Montessori Activity: Matching Chinese Characters

Age: From 3 years old

Objectives:
1. To teaching the concept of reading in a fun and concrete way

Materials:
1. 1 page of large-print advertisement from used magazine or book. (You can also use used printed powerpoint presentation).
2. 1 namecard with the Chinese character
3. 1 pencil
4. 1 tray

Directions:
1. Pick a Chinese word, for example '苹果' meaning apple in Chinese and show it to your child pronouncing its name and sound.

2. Encourage your child to look for the Chinese character on the page and circle them out if it is a magazine.

Tips:
1. Read out the word to your child, as he succeeded in finding and circling the  Chinese character.

Montessori Activity: Teaching Rhyme Recognition with Rhyming Stories (4B)

Lesson Plan from the book "Phonemic Awareness in Young Children" by Marilyn Jager Adams et al

Age: From 3 years old

Objective(s):
1. To teach your child to use meaning and meter to notice and predict rhyming words.
2. To stimulate the development of phonemic awareness in your child.

Materials:
1. Rhyming books such as nursery rhymes. This book "Phonemic Awareness in Young Children" has a fantastic appendix, Appendix F, that provides list of suggested books and stories.

I use the Rhyme Bible, which is really terrific and Joshua loves it:

Directions:
1. Read the story aloud, exaggerate the meter and rhyme to encourage active listening and anticipation by your child.

2. In the course of the reading, take an opportunity to anchor your child's understanding of the words rhyme and rhyming. Rhyme is a poem composed of lines with similar ending sounds. Remind your child to listen for words that rhyme.

Tips:
1. When reading a book that is already familiar with your child, stop after rhyming words and ask them what words tehy heard that ryhme.

2. Alternatively, stope before reading the second word of a rhyming pair, and ask your child to guess the word before you continue.

Additional Information:
I have already been reading the Rhyme bible to Joshua, but not in such a purposeful way as suggested by this book. I would be trying out this method with Joshua to create his awarenes of rhyming words.

I highly recommend this book "Phonemic Awareness in Young Children" by Marilyn Jager Adams et al and The Rhyme Bible from Amazon:

Montessori Activity: Teaching Rhyme Recognition with Rhyming Poems (4A)

Lesson Plan from the book "Phonemic Awareness in Young Children" by Marilyn Jager Adams et al

Age: From 2.5 years old

Objective(s):
1. To teach your child to use meaning and meter to notice and predict rhyming words.
2. To stimulate the development of phonemic awareness in your child.

Materials:
1. Rhyming books, poems, songs or jiggles. This book "Phonemic Awareness in Young Children" has a fantastic appendix, Appendix G, that provides a number of recommended poems, fingerplay and jingles.

Directions:
1. Read or recite the poem for your child, emphasizing its rhythm and exaggerating its rhymes.

2. Re-read line by line slowly and deliberately and invite your child to repeat each line with you in unison.

3. Introduce your child only to 1 or 2 rhymes that he can learn well.

4. Add more rhymes in time.

Tips:
1. Recite the poem in whispers, but say the rhyming words aloud.
2. Recite the poem in very loud voices, but whisper the rhyming words.
3. Recite the poem in crescendoing voices, getting louder and louder as you go.
4. Recite the poem in decrescendoing voices, getting softer and softer as you go.
5. Seat the children in a cirlce and ask them to recite successive lines of the poem, one at a time, in turn.
6. Seat the children in a cirlce and ask them to recite successive words of the poem, one at a time, in turn.

Additional Information:
I am doing this with the Tang dynasty poems in Chinese, when Joshua was younger, and then I discovered this book. It is reassuring to see that what I am doing by instinct is actually recommended by the experts. This book also helps me to puts into words, what I am doing in Chinese with Joshua with Tang dynasty poems. I have since then slackened, and diverted my attention to Montessori Practical Life activities, because Joshua did not show much interest in nursery rhymes. That curriculum was completed after one year, and now Joshua has recently turned 3 years old, and has developed a love for rhyme stories. Everything has its timing! I will now make more conscious effort to get back to nusery rhymes and rhyme bible, in line with Joshua's interests.

I highly recommend this book "Phonemic Awareness in Young Children" by Marilyn Jager Adams et al and The Rhyme Bible from Amazon:

Montessori Activity: Recognizing Chinese Characters through Montessori's 3-Period Lesson

Idea from Meixia

Age: From 2.5 years old

Activity Duration: 5 - 10 minutes

Objective(s):
1. To teach the concept of Chinese characters.
2. To teach reading

Materials:
1. 1 container with old name cards
2. 1 marker
3. 1 tray

Directions:
1. Ask your child what character he would like you to write.

