Back-To-School Printable: How to Write Numbers 1-10 in Chinese Characters

If you're just joining me here at Monkeys & Mooncakes, Welcome! I'm so glad you're here. Click here to read a little about this blog, or continue reading this post for a great back-to-school printable. 
It's hard to believe that we are already in Week 2 of Back to School! While the big kids are in class (and the little one is napping), I've been working on curriculum for a K-2 Level 1 Mandarin class I'll be teaching later this fall. 
This week I combed the web for character practice printables that showed both stroke order and direction. I was totally surprised when I couldn't find anything that fit the bill, except of course, for some websites that offered printables that I could download for a hefty yearly membership fee--Yikes! The cheapskate in me was not ready for this.  
So, I decided to use my new-found love of Picmonkey and make them myself. And because I want other people to have access to this resource, I am sharing them with you!

Click here to download. 

FAQ

What's included in the printable? 

• 1 practice sheet for each number 1-10.
• Stroke order and direction of the stroke is shown for each character.
• Guide lines are shown to give student a general sense of where to place each stroke.

Why numbers 1-10? 

• With 5 or fewer strokes, these characters are great for beginners. 

Why don't the characters look like Chinese calligraphy?

• This printable is not intended for calligraphy practice. I decided to show Chinese characters as if written with a pencil or marker (like your kiddo or student will be using).  

Why is stroke order and direction important?

• Some people don't think that stroke important is important, as long as you are able to write the character. While this is a valid point, I think that having a standard way of writing each character helps with muscle memory. 

Why are they only black and white? Where's the pizazz?

• I did this so they would be easy (and inexpensive) to print. 

What do you think about this printable? Will you use it in your home or classroom?

Practice Your Chinese Characters! Beach Edition

One of our favorite beach activities is writing in the sand. Names, secret messages, long squiggly lines--there's something just plain fun about a long blank canvas of wet beach sand that resets itself with each crashing wave. 

On a recent beach outing, Monkey #1 and I practiced writing Chinese characters (family names) in the sand. She practiced her Chinese name, 露希 Lùxī--literally "dewdrop, hope", and I practiced her brother's, Cháolì--"tide, encouragement," and sister's, Àilín--"love, heavy rain."  

Monkey #2 would have joined in the fun, but he was too busy throwing his body into the crashing waves--it was a good wave-jumping day. 
Can writing in the sand really be that fun? It was. We had to rush to finish the two characters that made up each name before the waves washed them away, leaving us giggling (because we could never seem to finish them in time) and staring at a wet, blank canvas ready for more sand writing. 

What I love about this activity:

1.  The act of writing Chinese characters in the sand is tactile. You feel each stroke as you carve it in the sand. This repetitive carving process helped the characters "stick" in my memory.
2.  As you write these large characters, you focus on each component of the character.  As I wrote Monkey #3's Chinese name (above, right), I found myself speaking the parts of the characters: hand, roof, friend; rain and forest. This helped me really learn how to write her name (something I should know as her momma=)  

     

3.  It is a challenge! Monkey #1 and I raced against the waves--trying to carve full names before the waves washed them away--and lost almost every time. 

Variations: 

Play with a friend and race the waves. See who can first carve their full name or another set of characters (legibly) before the waves wash them away. 

Which materials work the best? We tried sticks, beach grass, and gnarled roots.

Take photos of the sand characters--turn them into memories to hang in your home. I'm working on this (on the right) because I'm obsessed with beach photography. 

Instead of writing in the sand, form your character with found items from the beach. Monkey #1 used bits of seaweed, beach grass and stones to form the first character of her name.

What Mandarin learning activities are you doing this summer? 

Not your typical Chinese language textbook

Summer has hit, which for us means that my kiddos are taking a well-deserved break from formal Chinese lessons. This also means that I get to start reviewing materials and activities for next year.

One book that I’ve been dying to review is Chineasy: The New Way to Read Chinese by ShaoLan Hsueh, and published by Harper Design (2014). 

This is not your typical Chinese language textbook. It’s not a textbook at all, really, more of an exquisitely beautiful book designed to teach you the meaning of Chinese characters while enchanting you with ingenious to-the-point graphics.

The book is divided into four sections 

1. Where the author introduces herself, her method, and how to use the book
2. This is the main part of the book—where characters are introduced as either building blocks, compounds, phrases, or advanced sentences.
3. The classic story Peter and the Wolf is told using her method of illustrated Chinese characters (my phrase).
4. Reference, where building block plates are listed for quick reference, and Chinese characters and phrases are indexed (by English translation only).

