I’ve been trying to create a more Chinese environment by labelling more items around the house with Chinese words. One of the objects my daughter sees a lot are cars. Every time we see one, I tell her, it’s a car ,車 che. I’ve been trying to teach my daughter myself since my husband doesn’t speak/know Chinese. It’s been difficult that this is my journey and I’m willing to share it. Teaching her Chinese has been difficult and I’ve gotten responses like “Well you have to teach her English!“. I really hope she learns more Chinese before she starts daycare because English is going to become her dominant language. Honestly, when she speaks English I do get a little discouraged that she’s learning English faster than Chinese. But it’s all part of the learning process that she will learn both, probably English faster since we do live in Canada and I’m the only parent teaching her Chinese. So decided that we should have a game that solidifies her understanding of a 車 .
2 Fun Chinese Activities Learning Car
The Word Car in Chinese
In this exercise I just focused on the normal car. There are trains, trucks, small cars, big cars, and so many other different types of cars. Since my daughter is only 15 months old, we are doing the basic car. I was inspired by the activity by Chalk Academy by using road tape, but since I don’t have any and didn’t want to wait to buy and get it delivered, I had to think of another activity.
- Car (che, 車)
a) Fun Chinese Activities Learning Car – Car Slot
I used a diaper wipe box, I’m sure you have many in the house. We weren’t using this one so decided it could be used for her car activity to learn car in Chinese. I just used some cue cards I had around the house and wrote in black sharpie the word 車. Labelling all the sides of the box with the word and instructed my daughter that only cars go in the box.
What you need:
- Huggies/Pampers wipes box container
- Cue cards
- Black Sharpie
- Small toy cars
Result:
She was intrigued with putting things in the wipe slot. I told her that only 車/cars go in the box and constantly talked with her and played with her. She did surprisingly well. I introduced other toys in the mix to see if she would only put cars. She pushed my hand away when I handed her a hamburger, like that is not a car. We also had bigger cars that didn’t fit in the slot but I let her explore to see if it was possible to fit. Eventually she realized that it didn’t fit in the slot so we opened the box and we put it in through there. She did really well. This activity lasted the whole day! She never got tired of it.
b) Fun Chinese Activities Learning Car – Road Drawing
Since I didn’t have any road tape like in Chalk Academy’s car activity, I drew the word 車 like a road on a large piece of paper. I showed her that cars could go along that road.
What you need:
- Large paper
- Black Sharpie
- Small toy cars
Result:
She didn’t enjoy this game and didn’t do too well. I guess my drawing of the road wasn’t that great either. Perhaps the road tape would have been much better. Also since she is only 15 months old, she didn’t really understand that the lines on the road were for the car. As she gets older she will understand and will play this again in the future.
Overall
She did really well overall. I’m impressed with her understanding of the word. When I put away the cue cards she found one the next day. She pulled it out and said che che! and started pointing at cars. We had fun playing and it did occupy her the whole day which is always a bonus!
Mommy Dragon
