Teaching Children Mandarin Chinese

This hub reviews the best videos we have found for teaching our children Mandarin. Unless you are a native speaker of Chinese or have a Chinese language school in your town, it isn't easy to find materials to help your children learn this language spoken by one out of every 6 people on the planet. However, my husband and I are determined to help our children learn a little bit of Mandarin before we travel there as a family next summer and so we've been buying and trying out many different products.

Two of my five children are adopted from China. Instead of just trying to teach those two children about their Chinese heritage, my husband and I decided to "adopt" China and Chinese culture as part of our family heritage, just as we have adopted his French/Irish heritage and my German/Scottish ethnic roots. Of course we have eaten lots of Chinese food, searched for recipes, gone to Chinese festivals and made a lot of Chinese friends. However, we also wanted our kids to learn Mandarin. We don't have a Chinese school in our area and although we discussed getting someone to tutor our kids, we never were able to get that to work out. Instead, we've embarked on learning how to find materials to teach ourselves Chinese and to teach our children as well. My other hubs discuss my own journey in learning Mandarin, but in this hub I want to focus on the best children's materials available. I will also steer you away from some materials we haven't found as useful.

The good news is that there are a lot of good videos that teach the first 50 to 100 words in Chinese. Many of these videos are engaging and use a variety of methods to help kids (and adults) memorize and repeat the words. It really is quite possible to have your kids speaking some Chinese words after watching these videos just a few times. The bad news is that none of these video series seems to have been able to get enough funds to keep on going. Most of these videos only have the first or second volume, even though many of them promise more. I certainly hope that some of them do succeed and publish more videos. In the meantime, you may want to do what we are doing and use these beginning videos to teach your kids as much as you can.

Journeys to the East: The River Dragon King

This is by far my kids favorite video. They've watched it over and over and memorized the songs so that they were singing them over and over during our vacation. Unlike Jade and Mei Mei, this is an animated story which teaches the words as the two children in the story go on a mystery hunt. Although the animation is rather primitive, my kids didn't mind it because the game format of the story was enjoyable. In fact, it reminded me of one of the computer games they like to play which has them collect objects to win a prize. The 50 Chinese words are taught using games and songs. I was astonished by the fact that my kids learned all of these words after only watching the video 4 or 5 times. I went to purchase the whole set of DVDs only to be very disappointed that this is the only one they've produced so far. Hopefully, this company will be able to make a whole series, because I think the mystery format of the story and the question and answers along with the song make this very appealing for a wide range of ages. Moreover, I really can tell my kids learned the words they were taught on this video.

Follow Jade ( videos: Let's Visit Chinese Kindergarten, Let's Go to the Market in China): These videos teach about 40 words each. Jade is a very sweet and engaging young teacher. Her students are both Chinese and Caucasian kids. These videos are rather low quality, but do teach the words clearly, with a fair amount of repetition. My kids really enjoyed the fact that they include scenes of children in a Chinese school. They also enjoyed the songs and quickly began singing along. I also liked the fact that the words that were taught are ones that would be useful to use at home. There are some simple animated quiz sections which let your children guess at the meaning of different words. Since the videos were produced in Beijing, they also include some very typical outside Beijing scenes which are nice for the kids to see. I would recommend these videos as a good introduction. I only wish there were more available.

Mei Mei Series (nine different videos available in VCR or DVD)

Unlike Jade, who seems like a young mom, Mei Mei seems more like a grandmother. I would guess that she is an experienced and patient kindergarten teacher. Her videos seem to have been made based on a curriculum she teaches in small classes. She introduces some words and usually has a song or dance at the end which puts those words together. My girls really enjoyed watching the dances and singing along. Luckily, there are more of these videos, so your kids can go further in their vocabulary. Like Jade, Mei Me focuses on teaching words and phrases that kids could actually use in conversation, like the parts of the body, foods, greetings and talking about where they are from and how old they are. Using these videos is like bringing a Chinese teacher into your home. However, my 9 year old girls didn't like these videos as much as The River Dragon King or the Jade videos and weren't willing to watch quite as often. I think that is because these videos are more geared towards the younger set (ages 3-8).

Learning Chinese is Fun!

This program doesn't aim at teaching as many words per episode as the other programs, but focuses on teaching about Chinese culture and tradition as well as writing. There are six episodes that are each about 12 minutes long. Each episode tries to teach just 3-6 words through lots of repetition. The family in the story is an Asian mom and a Caucasian dad. They have two kids who also look Asian. If your family looks like this one, your kids might especially enjoy this series. The words are introduced through family conversation in a skit. Afterwards, there are children who say the vocabulary words. I've found that my kids like hearing other kids say the words, and not just adults. Like many of these videos, there is a song and dance to learn. Next, there is the dad reading a Chinese story to his kids which illustrates the final word of the show: compassion. My kids enjoyed the fact that they saw the family reading together and also got to see the pictures of the book. Though a bit forced in acting (like many shows with kids) the lesson was clear--families show compassion to one another by thinking about little things which help. Finally, there is an animated demonstration of how to write the word. My kids liked following along with a paper and pencil, and actually wanted to stop the viewing so they could get a brush and ink.

YouTube Videos

Another source of Mandarin videos is YouTube. Some of the videos there are actually Chinese language learning, but others are just videos for children which are in Mandarin. Since my husband and I have discovered that there is value in just listening to Mandarin sounds, even if you don't understand what is being said, I've let my girls just listen and watch some of these videos. They especially like some dancing girls called Shao Tian Tian (small heavenlies). However, in YouTube a parent has to be alert for what your kids are looking at. Sometimes, they have come across some videos which are not particularly appropriate. Moreover, it is hard to find videos which really teach a small set of words that they are able to understand and learn. However, this can be a resource to help you find other programs. One of the programs I've found there is Kid'sChinese Club, which is in a beta-stage of testing. Perhaps the most promising learning Mandarin learning program I've found, it hopes to engage Chinese learners all over the world in a "club-like" learning experience.