My daughter is 15 … no wait, she’s 16 months old. Boy, she’s growing fast and I can hardly keep up. She’s running around the copying everything people say now. I just hope she learns to speak more Chinese. It will be hard since 90% of the people and noise that she’s surrounded with speak English. My parents and I are the only people that can speak Chinese to her since my husband is Caucasian. Since the pandemic hit she’s been stuck with me and my husband so exposure to the Chinese language has diminished. She needs to have more conversations and different topics. So I decided to create a “Feed the frog” Chinese activity, perfect for Toddlers and their short attention spans. She can always return to the activity in the future and it’s pretty easy to make. She really loves animals and trying to make the animal sounds so frog is one animal that she knows. We always say ribbit every time we pass by the frog magnet on the fridge. So I hoped this activity would be as much fun. She can actually touch the frog and feed it.
Feed the Frog Chinese Activity
Chinese Vocab
- Frog (青蛙, xing wa)
What you need:
- Any standard size cereal box
- Colored paper – green, pink
- Ziplock bag
- Scissors
- Black Sharpie
How I made it:
- I drew a frog on green colored paper, cut out some pink cheeks for it. Cut out a hole for his mouth and cut out the space where it’s tummy would be.
2. Then used a used Cheerios box, traced out where the frog tummy and mouth would be. Cut those holes out of the Cheerios box and taped the green frog onto the Cheerios box.
3. I also used a ziplock bag and measured to make sure the bottom of the ziplock back would reach where the tummy would hit. Then cut a hole in the ziplock bag where the mouth would be. Taped the ziplock bag to the back of the Cheerios box. So when feeding the frog the food would fall into the ziplock bag and would see it in the frog’s tummy. For food I just cut up the Cheerio box to little pieces that would fit into the frog’s mouth.
The object of the game was to have fun and have her curious about the frog. Also talking in Chinese to her about the frog, food and seeing it’s tummy. She can practice her fine motor skills to try to pick up the pieces of food and feed them through the hole of the frog’s mouth.
Result
She was excited to see her frog and was very curious about the ziplock bag and how it worked. The frog had a hole in it’s stomach so she kept on pressing through the hole and pushing out the ziplock bag. I was able to talk to her about the frog in Chinese and talk to her about feeding it. We played with it for 2 days, well each time was for only 5 minutes but at least she paid attention to it for a little bit. I was also able to talk to her about the colors ie the green frog and pink cheeks. I noticed that the hold I cut for the frog’s mouth was too small, so I used scissors and just cut the hole a little wider. She was able to push the food through the hole much easier. We will continue to play with it in the future, perhaps make different animals for her to feed.
Mommy Dragon
