Kids Learn Chinese Pinyin dvd set

Originally submitted at Childbook.com

 

Excellent intro to Chinese phonics!

By Taotao’s Mom from Montreal, Quebec, Canada on 1/26/2011

5out of 5

Pros: Clear teaching style, Familiar characters, Entertaining, Repetition of pinyin song, Engaging, Live action scenarios

Cons: A few errors (cards,booklet)

Best Uses: 1-4 grade, Learn pinyin, Learn tones, Everyone, Preschoolers, Education

Describe Yourself: Single mom, Adoptive mom, Mom to preschooler, Elementary chineselearner

Kids Learn Chinese Pinyin dvd bundle

I was hesitant to buy this dvd set as I didn’t want to confuse my son in learning his letter sounds (he knows them pretty well in English, and as he goes to school in French here in Quebec, he is learning them again in French), but I did, since I think that 5 yrs old is a great age to learn the fundamentals of reading in any language.

I was very pleased with this set which has the same excellent quality as the Baby Learns Chinese (both 3-dvd sets). Fortunately in English they titled it “Kids Learn Chinese Pinyin” though in Chinese it still says “Baobao xue han yu” (Baby learns chinese), as by the time kids are ready to be learning to read letters they are usually old enough to be turned off by “baby” products.

The animated characters are a bit babyish for older kids, but my son is familiar with them so they were a good entry point for his interest. He also knows and loves the ABC song in english and french, so the fact that they use the same melody for the pinyin beginning sounds song, and then the pinyin endings song both attracted him and frustrated him (since he didn’t know the words).

The dvds are set up so that each dvd shows a section of the pinyin beginning sounds and ending sounds. All three dvds together cover all the sounds. Each section starts by introducing some sounds, which are said by the animated characters and then real life children, while we see the letters on the screen. One can put simplified characters or traditional characters and chose to put english subtitles or not.

After introducing the lesson’s sounds, they sing the pinyin song, like the abc song we know. This is great, in that we sing it over and over many times as we go through all 3 dvds (6 lessons). My only complaint is that they only show the letters AS they say them, instead of having a whole line of text, or the whole song, written on screen. So it is really hard to sing along. There is an included text booklet with each dvd, which we use as a guide, but it is hard to watch a screen AND read a booklet concurrently. My son finds it frustrating, so I printed up a large page with the pinyin letters in order so he can look at the lyrics as he sings. I find that is one drawback to their method.

After the song, we have a little role-playing scenario, ie getting up in the morning and leaving for school, meeting a family in the playground and asking names and ages, shopping for food with daddy, buying an ice cream cone… the children are played by preschoolers and the parents are played by children perhaps 7-9 yrs old. This is very engaging for my son, and it puts the words, and the sounds he is learning, into a very realistic context with normal sentences. This is excellent since many learning materials use words or sentences with no conversational context.

We get the little drama once, then we get it broken down word by word, sounding out the pinyin, then we get it again. This really aids in comprehension, and learning to pronounce the written pinyin makes much more sense than just a spelling test drill.

The scenarios chosen are good for children’s interest: going to school, buying ice cream, going to the playground. Even so, this is a dvd my son watches together with me (I am also learning Chinese) rather than choosing to watch on his own, as it really is more of a school-textbook like learning material than entertainment like the River Dragon King, Let’s Go Guang or Ping Ping and Walker dvds. But it really does teach a LOT more chinese, not just a smattering of words and phrases within a basically english story.

The only drawbacks I have found is a spelling mistake on the flashcards (which my son really likes btw) and sometimes the text booklet doesn’t match the dvd’s audio exactly.

I really recommend this series for parents whose children are beginning to understand ABCs and reading.

(legalese)

Tchoupi in Chinese!

Today, through following a comment (yay comment subscriptions) for asiamommy.com’s post on ereadbooks and touch reading pens, I discovered both a shopping site and a wonderful new blog I was unaware of by a mother named Lina Dickson who is raising her daughter in English and her native Chinese. Here’s her blog post on the Touch Reading Pen which I have blogged about.

Her blog Best4Future: Bringing up Baby Bilingual is a combo of mommy blog about her daughter, parenting tips, language tips, product reviews and even language lessons! She has little videos that will teach you how to say Snow Peas, spinach, sweet potatoes and strawberries and other fruits and vegetables in Chinese. It seems to be an ongoing thing. Much to explore. Her blog is added to my blogroll at the right.

