All About Your Child

Going away from posting about illness, though they are still no where near to recovery, I decided to finish up a backdated post that was supposed to be up in March 2011!!! *faint*

Chinese was never my best subject in school. It has always been a miracle I could maintain a blue or black ink (instead of red) year after year, when none of my parents speak that language.

I have very little faith…and *huge laugh* you could see how pathetic I am when I did the T-Rex post, whereby the ‘chinese’ word for dinosaur was taught wrongly (by me). *covering face in shame*

To me, when it comes to teaching, the most important thing is to make IT interesting. Without the interest of the child, all effort will go to waste. Going the Learn-By-Hard method is not my style.

So for a subject that even I do Not have interest in, what could I do to make it more interesting for my sons? Especially Keatkeat?

1 ~ I have tried playing games : See post “Hanyu Pinyin”

2 ~ I have chosen to let him learn online : See post “How To Teach Hanyu Pinyin”

3 ~ I have used stories to help him recognise Chinese words better : See post “Chinese Character”

4 ~ I have sought help from cartoons : See post “Study Chinese”

5 ~ And my lastest method was going into Comprehension : See post “How to Teach Chinese When Your Child has NO Interest in it?”

After using 5 different approaches, guess which one worked for Keatkeat?

Just in case you are wondering, why do I mention Keatkeat only when Binbin is in the schooling age as well? Well, sad to say, Binbin knows and recognise more Chinese words than Keatkeat.

Yes, Keatkeat is in Primary 3, obviously he should know more Chinese words. However, my above sentence is referring to words that BOTH were exposed to and most of the time, Binbin can remember and Keatkeat cannot.

So the one whom I focus on more is Keatkeat.

Anyway, Chinese aside, Binbin has always been amazing in everything, be it learning abilities, attitude, personality, he is one boy who does not make a parent worry much. Not even when he is sick. He cleans himself up, he asks for warm water, he washes his soil pants without us knowing…. I am very thankful that I was chosen to be Binbin’s Mummy… *heart melt*

Ok, back to the topic, so which of the 5 method worked for the totally-no-interest-in-Chinese 8 year old?

It was story-telling. Yup the third on the list.

I used to think that I need tools to teach Chinese, guess its not true. All I need was creativity, heart and determination.

It is still working till this day. But does that mean I gave up the rest totally? No! Its just that if you have a kid who has almost zero or negative interest in Chinese, you may want to try this story-telling method.

It just might work for your child too.

To end this post, let me share with you Keatkeat’s favourite chinese word now. It is based on this story, “One Japanese, holding a knife (dao), standing at the door (men-kou), killed four person.”

Can you guess what word is it?

I need tools to teach Chinese, or maybe not.

*scream* Time did not fly ever since I had moved to my temporary home, it ZOOMED like a Rocket!!! So much time had been spent on traveling to and fro from school and for the nitty gritty preparation we are making before we start to find our new house. Guessed I had no choice but to re-adjust the amount of time I spend in front of my PC. *sob*

Alright, so who was 1st Runner Up?

And for what type of Competition?

It was KeatKeat!!!

Though he only passed by 7 marks for his latest CA for his Chinese, which I can perfectly understand, given the standard of his Mother’s Chinese, he came in SECOND for this Chinese Draw and Guess Competition for the whole Primary 3 level.

His Chinese teacher gave him a card at a time with Chinese Words written on it. He needs to recognise the word and draw out the ‘thing‘ for the top Chinese Student in his level to guess and this top student will need to write out his guess in Chinese Word and it must match the Chinese Word written on the teacher’s card.

Among the top five artists in his level, he was the only one who recognised the Chinese word ‘Can -Guan’ ?visit) and he drew people at the Zoo. One of the 4 artists could not recognise the word, the other three drew restaurants. So he was the only one who scored a point for that round. Whoo-Hoo! *clap clap clap*

Yes, the Mother’s written chinese sucks and so does her elder son, but hey! nonetheless, he still managed to be the First Runner-Up for a Competition that is done in Chinese. *Super Grin*

Yeah! *Big Round of Applause*