拟声词!Onomatopoeia story and songs

We will read this book this week: 听, 是谁在唱歌? (tīng, shì shéi zài chàng gē ?)  ‘Listen, who is singing?’

It is full of Onomatopoeia, or words that make a sound like the sound they are trying to describe.  They are called  拟声词 (nǐ shēng cí) in Chinese, or literally ‘imitating sound word’.  These are great for young learners of Chinese, because just like in first language acquisition, these words can allow children to explore the ‘sounds’ of a language.  You will notice that most of the characters in the table below for these ‘sound’ words, have the 口 radical on the left side of the character, which is the ‘mouth’ radical…often giving a clue it is an onomatopoeia word!

The children will have to try and guess which animal is making the singing noise!

Below is a table that has a list of the animals in the book, and the animal sounds that the children will enjoy, but till Story Time enjoy this song! The words to the song are far too long to post here, but this link will take you to them 🙂 You will note some of the animal sounds in the song are a little different to some of the animals in the book…like the Rooster goes ‘ wowo’ in the book and ‘o o’ in the song…but just like animal noises in English…there is no law!

here are the animals in the book:

Cow niú Moo 哞哞 mōu mōu
Duck 鸭子 yā zi Quack 嘎嘎 gā gā
Dog gǒu Wuff 汪汪 wāng wāng
Cat māo Meow 喵喵 miāo miāo
Lion 狮子 shī zi Roar 嗷呜 áo wū
Sheep yáng Baa miē
Rooster 公鸡 gong jī Crow 喔喔 wōwo
Horse Neigh 嘶嘶 sī sī
Pig zhū Oink 哼哼 hēng hēng
Frog 青蛙 qīng wā Croak 呱呱 guā guā

Here is another more familiar song to help us make those animal sounds!  The first sound in the song is a chicken, which is not in our book (we have a rooster in our book crowing ‘wōwō!’. The chicken says 叽叽 ‘jījī’, more like the ‘cheep cheep’ sound of a baby chicken.  Lyrics to the song are under the video. Old MacDonald in Chinese is 老王先生 lǎo wáng xiānsheng, the ‘lǎo’ is a polite address of a senior, the ‘wáng’ is his surname, and ‘xiānsheng’ is the word for ‘Mr.’ In Chinese we say ‘Wang Mr’, not ‘Mr Wang’ 🙂  Enjoy!

wáng lǎo xiān shēng yǒu kuài dì yī yā yī yā yōu

地,

tā zài tián lǐ yǎng xiǎo yī yā yī yā yōu

zhè lǐ jī jī jī nà lǐ jī jī jī

叽叽叽 叽叽叽

zhè lǐ nà lǐ dào chù dōu zài jī jī

叽叽

wáng lǎo xiān shēng yǒu kuài dì yī yā yīyā yōu

地,

Literal English Translation:

Farmer Wang had a plot of land, yiya yiya yo

On his land he raised little chicks yiya yiya yo

With a cheep cheep here, and a cheep cheep there,

Here a cheep, there a cheep, everywhere a cheep cheep

Farmer Wang had a plot of land, yiya yiya yo

Whose bottom? and Handkerchief Game!

We love stories and songs about bottoms 🙂 So we will read 谁的屁股? (shéi de pìgu) ‘Whose Bottom?’ this week, Wednesday 10am in our Mandarin Song and Story Time. For more posts on bottoms check out our wiping bottoms page, who did the poo page, tones and poo page, and poos and water page!

We will also play the traditional Chinese game ‘Hide the Hanky’ as long as it is not raining!  There is a version of the song that accompanies the game below, together with the lyrics for you.

hide-hanky2

 

丢手巾丢手巾,轻轻地放在,小朋友的后面,大家不要告诉他,快点快点捉住他,快点快点捉住他

diū shǒu jīn diū shǒu jīn , qīng qīng de fàng zài , xiǎo péng yǒu de hòu mian , dà jiā bù yào gào su tā , kuài diǎn kuài diǎn zhuō zhù tā , kuài diǎn kuài diǎn zhuō zhù tā

Drop the hanky, drop the hanky, lightly put the hanky behind a friend, everybody don’t tell him/her, quickly quickly catch him/her, quickly quickly catch him/her.

