teaching Chinese to (little) children..

Some games he might enjoy http://www.mandarama.com/games/

thanks MMKY - good idea.

thanks mrdtait, I will definitely try it out!

When teaching the characters to little kids, I like to start with pictographic characters that are easy to discern and progress to adding parts. For example: 人 looks like a person, 大 looks like a person stretching out their arms to indicate big, 天 a line above the person to indicate what is above a person: the sky. 木，林， 森 to show the progression from tree or wood to woods to forest. 本 has a line at the bottom part of a tree for root, which is the bottom part of the tree. etc. Kids can pick up on this very fast, and its very satisfying to be picking up things fast.

Obitoddkenobi: I really like your lesson above, but why did you stop there? I was hoping you'd go through and explain at least a few thousand more. :u) Lydia: How old is the kid you'll be teaching? Regardless of his age, one way to elicit a lot of language is to go on field trips with him... the park, museum, video arcade, shopping mall, whatever. Act as his Chinese speaking tourguide, pointing out names/vocabulary he might not know, just start conversations with things that you see him reacting to... kids really open up when you get them out into their community. Also, how about cooking/baking? Can get a recipe and review the vocabulary of the ingredients... take a trip to the supermarket/Asian market... work on numbers/measurement/time vocab when you're back in the kitchen... conclude the lesson by having a little dinner party where you can review Chinese dinner etiquette and other interesting cultural tidbits.

mrdtait Hey, thanks a bunch. That site is great. Really cute games and engaging for a child. I will try it out on my grade school kids.

Somehow I think kids would love the characters so I would think some would be appropriate. I have always wondered how this is taught in Chinese elementary schools. How many characters do they learn by the end of high school? In which grade do they begin teaching memorization of characters and in what grade does it stop? How many characters do they learn per year or per week? Do they ever back up and review or do the characters learned each year overlap? Does anybody know? I would imagine at some point this stops and characters after this point are absorbed indirectly through other lessons. How nice it would have been to learn this way at such a young age. Stuff just sticks at that age.

I think what you can do is if he is enjoying learning the language you could get out some paint brushes and pain and try to do some calligraphy with him. Actually I would love to do that myself!

That should say paint not pain

Some more specific activities for a 7 yr. old boy: art projects would be good. Crayons/paint/markers could teach him colors, wet/dry, shapes, etc in addition to the calligraphy which has already been nicely suggested above. The game "Memory" with picture card pairs of everyday objects is fabulous for language. So is picture card bingo, though you might need an extra player. Or how about getting on the floor and playing with matchbox cars? (fast/slow, stop/go, up/down, parts of vehicle, destinations, you could go on and on and on). If you could get your hands on some Chinese storybooks aimed at the primer level you'd be set. I'm eagerly awaiting a response to RJB's questions about character acquisition as well, even though the answers may be disheartening... I have a feeling the pace of learning for a school aged girl/boy in China is probably 100x brisker than my own! Perhaps these questions should be re-posted under a different title so it doesn't get overlooked in this thread.

thanks obi & mandomikey! the boy is 7 years old. I assume he has just learned how to write, so i don't want to burden him with the Chinese writing system, exciting as it may be. first I want to focus on spoken language: basic words and sentences thanks for the great tips!