交通工具 - 车

I broke the teaching of transportation into 3 parts - 车, 机 and 船.

车 are the vehicles on land, 机 in the air and 船 on the sea.

Here's what we've done for the first part of the theme.

First, we read a chinese pictorial book on transportation. Told them the difference between 车, 机 and 船. I know not all vehicles on the ground has 车 in the name and not all 船 are on the sea.  (飞船 ie airship goes in the air )But I'm hoping they will remember the names of the vehicles better this way. 

The first vehicle I introduced to them was 火车.

We took 3 storage boxes with wheels and joined them up to form a train. I told them those are the carriages of the train, called 车箱 in mandarin. They have a Dora book with a nice picture of a train going up a mountain, with Dora, Boots and her teacher, each sitting in one carriage. Mandy was very pleased to do the same. They even had one extra carriage for their soft toys!

Going into the tunnel (隧道)

Did I say she's into posing now?

It was pretty tiring pulling them around in that 'train' and repeatedly singing '开火车'. It was my favourite childhood song but the kids don't like it.

They pretended to be passengers getting on and off the train, stopping at stations like the zoo, the beach, and the airport. They also took turns to be the driver (司机) steering the train using a round plate.

I explained why 火车 is named as such. Unlike subway trains (aka our MRT trains), 火车 runs on burning coal. The coal gets very hot and gives out smoke, much like fire burning. I hope my understanding is correct.

Then I told them 脚踏车 has its name because we use our legs (脚) to pedal (踏) in order for the bicycle to move. 汽车 runs on 汽油.

Next, we did bus. 巴士 when said very fast, sounds like bus!

We made buses out of tissue boxes and cardboard. Mandy cut out the cardboard wheels herself (not bad!). The kids stuck on the wheels. I suggested adding windows with pictures of passengers, gave them a stack of leftover coloured papers from previous projects, and encourage them to 'dress up' their bus! I did give a few suggestions though.

Here's what Mandy did, with no physical help from me at all.

Notice the bus doors and the driver? Oh, I wrote the chinese words for her to stick, of course. All her passengers look alike. I commented that some of them look like Bert from Sesame Street, because of their hair. Cute.

She told me she wanted to leave some windows blank because not all seats are filled, but went on to draw in all the windows anyway. She also told me, with a smile on her face, that the 2 friends are sitting together. (right red window)

Barry's bus is... destroyed. As usual. Haha. Managed to get one picture. He needed quite a bit of help.

I was so hoping he would draw a face again, like last time. But he's back to doodling. Ha.

Did a worksheet with the girl.

The bicycle and bus were colored by her.

I think this is a good worksheet. Buay paiseh, hehe. She learnt the names of the vehicles and how the words look like, how many wheels they have, chinese word recognition (the numbers) and practised writing the numbers.

We also played a game using these:

I ask questions like (in mandarin) "See who can find the bus first!" and "How many cars are there?". For the latter, she had to grab the correct word (that represents the number) before I do. I made it into a competition. She gets pretty competitive, so I've found out that's one of the ways she learns well. Barry, on the other hand, totally couldn't be bothered. All the while, he lied on the bed and stoned. Haha.

We learnt 3 songs.

It's totally not practical doing up elaborate song sheets on vanguard so I just do simple ones on A4. They're kept in a file and once in a while, I take it out to sing with the kids. They love 造飞机.

Did one fill-in-the-blanks with the girl.

She doesn't know all the words so I let her refer to the original lyrics for this. In this way, she learns.

Now, I'm racking my brains on how to teach aeroplane and helicopter.

By the way, now during storytime, Mandy tells me "妈妈, 我要读书." When we were reading one night, she pointed out that I had mistaken a child for the mother, "不是, 这个是孩子!". She's saying much more mandarin her vocabulary has improved a lot too!

Making progress. :)