Unusual Enjoyment

Tutu’s Dad one day suddenly felt bored. He felt that life was repeated everyday; there was no enjoyment. He kept on wondering “what is the point of life?” until he dug out his forgotten violin! He started to play violin as it had been his dream to become a violist. Although he did not play violin well, he enjoyed it so much that he played it whenever he has time. His passion led Tutu’s Mom and Tutu to explore enjoyment in life. …

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新年好！
xīn nián hǎo!

恭喜发财！
gōng xǐ fā cái

Here are some videos regarding Chinese spring festival and celebrations, some were posted before, one was a new addition:

Introduction to Spring Festival
Please have a look at my old post

Dragon Dance

Chinese Zodiac
Please have a look at this post.

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Chinese new year is coming… This year it will arrive on Jan 23. It will be a special year — a year of Dragon!

According Wikipedia, “In contrast to European dragons, which are considered evil, Chinese dragons traditionally symbolize potent and auspicious powers, particularly control over water, rainfall, hurricane, and floods. The dragon is also a symbol of power, strength, and good luck. With this, the Emperor of China usually uses the dragon as a symbol of his imperial power.”

Children are generally interested and fascinated with dragons. So I am sharing with you some of the dragon crafts I came across when I was searching for relevant information.

1. Chinese Dragon Mask from firstpalette.com

Materials Needed are

• A4 or Letter size card stock
• Any coloring or painting material
• Elastic string
• Scissors
• Hole punch
• Scotch tape
• Crepe paper strips (optional)

The dragon mask template can be found here.

2. Pull-Along Dragon Toy from firstpalette.com

Materials needed are:

• Paper cups or yoghurt cups
• Construction paper or printable
  card stock
• Poster paint or acrylic paint
• Paint brush
• Crayons or oil pastels
• Jingle bell
• Beads
• String
• Glue gun
• Hole punch
• Scissors
• Scotch tape
• Pencil
• Small coins

The dragon head template can be found here.

3. Dragon coloring or dragon mask from http://dltk-kids.com

This cute dragon image can be used for little children to color or for older children to make a nice mask.

The templates are available in color and only black and white.

4. Chinese dancing dragon Puppet from craftjr.com

Materials Needed:

• colored pencils or crayons
• construction paper for the body
• printout of the template
• wooden kebab skewers

It is quite simple project, even toddlers can handle it. With the addition of wooden kebab skewers, it can turn into a nicely dancing dragon puppet.

The head and tail template can be found here.

5. Chinese dragon coloring pages from fantasyjr.com

If you look for coloring pages for young children. You can find several high quality ones here .

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Everybody Has Secrets

To Tutu, it was at first hard to understand that many people have secrets: for example, his teacher likes sewing; his rich classmate, Prince, has a really old and torn teddy bear; Prince’s mom, although pretends to be very rich, likes food sold from the street; Tiger, the boy who was not afraid of bullies, is afraid of darkness; even the tomboy, Shuaizi, has a soft heart… Tutu concludes, everybody has secrets, nobody wants to be a “kitty without secrets”. … A fun video to watch.

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Reader Harsha wrote to me, “My 2 year old kid keeps singing a chinese rhyme that starts with ‘neevava neevava’ or may be ‘nee vah vah nee vaa vah’.” She wonders what song it is and what lyrics it is.

Well, she is right, this is a quite famous children’s song in Chinese. The name is “泥娃娃“ ní wá wá（Mud Doll). Here is the song.

泥娃娃

泥娃娃, 泥娃娃
ní wá wá, ní wá wá
Mud doll, mud doll
一个泥娃娃
yí gè ní wá wá
A mud doll
也有那眉毛，也有那眼睛
yě yǒu nà méi máo, yě yǒu nà yán jīng
She also has eyebrows, she also has eyes
眼睛不眨
yǎn jīng bù zhā
But her eyes don’t blink

泥娃娃, 泥娃娃
ní wá wá, ní wá wá
Mud doll, mud doll
一个泥娃娃
yí gè ní wá wá
A mud doll
也有那鼻子，也有那嘴巴
yě yǒu nà bí zi, yě yǒu nà zuǐ bā
She also has a nose, she also has a mouth
嘴巴不说话
zuǐ bā bù shuō huà
But doesn’t speak

她是个假娃娃
tà shì gè jiǎ wá wá
She is a fake baby
不是个真娃娃
bú shì gè zhēn wá wá
Not a real baby
她没有亲爱的妈妈
tā méi yǒu qīn ài de mā ma
She has no dear mother
也没有爸爸
yě méi yǒu bà ba
Nor has a father

泥娃娃, 泥娃娃
ní wá wá, ní wá wá
Mud doll, mud doll
一个泥娃娃
yí gè ní wá wá
A mud doll
我做她妈妈
wǒ zuò tā mā ma
I’ll be her mother
我做她爸爸
wǒ zuò tā bà ba
I’ll be her father
永远爱着她
yǒng yuǎn ài zhe tā
I’ll love her forever

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Friendship is Strange

Tutu and Shuaizi fight a lot, but one day both of them discovered that both of them do not like tomatoes. How strange it is! As soon as they find out that they share this strange likeness, they start to like each other. Friendship grows from this little common interest. One day, Tutu’s Mom was invited for a talk in the school. She met the mother of the Shuizi’s. From the initial dislike, they gradually felt like to get to know each other better as they observed that their children got along very well.

As the movie says, the world of children’s is different from our world. Don’t use our thinking to influence children’s.

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Hope this Jingle Bells bring you happiness and health to this holiday season!

Merry Christmas!
圣诞快乐！
shèng dàn kuài lè

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Fight in the Class

Tutu had a fight in the kindergarten! He came back home with scratches on face and torn clothes. His Mom got even more angry than he was. She wanted to find out who was the bully. In another family, a tomboy named Shuizi，was in similar situation. Her Mom was worried to death that her daughter was bullied in school. The next day the two mothers went to school to talk to the teacher — they almost got into a fight themselves. But to their surprise, the two kids became friends again later…

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First Day in Kindergarten

It is the first day for Tutu to go to kindergarten. Lots of other kids were scared to be away from their families, so most of them cried when they had to say goodbye to their parents. Tutu was behaving well - he was the few who did not cry, which made his mother extremely proud. Would it last though? How was the the first day in the kindergarten? Have a look and experience the first together with Tutu!

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It always takes time for young kids to learn all the names of months in English, especially with the right spelling. But for Chinese language, it is actually the easy part. As soon as a person learns the numbers, it is time to introduce the concept of 12 months. The only word one has to learn is 月（yuè, meaning “moon”,”month”). The rest is easy: you simply add numbers 1-12 in front of 月. In detail, the 12 months are

一月 yī yuè January
二月 èr yuè February
三月 sān yuè March
四月 sì yuè April
五月 wǔ yuè May
六月 liù yuè June
七月 qī yuè July
八月 bā yuè August
九月 jiǔ yuè September
十月 shí yuè October
十一月 shí yī yuè November
十二月 shí èr yuè December

How to write 月，have a look below:

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