler (27 month old) and a beginning to crawl infant (7 months).

I’m planning to add:

• Product reviews.
  Learning chinese DVDs / softwares / CDs for toddler, preschooler reviews
• Local resources directory (Santa Clara County, CA)
  I would love to add more resources directory but no time to look So for those who like to list their resources or share information, feel free to join our Yahoo! group : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/earlylearningchinese/
  
• Free Chinese Language Homeschooling Resources
  Lesson plans, Vocabulary List, Teaching tips

Please feel free to leave comments to this post to give me your suggestions and opinions.

Posted by: Grace
http://www.earlylearning-chinese.com

My daughter is almost 27 month old. Her current favorite Chinese song is ‘wo de peng you zai na li’ (where’s my friend). If we ask her to sing, (or sometimes she will start singing without being asked) she will always sing this song. She know all the words and can already pronounce them correctly.

Her other favorite Chinese songs previously are:

• Zhao hao peng you (Looking for a good friends)
• Ba Luo bo (Pull the Carrot)
• Hua Xiao Chuan (Row Your Boat) – chinese version of Row-row your boat
• Jiao You (Take a walk)
• Da Xiang (Elephant)
• Yi Shan Yi Shan Liang Jing Jing (Twinkle-twinkle Little Stars)
• Zao Fei Ji (Make Airplane)
• Ya Zi (Ducks)

Most of the songs are action songs which explain why toddlers like them so much. The others are familiar lullaby and the elephant song became a favorite since we have a huge elephant doll and she like to ride the elephant

I define favorite songs as those which she likes to sing (without being asked) while walking outdoor or in the car or while playing with her toys.

My main website www.earlylearning-chinese.com/songs.html has many more children chinese song lyrics and I’ll be adding more lyrics (and mp3 tunes in the future), so check us regularly or sign up for our newsletter or subscribe to this blog’s RSS.

Posted by: Grace
www.earlylearning-chinese.com

Children songs in Chinese is a great way to introduce Chinese language to our children. We can start singing to them since they are baby. Just the same way as we sing all the lullabies and chant all those English rhymes to our babies / toddler to promote early literacy.

I didn’t know any Chinese songs at all before we enrolled our daughter to a music class at our community center. Now I know a lot of them and just want to share it with you

Of course singing songs alone is not enough to learn a new language, but it’s a start. My website :www.earlylearning-chinese.com has the lyrics to traditional children songs in mandarin. Recent addition include vocabulary list, tips, and links to other resources.

Coming up would be ‘alphabet book’. As a Chinese learner myself (along with my children), I often don’t know what the Chinese words for common things we read in our English alphabet book. If I know the Chinese word for them, I don’t know how to read/write the Chinese characters .

So I plan to come with vocab list for quick lookup for parents like me and some printable Chinese character for activity to do with our children (read: my daughter). Thinking of just providing the character and let her either coloring, drawing or decorating with images we could find from old magazines/online/stickers (my daughter loves stickers!!!)

Posted by: Grace
www.earlylearning-chinese.com

Should we teach sign language to our baby or toddler? I believe we should.

I don’t mean teaching them to be proficient in sign language as those who can’t speak. But I believe baby sign language is important skill to teach babies for the following reasons.

• It make your baby and toddler LESS WHINY.

If they can sign to us when they want more milk or more cookies, it definitely reduce the amount of whining and screaming.

• RICHER VOCABULARY by 2 year of age.

Remember the myth that teaching more than one language to your child could cause delay in language development? It’s NOT TRUE at all.
My daughter is learning three languages (mandarin Chinese, English, Indonesian) and basic sign language (milk, more, all gone, etc) and she started talking quite early. At 18 months, she could speak 25 words with correct pronunciation, 50 words (more like consistent sound associated with specific meaning), and understood many more words. This is more than the expected normal speech development standard.

• It is FUN TO LEARN.

We don’t teach our daughter any more sign language since she started talking. But when Sesame Street show sign language and I teach my daughter to do them again at later time, we always have good time trying to get the sign right (26 month old, still having little problem with complicated finger signs)

• Happy kid!

She is having fun communicating with her parents and being able to communicate reduce her frustration level.

So if you’re thinking about teaching sign language in addition to raising bilingual or trilingual children, by all means GO AHEAD and HAVE FUN.

Posted by: Grace
www.earlylearning-chinese.com

My husband and I are not a Chinese native speaker but we introduced Chinese language to our children since they are babies. The following is a quote from an article from the Multilingual Children’s Association:

Not speaking perfectly and occasionally being at a loss of words turn out to really be not problems at all. Here’s why:

When baby is small, the language is very simple; as he grows, your own language will grow alongside him. You will have plenty of time to brush up and to maybe take a refresher class or two.

Native speakers make mistakes too, so don’t even worry about it. Your mistakes will be ‘overruled’ the amount of exposure your child gets to the language. The same is true for pronunciation. How many different accents exist even within one single language?

You’ll always be able to find native speakers to supplement your own efforts. You can or plan a few trips to the country for full immersion which will be good for both of your language skills.

My Chinese vocabulary has indeed grow alongside with my daughter. I took Chinese lessons when I was in primary school age and never really use the language afterwards. So I almost forgot everything. But now I start to remember what I’ve learned and learn more words as I read Chinese children books or watch Chinese programs with my daughter.

So, what if we can’t keep up with the Chinese learning? I think no effort will be wasted. As my own experience, even though I forget a lot of Chinese characters and words I learned during my childhood, but at least I know some basic Chinese language. I can still understand simple conversation in Chinese. I can read some frequently used Chinese characters. I know what are radicals, I know how to count number of strokes in the Chinese characters, so I can still look up the characters in Chinese dictionary.

Posted by: Grace
www.earlylearning-chinese.com

One of the first things to teach to babies is naming body parts, whether it is in Mandarin, English or any other language.

Classic, what we do is naming the body part as we play with our babies, change diaper, bathe them, or massage them.
Playing ‘Simon says’ also has been our favorite way to revise the name of body part. We do this almost everyday especially with our 2 yr old, during changing diaper.

Definitely MUST do this when we change poopy diaper Remember to ask her/him to point to the UPPER part of the body
We always ask: Simon says – touch your eyes! ; Ni de er duo zai na li ? ; bi zi ? and so on

SING head and shoulder, knees, and toes. We sing it in three languages Indonesian, Chinese, English.

Posted by: Grace
Early Learning Chinese.com

Song lyrics
Coloring pages
Flashcards

First Mandarin immersion middle school graduation in Cupertino and the launch of similar program in Palo Alto.

Read the news at San Jose Mercury News