Chinese teachers wishing to get their students to explain how to play the game in Chinese could show this video:

The simplified script is :

不知道小朋友有没有玩过丢手巾?那是一种小朋友玩的游戏。游戏的方式很容易。只要几位小朋友围成一个圈。另一个小朋友拿着手巾放在他们后面。谁拿到手巾就要追回放手巾的那位小朋友。

hide-hanky

See you Wednesday 🙂

画了一匹蓝马的画家 ‘The artist who painted a horse’

This week we will read 画了一匹蓝马的画家 ( huà le yī pǐ lán mǎ de huà jiā) ‘The artist who painted a horse’ by Eric Carle. The children can guess what crazy colours Eric Carle has painted his drawings 🙂

We can also sing a new balloon song.  Here are the words, you can sing to the tune of ‘My darling Clementine’.

Hóngsè qìqiú huángsè qìqiú

球, 球,

wǒde qìqiú zhēn piàoliàng

亮。

lǜsè qìqiú báisè qìqiú

绿 球, 球,

bié rang qìqiú fēi tiān shàng

别 让 上。

Literal English Translation:
Red balloon, yellow balloon, My balloon very beautiful,
Green balloon white balloon, don’t let the balloon fly to the sky.
Song originally sourced from ‘Better Chinese’, lyrics changed to reflect better environmental practice 🙂

家 Family: Mandarin Motion Song and Story Time Wed 21st June 2017

We will read all about family over next few weeks.  We might start with this one for our next story time 袋鼠也有妈妈吗? (dài shǔ yě yǒu mā ma ma?) ‘Does a Kangaroo have a mother too? ‘ by Eric Carle.  Some vocab from the book is at the bottom of this blog post.

 

Here is a video Aurora made for our ‘I love my family song’ that we sometimes sing in class.  We have included this song for many years in our story times, the kids learned it when they were little from the ‘Better Chinese: My first Chinese Words’ series.  Hope you like Aurora’s production of it:

 

Here are the words to the song:

wǒ ài wǒ de bà ba

wǒ ài wǒ de mā ma

wǒ ài wǒ de gē ge

wǒ ài wǒ de jiě jie

wǒ ài wǒ de jiā

Translation:

I love my Dad, I love my Mum, I love my older brother, I love my older sister, I love my family.

The second time around the words 哥哥 (gē ge) big brother’ 姐姐 (jiě jie)  big sister’ are replaced with 弟弟 (dì di) little brother’ and 妹妹 (mèi mei) little sister’.

Here is a little bit of the Kangaroo book for reference of vocab:

dàishǔ yě yǒu māma ma? yǒu! dàishǔ yǒu māma

jiù xiàng wǒ yǒu nǐ yě yǒu.

袋鼠有妈妈吗? 有!袋鼠有妈妈,

就像我有你也有。

Literal translation: Does a kangaroo also have a mother? Yes (has), a kangaroo has a mother, just like I have and you have too.

This is the same each page, just replace kangaroo (red highlighted) with following animals:

狮子 shīzi lion 长颈鹿 chángjǐnglù giraffe 企鹅 qǐ’é penguin 天鹅 tiān’é swan 狐狸 húli fox 海豚 hǎitún dolphin 绵羊 miányáng sheep xióng bear 大象 dàxiàng elephant 猴子 hóuzi monkey

 

一只两只蜘蛛 Incy Wincy Spider

下雨了!(xià yǔ le) It’s Raining! Well it has been a rainy few days, so it’s a good time to sing the Incy Wincy Spider song!  Kids recorded the song and made an animation to go with the Chinese translation for you, so that you can enjoy on rainy days at home too 🙂  Enjoy and we will see you at our Mandarin Song and Story time to sing it together…it is forecast to be still raining 🙂

Here are the lyrics:

一只两只蜘蛛爬呀爬出来,
雨水落下来帮它洗洗澡,
太阳出来了照着它身体呀
一只两只蜘蛛又爬呀爬出来

Yī zhǐ liǎng zhī zhīzhū pá ya pá chūlái
Yǔshuǐ luòxià lái bāng tā xǐ xǐzǎo,
Tàiyáng chūláile zhàozhe tā shēntǐ ya
Yī zhǐ liǎng zhī zhīzhū yòu pá ya pá chūlái.

Literal English Translation:
One spider, two spiders crawl and climb out,
The rain falls and helps them take a bath
The sun comes out, it shines on their bodies,
One spider, two spiders crawl and climb out again.

The story of the little mole who knew it was none of his business, Mandarin Motion Song and Story Time 7th June 2017

We will read ‘The story of the little mole who knew it was none of his business’ this Mandarin Song and Story Time as requested by one of our students (It’s not just me that picks books about poo 🙂  We didn’t have a Mandarin version of the book, so I have made my own simple and repetitive Mandarin translation for us to read this week.  Here is a page:

It is a great story for repetitive input of the location marker 在 (zài), and for hearing how to say that ‘something looks like something’ 像…一样 (xiàng…yī yang).

