Our collection of Chinese stuff for Sophie

Top Left: Pre school readers from Popular, published in Malaysia

Top Right: James’ books from ancient of days

Bottom Left: Cds with Chinese sunday school songs from my MIL

Bottom Right: James’ books which my MIL transformed into flash cards

I had almost 10 years of Chinese language lessons in school plus I had tuition (outside help) for almost just as long….. BUT BUT BUT……………….. I’m having real difficulty reading Sophie’s pre school Chinese readers and I really can’t catch the Chinese songs I play for her!

Anyways… I thought I’ll blog about this coz I heard her say this today

"Mummy, I want to drink he shui!"

What on earth is "he shui" i was thinking? I kept asking her to repeat until I finally realised she said "he shui" as in drink water in Chinese. She’s totally mixing up her languages! So funny! That prob explains why I’ve been having difficulty understanding what she’s saying recently.

See… Wednesdays are Speak Chinese days for Sophie and I. Not that we speak Chinese a lot. It’s precisely because we don’t that’s why I needed to fix a day to remind myself to speak whatever broken Chinese I can to her.

What’s Speak Chinese Day?

We
- play the Chinese Cds (very ching chiong but very good for Sophie)
- read Chinese books and flash cards
- attempt to give commands and communicate in Chinese

It’s hilarious sometimes. I’ll say

"Ling Jing (her Chinese name), ni yao bu yao he shui?" (Sophie, would you like to drink water?)

And she says

"Yes!"

She totally understands me but she always replies in English! And it’ll go to and fro. She’ll speak to me in English and I’ll speak to her in Chinese.

I bought a couple of Chinese readers from Popular that has Hanyu Pinyin and only one sentence per page. Plus we have some flash cards from James’ old books. Yes! My mil kept them. She cut them up and laminated them! I’m so glad she’s a chinese kindy teacher.

I really hope Sophie’ll grow to enjoy the language as I am now, finally.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 2:26 pm and is filed under Baby Books, Baby Education, Baby. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.