Don't be mistaken, I am neither from a Chinese education background (albeit I was offered the opportunity but I was a die-hard English "helipcopter" then who did not mind studying Chinese as a second language to become bilingual) nor am I a Buddhist.  Why I mention Buddhist?  This is because some Buddhist organisations are distributing these books for free.

My first encounter with this was when I heard my child reciting the verses(to me was yet another rhyming jingle then)  from one of her enrichment classes.  It did not occur to me how interesting these verses were until one day, I really perked up my ears to listen carefully to what she was saying.

Leaning Chinese will never be boring. The simple flashcards are not only use for recognition of chinese character, but also can use in different way, such as
reviewing words learnt, making words & sentence, practice child's math skill (multiplication, addition, substration).

I am using "Zi Bao Bao" flashcard. Normally the lower primary students will be required to purchase.

1. I ask my child to lay the cards on the table in rows. She has to read the card when she display it.

2. once she has done, she needs to calculate how many cards in each row and how many rows. e.g. 7 cards in each row, there were 3 rows.
so she will use multiplication to calculate the total. 7x3=21cards

3. We start to play game. Each person can collect the cards whenever she/he can match two cards or more card to create words or sentence or idoms. Whoever has the more cards gathered wins the game. (addition, substraction will be needed in this case).

My girl loves to play this game with me. In the meantime, I also temporarily put down my serious/fierce face during study time, and enjoy my bonding time with her too.

现代的小孩可说是幸福既不幸福.  怎么说呢?  幸福呢是因为市场上有林林种种超好的幼儿培训材料,不幸福的地方就是缺乏宝贵的时间.  不是上补习班就是父母忙着工作. 

今天我要推荐的这系列书本,适合幼儿3至6岁,可是这需要父母阅读给他们听. 虽然我的孩子已经算是超龄了可是这系列的故事还是给她带来了无穷的乐趣.   这系列里面包括了30本书,有的故事内容简单却很有意义.

I have received some chinese books of  学前阅读计划 series from my ex-colleague.

Since I have 2 series of it, so I make use of it to teach my kids chinese by using this reader which is similar to Peter & Jane series. Wow... it is really good! I can see big improvement in my kids who obviously face problems in recognising chinese words!

I was encouraged to buy the further series for my kids. From the link, I noticed there are actually 5 series for this reader. Each series has 8 books. After finishing all the 5 series, children are exposed to 1200 words.

My boy was poor in MT oral at first.  Here's what I did to improve his oral:

1. Speak to him in MT.
2. Read a story in MT.
3. Expect him to speak to you in MT.
4. Get him to read a MT story aloud to you everyday.

Practice makes perfect.  The only way to improve our speech is to speak MT on a daily basis.  I will set aside half an hour everyday to read a MT story to my children. I will then ask them to read the story aloud to me. From there, they can learn to recognise new words, the correct pronounciation and build up their confidence.

Children tend to shun subjects that they are least competent in. By getting them to read aloud to you in MT gives you the chance to correct their pronounciation and at the same time, as day goes by, you will realise that your child will be more competent in his oral skills.

I have been looking for good resources to teach Chinese at home. A few days ago, I just received my books from www.dangdang.com. The following books are the best resources for teaching Chinese at home!

This series of 7 books are not available in Singapore. I ordered them directly from dangdang. Here is the link to the books: 四五快读

I highly recommend these books to parents who are:

1. Very passionate to teach their kids at home

2. Quite good in Chinese, at least able to read and understand Chinese newspapers

Do your child have any difficult trying to remember certain chinese words? Actually, a lot of chinese characters are derived from shapes and appearances of objects. It is easlier to associating them with actual form of these objects, making the learning fun and interesting.

I bought these series of books called 字形画 from popular (King of the chinese series published by Arts publishing of singapore pte ltd.) . It helps my child to recognized most commonly used words in her kindergarten age. In this book series (total 3 books), it has about 120 modern pictographic characters- character pictures that are fun to look at the easy to remember.