In her shop, she offers the eReadbook pens and books, but also a multitude of other books, VCDs and DVDs. There I discovered Tchoupi and Doudou books in Chinese to my surprise. As we live in Quebec, a francophone majority province, Tchoupi (pronounced Chewpy, like Happy) and his little stuffed pal Doudou (Doodoo, like “do the dishes” do) are well-known television/animated dvd characters here. I like that their french is very simple and clear to understand, especially when my son was just starting to learn it, and the stories very simple, cute and child-friendly. I hadn’t heard of Tchoupi outside of French media, which was why I was so surprised to hear of them in Chinese.

But as Lina blogs, there are actually 48!! little Tchoupi books translated into Chinese characters. The stories seem to be as simple and charming in Chinese, and looking at the page details that are posted in the Best4Future shop, I can almost read them without a dictionary (almost!)… common high frequency characters. There is no pinyin that I can see, so they wouldn’t be so great for those f you who cannot read simple characters yet, or who cannot look up characters by radical and stroke order in a dictionary.

But for those who can, they would be lovely little stories about a preschool child’s life, preoccupations, adventures and tribulations. Not as formulaic as Dora, not too wild and crazy or action oriented, not so tied into merchandise as Disney and Strawberry Shortcake and other translated offerings. And not so moralistic (though with good values and life lessons) as many Chinese children’s tales. I haven’t read them all, but I’d definitely go on a limb and guess they are books I’d like in my home.

Very excited to find these, and also the Best4Future blog and learning materials.

The Tchoupi books are $4.99 each, and now is the time to get them!
There are two more days left to her Holiday Sale: Save an EXTRA 15% on EVERYTHING (all regular and on sale books & DVDs) between Jan 1 – Jan 15, 2011. Use the code: newyear15 when you check out.

Enjoy!

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 4,800 times in 2010. That’s about 12 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 38 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 97 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 6mb. That’s about 2 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was April 27th with 69 views. The most popular post that day was Practice your reading with Chinese Readers!.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were forum.brillkids.com, cluttergirl.typepad.com, chinese-forums.com, haomama.us, and WordPress Dashboard.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for ereadbook, chinese reading practice, wenjonggal, readingeggs, and e-readbook.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Practice your reading with Chinese Readers! February 2010
8 comments

2

eReadbook Touch-Reading Pen February 2010
11 comments

3

Hatching a reader with ReadingEggs January 2010
6 comments

4

Liang zhi Laohu: Two Tigers song January 2010
2 comments

5

Free 4-wk Trial of ReadingEggs phonics April 2010
4 comments

Maintaining bilingualism in adopted kids

Hi!
Long time no write. Just super very busy. Very super busy.

But I was pointed to this article Raising a Bilingual Child in Adoptive Families online magazine. Most of it is just reminders for me. But also reminders that my child has jumped from one group to another since August.

Big Boy is no longer at home all day with mommy except for a couple days of daycare. We used to do a lot of Chinese play together, hide and seek, Kingka game, watch Dora in Chinese etc. And now we just have a few hours in the evenings and weekends. So his Chinese exposure has really tapered off.

Also at now five years old, he has gone out of the toddler age where I can really just plop him in front of any dvd and he is thrilled. He actively uses the dvd player himself now and doesn’t have to rely on me to change the language to whichever he wishes to hear. He does bargain a bit: “… but will you let me watch another dvd if it is Chinese?”… “Yes!”… but I have to watch he doesn’t switch it to English when I’m not watching. Many of our materials have alternative English or Mandarin soundtracks (vs language learning dvds like Mei Mei, The River Dragon King, Walker and Ping Ping where the dvd is in English and the Chinese is words and phrases integrated into the English). I am happy to report that he does voluntarily chose Chinese language learning dvds out of our dvd library. And I keep adding new dvds to keep his interest fresh.

But I can no longer “force” him to listen to me read Chinese books out loud badly. And we have lost our weekly Chinese native speaker friend, whose current work schedule doesn’t allow for so much extra engagement.