2. Write it on the back of an old name card.

3. Teach using the Montessori 3 Period Lesson method:

• Step 1: Point to the Chinese character and read it to your child. For example, say "This is mom."

• Step 2: Say the Chinese character and ask your child to point it out. Example, "Show me the character 'mom'."

• Step 3: Point to the Chinese character and ask him what it is. For example, ask "What is this character?" Your child should say 'mom'.

Tips:
If your child can't remember the Chinese character, you can use baby sign language to give him the hint.

Additional Information:
My friend taught me this way of teaching Chinese to toddler. My friend's Meixia's son, Daniel is 2.5 years old (about 2.5 months younger than Joshua) and he can recognize 60 Chinese characters now. I thought that is really amazing.

Joshua (2Y8M25D) tried it today for the first time, and he enjoyed it quite a lot. He already asked me to set the tray nearby for another session tomorrow :-)

I found this method by my friend Meixia to be very simple, effective and also very inexpensive. What a better way to show Chinese characters than by writing it down yourself and show it to your child in real time. It is not necessary to buy expensive flash cards or DVD.

Don't show any picture with the character. I find showing picture to be a distraction to learning Chinese characters, as Joshua tended to look at the picture, and not the Chinese character. In this way, it really helped Joshua to only focus on the characters.

For younger children, keep it simple by limiting it to one-character word per card as shown above.

Yes, for the Europeans, this is a form of rote-learning. There is no other way of learning Chinese, except by rote learning. And it is amazing that toddlers like Daniel have such good memory. Incidentally, the characters are very intuitive, even for Joshua. For example, when I showed him the Chinese character for rain "雨", he pointed by himself to the rain drops in the character, before I could point out and explain it to him. And straight away he could remember and recognize the character for rain, when I showed him again.

Updates 3.12.2011:
Joshua (2Y8M28D) is very interested in reading, but does not seem to show any interest in recognizing Chinese characters. He is only interested in recognizing 4 characters - mom, dad and his name in Chinese. I showed him the character for mom and dad, and he asked me more than once for his name. So finally I wrote it for him. Now, he recognizes these 4 Chinese characters - 妈, 爸 and 慨恩.

References:
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150451140445091
http://www.words-chinese.com/symbols/_education.htm

The Number Nursery Rhyme

Age: From 1 year old (Level 1)

This is a very good way to learn numbers AND at the same time to learn language. I got this idea from "Having Fun at Home".

Here is the Number Nursery Rhyme:

One is fun.

Round and back on the railroad track. 2-2-2

Round the tree, round the tree, that's how we make number 3.

down and over, down some more. That's how we make number 4.

Down and around with a flag on top. 5-5-5

A line and a loop, six makes a hoop.

Across the sky, down from heaven. That's how we make number 7.

We make an S, do not wait, climb back up and make and 8.

A loop and a line make number 9.

Straight line down, circle we bend. That's how we make number 10.

References:

http://havingfunathomeblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/teaching-numbers.html

Encyclopedia Book for Toddler

Age: From 1.5 year old (Ok, this book was not written with toddlers in mind, but it is so good for toddlers)

Additional Information:
J got tired of baby and toddler picture books when he was around 1.5 year old and we got him this book, when he was 1 year 9 months old. My Significant Other suggested buying this encyclopedia for him while we were in Singapore last December. Initially I thought it was too crazy and super-kiasu as J was just a toddler! I would be too embarrassed to tell people that we gave J encylopedia already when he was only 20 months, but I finally could not resist sharing it, as I have seen how much good it has done for J. The Danish Daddy was right after all, and even more kiasu than the Singaporean Mommy!!! This book was a great hit with J straight away. And I think it was because this book contains lots and lots of colourful pictures of living things in nature. J was never bored with it, unlike he was with those expensive baby and toddler picture books, and he seemed to be absorbing so much more from it. We bought this from Popular Bookshop and it cost only 14.90 SGD (62 DKK).

Here is the link to www.popular.com.sg/ It has really good books for babies, toddlers and kids in both English and Chinese at very economical prices. It has also the Singapore Maths books at prices below what is sold to the U.S.A.

Now that J is 2 years old, we are using this book to teach him how to use magnifying glass, as it contains so many lovely pictures of insects, butterflies, etc.

For those from the US who are using Singapore Maths books, you should try to enquire buying directly from Singapore bookshops.