Halloween Vocabulary & Halloween Bingo

I know that Halloween is not a traditional Chinese holiday, but it's a plethora of vocabulary that kids will enjoy learning.  And, because stores start advertising Halloween in September, they'll have lots of opportunities to practice the vocabulary!  So, if your planning on introducing this topic, here's some flashcards and a Bingo game to get you started.

*Note- Consider cutting out the flashcards and posting them around your house, pocketing them when going for a walk, and even keeping a set in your car.  This way if you see a Halloween decoration or costume, you'll be able to talk about it using your new vocabulary!  Also, I've created 6 Bingo boards below.  If you need more, have Learners cut out their own flashcards and tape them to a blank sheet to create an infinite number of boards.

Flashcards- traditional characters with 注音符號
Flashcards- simplified characters with 漢語拼音 (Hànyǔ Pīnyīn)
Bingo- traditional characters with 注音符號
Bingo- simplified characters with 漢語拼音 (Hànyǔ Pīnyīn)
Bingo- no characters

Chinese Writer

DON'T IGNORE THIS APP! 

Chinese Writer is a wonderful app which integrates game and flashcard options to help young students remember stroke order, pronunciation, and meanings of characters. There are now over 5,000 (an update in Spring 2012 increased the available characters from 3,500) simplified/traditional Chinese characters from which you can make your own list to practice. An initial set of 43 simplified/traditional characters are free and then you have the option of purchasing further sets.

What drew me to this Chinese Writer (by trainchinese) is that it contains the radicals (the building blocks of Chinese characters). From this app, I created a list of specific characters/radicals that I wanted my children to focus on. They can practice the correct stroke order (the app lets them know if they write a stroke in the wrong order or in the wrong direction), listen to the correct Chinese pronunciation (or not if I turn the iPad to mute), and tell me the meaning (which scrolls across the top of the page).

The game is like Tetris in that Chinese characters "fall" down the page. The learner taps the character and then "traces" the correct stroke order over the outline of the character. He/she must complete the character before it reaches the bottom or it fills in one of the five boxes at the bottom of the app. When all five boxes are filled, the game is over. As the learner continues playing the speed of the character's fall increases (The user can control the initial speed on the settings page.). Randomly throughout the game, rockets appear that can be tapped for extra points. This really helps my 5-year old keep his attention on the game. He also likes trying to beat his best score.

For more advanced students, there is a "writing" mode within the game. If you select this game option, you won't see a character once you've taped the character.  You must pen it without help or the character will fill in one of the five boxes.

In flashcard mode, learners can practice the stroke order without being timed, hear the correct Chinese pronunciation, and read the corresponding English meaning. This is the part of the app that I use for my 3-year old since her fingers cannot move fast enough (yet!) to play the timed game.

Chinese for Kids

Chinese for Kids- Created by 321Speak, this program has the same layout as Rosetta Stone, but with vocabulary aimed at kids. The app utilizes simplified characters with pinyin.  I've enjoyed this app and so have my children (ages 3 and 5). Currently there are 11 categories: body parts, people, animals, colors, numbers (Arabic numbers to Chinese pronunciation), food, school, getting places, home, opposites, and more food.

My only complaint is that the pictures are sometimes confusing.  For example, the pictures used to drill numbers are difficult to see (too busy).  Also, the pictures for up/down (上\下) are misleading.  To illustrate, the picture for "down" showed a cat that was under a sofa but was placed in the upper portion of the picture. The picture for "up" showed a cat that was on a table but placed in the lower half of the picture. When these pictures are compared side-by-side, there is an opportunity for confusion. It helps when an adult can direct the child's attention to the relative position within each picture.  The pictures illustrating other concepts are fine.  However, because of these issues, I'm recomending parents to use this app not to teach the vocabulary, but to reinforce the vocabulary.

Side Note- There is another Chinese program written by the same company called Chinese (Mandarin) Course- Speak and Learn Pro.  Written for adults, Chinese (Mandarin) Course also uses simplified characters and pinyin.  It contains over 50+ Lessons on various topics including:

• Airport Travel
• Travel Vocab
• Places
• Directions
• Money and Shopping
• Eating/Dining
• Colors/Numbers
• Hotel
• Family and Friends
• Plus many more 'most used' words and phrases

Flashcards- Eric Youngsdale

Eric Youngsdale has written a skeleton program that allows regular folks like you and me to control what Chinese characters we want to study.  The program is nice because it allows you to choose either simplified or traditional characters.  It also allows you to decide how to study (i.e. do you see the phonetic pronunciation, the character, or the meaning).  But what truly makes this program awesome is that the computer keeps track of which cards you need to practice more and makes these cards appear in the deck more often.

In order to convienently create your own cards, you will need to be able to type in Chinese.  Check out this post to learn how.  Alternatively, you can copy and paste Chinese characters from an online dictionary like YellowBridge.

ABCs and Me

ABCs and Me- This is a free flashcard app that teaches numbers (0-100), shapes, colors, transportation, and food in Chinese using both simplified characters and pinyin (adjust the language under settings).  The nice thing about this app is that the parent can control which flashcards a child sees.  For example, if you only want the child to study numbers 1-5, you can set that.  

To control the "favorite" flashcards that your child sees, do the following two steps.  First, touch the star outline in the top, right-hand corner of the flashcards you want your child to study so that the star turns yellow (like in the picture seen here).  Next, go to the home page and touch the gear in the upper, right-hand corner (this opens the settings).  In the settings page, find "Favorites Only" and slide the bar so that it displays "On."  Voila, personalized flashcards!

GenkiChinese.com

GenkiChinese- written by Richard (sorry, no last name) this website posts songs and simple games that can be used to teach and reinforce simple vocabulary and sentence memorization.  Types of vocabulary include:  numbers, colors, body parts, names of fruits, the months of the year, directions, names of countries, and different types of drinks.  

There are two components to most every game on the site.  The first is the vocabulary introduction.  This is where the user can click around the screen and hear the vocabulary.  The simple characters and the pinyin pronunciation also flash up on the screen to help reinforce character recognition.  The second component is the game.  Typically the game asks the user to listen to a vocabulary word and then correctly identify it on the screen.  These games are easy and anyone with a mouse can play- even my five-year old!

I would suggest reviewing the fruits vocabulary with your child before having him/her play the game.  There are two reasons:

1. During the game, the picture for grape is a picture of one grape; however, during the review the picture is of a bunch of grapes.  This may be confusing to some students.
2. Some of the vocabulary is new/different.  Some children learn 菠蘿 (bōluó, ㄅㄛ ㄌㄨㄛˊ ) and some learn 鳳梨 (fènglí, ㄈㄥˋ ㄌㄧˊ ).  Depending on which word your student learned for pineapple, you may need to introduce the alternative.  Remind your student that English also has many words that mean the same thing.  For example: sofa & couch; road & street; child & kid; etc.

The site also has songs to help language learners remember sentences.  For example, he's produced a song called "你好吗?" (ㄋㄧˇ ㄏㄠˇ ㄇㄚ˙?, Nǐ hǎo ma?, How are you?).  It's a good representation of the types of songs he creates.  Be careful- the songs tend to stick in your head!

Please, preview the songs first before sharing with your children.  In the song called "请给我" (ㄑㄧㄥˇ ㄍㄟˇㄨㄛˇ, Qǐng gěi wǒ, Please give me) the word "beer" appears.