Baby Learns Chinese Phonics bundle

On the other hand, he is coming of an age to be able to formally teach a language or go into language learning classes. I have bought the Baby Learns Chinese (sort of a misnomer for phonics program!) Phonics dvds for him for Christmas: I think he is ready now that he knows his ABC in English and French and has a good basic understanding of letter sounds from ReadingEggs.com Though I do have some concerns that the different sounds for letters in pinyin phonetics and English phonetics might confuse him (see previous post).

I am thinking that now he may be of an age to start Saturday Chinese Class… which is a Chinese community offering here. I believe the classes may be French/Chinese so would be more appropriate now that his French has improved exponentially with five day a week French preschool. He seems to be doing very well academically (vs behaviourally!) in the total francophone learning environment. So taking him to a Saturday Chinese Class for french speaking students might work now. Though I am not sure I want to add more school days to the life of a boy who has just just turned five. (or to lose my weekend relax time!) I’ll look into it.

But I do have to recognize that his interests and needs are evolving as he gets older and enters “school age” vs “preschool” (hah! I guess that is a funny thing to say about a kid who is officially a “preschool student”… an oxymoron when you think about it!)

So, for us, I read this article with a “trilingual” eye, as our bilingual needs are already taken care of. We are anglophone, living in a mostly English dominant continent, with anglophone extended family and friends. Living in a francophone environment, with preschool, daycare, friends and neighbors dominantly french.

How are you doing with a second or third language? How are you dealing with changing language needs as your child changes from baby to toddler, from toddler to preschooler, from preschooler to school age?

Some Montreal resources:

Montreal Chinese School: seems to be traditional characters, Sunday mornings or afternoons. Also seems to be geared towards kids whose first language is Mandarin.

JiaHua School of Montreal: They do have classes for children whose first language is not Mandarin, with the goal of integrating them into the regular Chinese classes with Mandarin speaking students, on Saturdays, starting at age 5.

McGill Playgroup for adopted Chinese Children I have friends who go to this who like it, though I think it is just a bit of a fun brush against their culture rather than real language learning.

Multilingual phonetics?

Well, Big Boy has been using http://readingeggs.com to learn his phonics and learn to read since January… ten months now. He is still enjoying it and often surprises me what he can sound out if he takes the time. Often he jumps the gun and thinks he knows a word once he has sounded out the first consonant or two (ie he clicked “Blue” when he was supposed to click on “Black” in a recent online test) but he is still pretty consistent about hearing a word, or looking at a word, and sounding out what letter of the alphabet it starts with.

Just to say where he is at… he will be five in about three weeks.

Now, I wanted to get him started on phonics in English before he entered school (he entered pre-kindergarten this September in French, but they are only doing reading readiness: they start phonics and writing letters in Kindergarten I believe, and actually sounding out the multiple dipthongs in French, and learning to read in Grade One). It is his first language, his strongest language, which he uses at home. And I wanted him to have a solid foundation of the idea that letters make sounds, and sounds together make words in his first language, before being thrown into second language reading.

Especially since French has so many different phonetic combinations than English. Thibault. Tetreault. Eau. And so many ways of writing the same sounds: parlez, parlé, parler, parlait, parlais… Even the francophones have a challenge, and I see a lot of spelling mistakes that end up being grammar mistakes (Parlez! is an order to speak. Parlé is past tense. Parler is infinitive. Parlais is ongoing past tense…) My favorite is Fermez magasin… which means “Close the store!” when the mean “Magasin fermé” “The store is closed”.

So, I think we are doing great. Big Boy’s spontaneous spoken French has grown in leaps and bounds with 5 day a week full time school and daycare (he has preschool in the mornings, and then lunch and afternoons in the day care service at school), and along with it his French comprehension. His English speaking has improved with speech therapy (more about that later), and I do believe his knowledge of correct phonetics from ReadingEggs has helped as well. And his comprehension of the link between the spoken and written sound is quite solid, even if he cannot sound out every word.

So… the reason for this post? The dvd series Baby Learns Chinese, which we really enjoy for its clear images, on screen Doman-based use of written characters, and its engaging scenarios, has put out a new Chinese phonetics series. This is designed to help children who up to now have just seen characters, learning them mostly by shape association, learn pinyin. Pinyin is basically the method of using Roman letters to write Chinese sounds and syllables, especially paired with simplified Chinese characters on the mainland. When we see Chinese written as ” Wo yao chi dongxi.”, it is pinyin vs characters. Pinyin is used in Chinese schools along with characters as it helps a child be able to pronounce words that they know the sound of (we are assuming a child who can understand and speak spoken Chinese), as the characters themselves, until they are memorized, give very few clues. Also, Chinese English dictionaries have all the Chinese words listed in alphabetical order by pinyin spelling.