It follows the pattern :

(对小山羊问)你拉大便便在我的头上吗? 我?不是我的。我的便便看起来就像这样… (它拉便便像巧克力球一样)。

( duì xiǎo shān yáng wèn ) nǐ là dà biàn biàn zài wǒ de tóu shàng ma ?  wǒ ? bú shi wǒ de. wǒ de biàn biàn kàn qǐ lái jiù xiàng zhè yàng …  tā lā biàn biàn xiàng qiǎo kè lì qiú yī yàng

(Mole asks the goat) Have you done a poo on my head?  (Goat) Me? That’s not mine.  My poos look like this… (The goat does a poo that looks like chocolate balls).

We will have a treat after the story time, a bowl of goat poos to share 🙂    (NB there will be nuts in these goat poos)

See you Wednesday 10am 🙂

手指大拇指动动动 One Finger One Thumb Keep Moving

Well the kids have grown a bit, but we did used to love the old Wiggles 🙂 So we translated the Wiggles’ version of ‘One Finger One Thumb Keep Moving’ for our Mandarin Motion Song and Story Time, which we had fun singing today 🙂

Here is the Wiggles’ English version to help you sing the Chinese version.  Just replace our Mandarin lyrics below.  My kids plan to make a Mandarin version video for you 🙂

手指大拇指 动动动

我们都很高兴 (repeat after each verse)

手指大拇指 胳膊 动动动

手指大拇指 胳膊 动动动

手指 大拇指 胳膊 点着的头动动动

手指 大拇指 胳膊 点着的头 站起来 坐下来动动动

手指 大拇指 胳膊 点着的头站起来 转个圈 坐下来 动动动

shǒu zhǐ dà mǔ zhì dòng dòng dòng

wǒmen dōu hěn gāo xìng (repeat after each verse)

shǒu zhǐ dà mǔ zhì gēbo dòng dòng dòng

shǒu zhǐ dà mǔ zhì gēbo tuǐ dòng dòng dòng

shǒu zhǐ dà mǔ zhì gēbo tuǐ diǎn zhe de tóu dòng dòng dòng

shǒu zhǐ dà mǔ zhì gēbo tuǐ diǎn zhe de tóu zhànqilai zuòxialai dòng dòng dòng

shǒu zhǐ dà mǔ zhì gēbo tuǐ diǎn zhe de tóu zhànqilai zhuàn ge quān zuòxialai dòng dòng dòng

One finger One Thumb keep moving
We’ll all be happy and bright.
One finger, One Thumb, One Arm, keep moving
One finger, One Thumb, One Arm, One Leg, keep moving
One finger, One Thumb, One Arm, One Leg, One nod of the head, keep moving
One finger, One Thumb, One Arm, One Leg, One nod of the head, Stand Up, Sit Down, keep moving
One finger, One Thumb, One Arm, One Leg, One nod of the head, Stand Up, Turn around, Sit Down, keep moving

The Pet Dragon, Mandarin Song and Story Time Wednesday 31st May 2017

We will read ‘The Pet Dragon’ by Christoph Niemann this week, as requested from one of our students 🙂 It is a lovely book to introduce Chinese characters through clever illustrations.

We might see if we can be just as clever and make some of these characters with our bodies, on our own or as a team 🙂 Here is the illustration for 上下 in our book.

And here are our kids making them with their bodies:

We sing lots of songs that have 上 (shàng) ‘up/above/over etc.’ and 下 (xià) ‘down/below/under etc.’ in them. A good song and video to keep watching for ‘Up/Down’  is the Groovi Pauli ‘Going Up Going Down’ song, which you can watch by clicking on the song name! And don’t forget our ‘Where is the teacher?’ song that has ‘Up there’ and ‘Down there’ in it.  We move our shoulders ‘Up and down’ in our Clap hands song.  Our ‘London Bridge’ activity too has ‘falling DOWN’ in there.  And our Jelly Fish song has Up/Down in it! Here is a video I forgot I had of my kids a couple of friends singing this a few years back! You can watch it here but click on the London Bridge link for more details and lyrics of the song. There are no excuses for getting our 上 and 下 mixed up 🙂

So come along for some kinesthetic character learning fun!

好饿的毛毛虫 Very Hungry Caterpillar

This week at our Mandarin Motion Song and Story Time we will read 好饿的毛毛虫  (hǎo è de máo mao chóng) ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’.  We have all the food ready to feed our very hungry caterpillar!