Her Method

If I had to describe ShaoLan’s method, I would call it illustrated Chinese characters. She takes a Chinese radical such as 人 (rén, person--her building block) and then draws an image on or behind it to illustrate the meaning of this character (i.e. 人 is turned into a walking person). 

Then, she shows other characters that make use of this radical, such as 从 (cóng, follow--a compound), and illustrates these characters also to show the new meanings  (从 becomes two walking people).

Instantly, two characters make perfect sense and become easy to remember. This, my friends, is the simple genius of this method.

What I love about this book 

·        ✔ While some of the ideas for these illustrated characters are not new (they pick up on the ancient etymology of the character; for example, 火--huǒ,fire--was once drawn to actually resemble a fire), others are ShaoLan’s own creative inventions. Check out her building block plate for 女 (nǚ, woman).  

     ✔ The graphics themselves, created by the super-talented graphics artist Noma Bar, are beautiful--simple, yet striking, in a happy color scheme. This book could easily be a coffee table book, yet it is better than your average coffee table book, because if you put it out, people will learn something.

✔ Shaolan’s notes on each character are super helpful. She explains the construction of the character and gives cultural insights to the character’s meaning. For example, she explains how the character 羔 (gāo, lamb) is a combination of lamb over a fire, which is how  lamb would be prepared in certain parts of China.  She also includes snappy little phrases that will help you remember characters. For the character 众 (zhòng, crowd): "two’s company, three’s a crowd.” 

How you can use Chineasy

✔  Supplement your daily/weekly lessons. The book is chock-full of ideas for teaching certain characters. A lot of this information is already on the web but this book brings it all together in one place with simple, yet visually appealing color graphics.

✔  Put it out on your coffee table. It’s fun for guests to browse and can be a good conversation starter. And have I mentioned how beautiful these graphic illustrations are? Your guests will be surprised that they will be able to recognize a bunch of Chinese characters in just a few minutes.

✔  Use the accompanying Chineasy website where you can listen to the pronunciation of the characters, watch a TED Talk where ShaoLan describes her method, andsee a video in which Chinese characters are animated and explained.

The bottom line

This is a really great tool for teaching Chinese characters. This likely will not be your only tool because it doesn’t teach all the characters, but its approach is super creative, beautiful, and intuitive. Shaolan, I look forward to Volume 2!

Disclaimer: Neither ShaoLan nor Harper Design gave me anything to endorse their book. My fabulous friend Jill gave it to me because she is just that awesome—thanks, Jill! 

How to Learn Mandarin Outdoors with Sidewalk Chalk

Welcome to Monkeys & Mooncakes! So glad you're here.   Spring is in full bloom at our house (lilacs, birds singing, ahhh...) and when the sun is shining, I move Chinese lessons outside. Our blacktop driveway becomes our blackboard, a giant canvas for creative learning.
It's a super simple idea but the change of pace is refreshing after weeks inside and the girls love drawing with sidewalk chalk. 

This past month I've been teaching a unit on basic directions: walk forward, walk backwards, turn right, turn left, etc... I designed a couple of simple outside exercises to help the girls review these phrases.
First, I drew a giant matching game on the top half of our driveway: match the directions in Mandarin (including both pinyin and the characters they know) to their English translation. Each of the girls were assigned a color (so they could work independently), and they read their matches out loud (in Mandarin) when they finished. 

On the bottom half of our driveway, I drew a large city map, adding my own goofy street names in Mandarin (e.g. "bad bunny street," "long snake street," "good pig street"). 
I asked the girls to help design some buildings and landmarks on empty street corners, and they filled in a Lego shop, airport, flower store, and ice cream shop.    

Then, the girls took turns navigating one other to a specific destination by giving directions to the robot. They called this "The Robot Game." 

When the robot arrived at its intended destination, the operator announced 你到了! (Nǐ dàole "You've arrived") The robot would then notice where she was standing, and answer the question, "你在哪里?" (Nǐ zài nǎlǐ "Where are you?")

What I loved about this activity:

• It got us all outside and being outdoors is relaxing!
• It required the girls to move around and interact with each other--actively participate in learning.
• Sidewalk chalk leads to all sorts of unanticipated creativity--Look at the surprise the girls left me and my friend!

How do you bring Mandarin learning outdoors?

10 Sensory Activities for Practicing Chinese Characters

Lately I've been seeing all sorts of great ideas on Pinterest for multi-sensory activities that help kids practice writing letters, reading, and spelling by giving them fun, creative, and different ways to learn.  Multi-sensory learning involves tactile (touch), kinesthetic (movement), visual (what we see), and auditory (what we hear). 
There are oodles of sensory activity ideas circulating on the web (Really...Go to Pinterest and search for "sensory spelling" or "sensory alphabet." Look at those great ideas!)