It is possible to look up Chinese characters by radical and stroke order, but it is a long and drawn out process! A necessary process to find unknown characters’ meanings, but if you have the pinyin of an unknown character, you can zip straight to the meaning!

The new 3-dvd series looks great, and would tie in with Big Boy’s ongoing phonics work in English. HOWEVER, not ALL the letters of the alphabet have the same sound in Chinese as in English. The short “e” sound is different for instance. The “r” sound is pronounced with the tongue tip on the upper center palate, rather than with round lips like in English. The sound for zh is new: pronounced much like J in Jack. U works much like W: huang is pronounced hwang.

 

So, this set is what a Chinese child of his age would be learning pinyin phonics from… the children shown are 4-6 yrs old, the play and concepts are very preschooler to grade 1 friendly. It is too old for a 3 yr old, and too young for a grade 2 I would think… though even an adult would learn a lot if they are studying Chinese, I suspect they’d rather have something less cutesie and centered around playing house and dress-up! And certainly not something called BABY learns Chinese!

Kids Learn Chinese Phonics at Childbook

So, do I get it now when he loves the Baby Learns Chinese series? Or do I risk mixing up his phonics learning, when he is learning in English, AND learning vocab, grammar, comprehension and pronunciation aurally in French? Do I start it in a year, when it might be mixing up his French phonics learning in school? Or do I just think, well, he hasn’t mixed up the spoken languages, why would he mix up the written/phonetic ones?

Any ideas? Experiences with your own children? Advice?

Thanks so much!

Online Auction to help Chinese Orphans

Hi! I support this organization, Love Without Boundaries, which does wonderful work in China. They were one of the groups who set up aid specifically for children when there was that earthquake that saw so many schools collapse when government buildings stayed standing. They do tons of medical care for children: heart operations, cleft lip operations (like Big Boy) etc that make a huge difference in the children’s lives, or even save them. Many children are adoptable because of their interventions.

The have an auction every year of donated items, many of them artwork and unique handmade items, often with a Chinese theme, to raise money for their works. Please check out their offerings this year, and bid on the items of your choice.

Thanks so much for supporting such a worthwhile charity.

Online Auction to Benefit Orphans with Medical Needs

LWB’s 7th annual online auction is now live and runs through April 27th! Click to see the over 300 great items available

All proceeds benefit orphaned children in China who have medical needs. Please help by bidding and spreading the news to your families and friends. Can you give just five minutes to tweet it, Facebook it, blog it….SHARE IT? We have a long list of children who are waiting to be healed.

The wonderful part is that if you win an item, every time you look at it, you can know you helped change the life of a child forever. When’s the last time that happened when you went shopping?

Thanks for helping us make a difference for the kids. We couldn’t do it without you!

Amy Eldridge
Love Without Boundaries Foundation

Learning to Learn Languages

Here is an interesting page of books that might help you learn to learn languages better: Language Books at Learn in Freedom.org.

I found this link through a book suggestion from Soultravelers3, who suggested the book by George Saunders:

Bilingual Children: From Birth to Teens
George Saunders (Clevedon, Avon and Philadelphia, PA: Bilingual Matters, 1988) (ISBN 1-85359-009-6). xiii and 274 pages; glossary, bibliography (which has a GREAT list of titles of similar interest), indexes. Saunders is from English-speaking monolingual ancestors, going back at least six generations on all sides of his family. He studied German in college, got to study abroad for a while, and then decided to bring up his children bilingually. The book describes his remarkable successful experiment in bringing up three children as German speakers in Australia. KMBseen_SPP

. click to see book description at Amazon. Someone else recently recommended this book to me. Unfortunately it seems to be hard to find and expensive ($47 used, $76 new). Soultravelers3 are two parents who are mostly anglophone, (father speaks some Spanish), raising their daughter to be trilingual as they travel the world. Do check out their blog.

Anyways, this Saunders book seems to be a precursor to the trilingual parenting book I like: Growing Up with Three Languages. Has anyone else read the Saunders book and recommends it enough for me to spend $50 on it?
thanks!