This book is great for kids to make so many connections in Mandarin!  It has days of the week, counting, and lots of different measure words to hear!

We can also sing along to these two cool Groovi Pauli songs , salsa to the fruit song, and listen to our bellies 咕噜咕噜叫 (gū lu gū lu jiào) ‘rumble’!

苹果,苹果,苹果 (píng guǒ, píng guǒ, píng guǒ) apple, apple, apple
香蕉,香蕉,香蕉 (xiāng jiāo, xiāng jiāo, xiāng jiāo) banana, banana, banana
葡萄,葡萄,葡萄 (pú táo, pú táo, pú táo) grapes, grapes, grapes
橘子 (jú zi) tangerine

水果,水果,水果 (shuǐ guǒ, shuǐ guǒ, shuǐ guǒ) fruit, fruit, fruit
营养 (yíng yǎng) nutritious
水果,水果,水果 (shuǐ guǒ, shuǐ guǒ, shuǐ guǒ) fruit, fruit, fruit
水果 好吃 (shuǐ guǒ hǎo chī) Yummy fruit

草莓,草莓,草莓 (cǎo méi, cǎo méi, cǎo méi) strawberry, strawberry, strawberry
西瓜,西瓜,西瓜 (xī guā, xī guā, xī guā) watermelon, watermelon, watermelon
梨,梨,梨 (lí, lí, lí) pear, pear, pear
柚子 (yòu zi) grapefruit

水果,水果,水果 (shuǐ guǒ, shuǐ guǒ, shuǐ guǒ) fruit, fruit, fruit
营养 (yíng yǎng) nutritious
水果,水果,水果 (shuǐ guǒ, shuǐ guǒ, shuǐ guǒ) fruit, fruit, fruit
水果 好吃 (shuǐ guǒ hǎo chī) Yummy fruit

 What sound is that? 什么声音 shén me shēng yīn
Are you hungry? 你饿吗 nǐ è ma

I’m hungry 我饿了wǒ è le
I want to eat something 想吃东西 xiǎng chī dōng xī
So hungry.

Ah-ya. I’m so hungry. 哎呀。我好饿。āi yā wǒ hǎo è
My stomach is rumbling. 我肚子咕噜咕噜叫。wǒ dù zi gū lū gū lū jiào
I want to eat eat eat eat something. 我要吃吃吃吃东西。wǒ yào chī chī chī chī dōng xī
I want to eat til I’m full. 我要吃到饱。wǒ yào chī dào bǎo

I’m hungry 我饿了wǒ è le
I want to eat something 想吃东西 xiǎng chī dōng xī
So hungry.

See you Wednesday!

谁的屁股?Whose bottom?

We love stories and songs about bottoms 🙂 So we will read 谁的屁股? (shéi de pìgu) ‘Whose Bottom?’ this week, Wednesday 10am in our Mandarin Song and Story Time. For more posts on bottoms check out our wiping bottoms page, who did the poo page, tones and poo page, and poos and water page!

Lucas has also been busy this week playing with iMotion, and has made a little video to go to our 开门关门 song.  We have been singing this song for years in our story time, I wrote it when my kids were little and used to enjoy ‘Open Shut Them’ at regular library story time, and I wanted to try and write a similar action song in Mandarin to the same tune.  So here it is to enjoy at home 🙂 Well done Lucas 🙂 The words to the song are underneath the video.

Kāimén guānmén Kāimén guānmén,  Pāi Pāi Pāi Pāi shǒu

Kāimén guānmén Kāimén guānmén, mōmō jiǎozhǐtou

Zhànqǐlái zuòxià Zhànqǐlái zuòxià, Pāi Pāi Pāi Pāi shǒu

Zhànqǐlái zuòxià Zhànqǐlái zuòxià, mōmō nǐde tóu

开门关门开门关门, 拍拍拍拍手

开门关门开门关门, 摸摸脚指头

站起来坐下站起来坐下, 拍拍拍拍手

站起来坐下站起来坐下, 摸摸你的头

English translation is : Open the door, shut the door, open the door, shut the door, give a little clap, Open the door, shut the door, open the door, shut the door, touch your toes, stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down, give a little clap, stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down, touch your head.  Children put hands in prayer position and open and shut them to imitate a door opening and shutting for the first verse.  Children respond immediately as they know the tune so well.

We often, as with other songs, choose to sing this one 快 kuài /fast or  慢  màn /slow.  Kids love doing movement songs in speed and skow motion, and the slow version allows them to listen to and sing the song with very clear drawn out syllables.

See you Wednesday 🙂