Multi-sensory isn't just a Pinterest trend, there's some real science behind it:

In 2008, two University of California researchers found that multisensory learning has found to be more effective for learning because it better approximates natural settings. Read more here.  And then I began to wonder...

Here are some multi-sensory ideas for practicing Chinese characters:

1. Form characters with your body.  Form simple characters like 大 (dà, big) or 人 (rén, person) using your own body.

For a challenge: Partner with friends to form characters with more stokes. How many characters can you form? 
2. Sidewalk chalk characters.  Practice writing characters of all sizes on the sidewalk or a blacktop driveway. 

sì (four)

Make it a game: Partner with a friend to practice characters. If you chalk the beginning strokes, can your friend finish it?
3. Paint characters with water.  Pretend you are practicing calligraphy in a beautiful park in China, and paint the characters with water and a big paint brush on blacktop. If it's raining outside, practice inside on a blackboard. 

nǚ (woman)

Turn it into art: trace over chalk characters with paintbrush dipped in water to give the characters a painted effect.
4. Write characters in a salt tray. Pour salt on to a cookie tray (I found these cute trays at the Dollar Store) and write the character with your finger or a chopstick.

xiǎo (small)

Note to parents: Salt can scratch your table's finish (yikes!)--so take this idea outside or cover up your pretty table first. 5. Form characters.  Form the character using play dough "snakes," wiki sticks, pipe cleaners, yarn--or if you're hungry, pretzel sticks licorice laces, etc... The possibilities are endless here. 

                shēngrì (birthday)                                                       zěn (how)

Helpful Hint: Print out a large version of the character to practice shaping around. Then, as a challenge, try it without the template. 
6. "Hide" characters by them on paper with a white crayon. Then paint over the hidden characters with watercolor paint.  Watch as the characters magically appear! We found that the characters were easier to see if we painted over them with dark colors. 

zuò (sit)

Make it a game: Write a secret message to your friend in Chinese and then let your friend magically decode the message with watercolor paint. 
7. Rainbow color characters. Trace over the character with crayons in all colors of the rainbow.

zuò (sit)

 For a challenge: tell your child (in Mandarin, of course!) how many colors or which colors to use.

8. Decorate characters with cotton balls, plastic gems, beads, stones, anything that will help you remember their meaning. 

tiān (sky, heaven, or day)

9. Trace characters on a friend's back or palm of their hand. Or draw it with your finger in in the air. Practice with 2 or 3 characters. Can they guess which character is being traced?

10.  Storytell characters. Ask your child to make up a story about the character and then draw the story on the character in order to bring it to life.  

zǒu (walk) 

For inspiration: check out The Pet Dragon, a cute book in which graphic designer Christoph Niemann brings Chinese characters to life through his illustrations. 
Click here to read a review I wrote about this book on my old blog: Rice and Pasta, Please!

What types of multi-sensory activities help you practice Chinese characters?

3 Books about Chinese Culture To Read To Your Preschooler

As I cruised my local library for new books to read to my little ones, I stumbled upon three beautiful picture books written by Roseanne Thong and illustrated by Grace Lin.  

This three-part series introduces Chinese culture to the very young through vibrant illustrations and lilting text about shapes, colors, and numbers.

------------------------------------------------

Fun Fact

In an interview with the South China Morning Post, Thong describes her inspiration for these books as her own daughter. When she was three, Thong wanted to read books with images her daughter would recognize from her life in Hong Kong. When none fit this description, she began writing these three books.

-------------------------------------------

What I absolutely love about these books

• Basic colors, shapes, and numbers are introduced through references to Chinese American culture and childhood: a yellow incense stick, a round rice bowl, one dragon boat, and also---sprinklers, birthday cakes, and puppies.
• The author's note at the end of the book briefly explains the Chinese cultural references mentioned in the story, making these books accessible for non-Chinese families as well. 
• The lilting, rhyming text makes the stories fun to read!
• Grace Lin's beautiful illustrations. If you haven't discovered this already, I am a huge Grace Lin fan. LOVE her stories, LOVE her illustrations. They are a feast for the eyes with vibrant colors, beautiful patterns and scenes full of charming details.

The Takeaway

These books would make a great addition to any family's library and serve as a fun tool for parents hoping to introduce their child to aspects of Chinese culture.

 Which books about Chinese culture do you enjoy reading to your young ones?