数学 – Maths 1

One of our goals this year is to try and do some of our school subjects in Mandarin.  Maths is a subject we are going to try and talk about more in Mandarin.   Starting with some basics though!  We have a chart on a whiteboard at home, where when the kids do their chores for the day, they get a smiley face which equals a dollar…at the end of the week their dollars get added up for pocket money.  My little boy’s chart  one day was totaling $4.  He sneakily changed it, meaning to change it to $5, but wrote his 5 back to front, so it ended up being $2!  He won’t make that mistake again in a hurry!

So, we got out a book that we bought in China that has a rhyme in it comparing the shape of numbers to other objects.  We then looked to see if we could find a video/ song to the rhyme that we have in our book. We couldn’t find a rhyme with the exact words in our book, but we found many different versions.  As well as enabling the kids to see pictures in numbers, we could talk about the use of 像 (when something is like something).  Also, because these are Chinese rhymes, the things that the numbers look like, may not be familiar to a western kid, so a great opportunity to talk about what twisted fried dough sticks, sickles, or hanging gourds are!!

Here is the rhyme in our book. of course we have pictures to go with it, so you can see the shape of the number compared to the object.  But if you copy and past the Chinese into google images you will find plenty of piks if you wanted to make this rhyme into your own book.

0像鸭蛋圆滚滚,  1 像铅笔能写字,  2像小鹅水中游

3像耳朵听音乐,  4像小旗迎风飘,  5像小钩能钓鱼

6像蜗牛爬呀爬,  7像镰刀割青草,  8像葫芦藤上挂

9像蝌蚪水中游

Líng xiàng yādàn yuángǔngǔn                  0 is like a duck egg, plump and round
Yī xiàng qiānbǐ néng xiězì                          1 is like a pencil writing characters
Èr xiǎo é shuǐzhōng yóu                             2 is like a little goose swimming in the water
Sān xiàng ěrduo tīng yīnyuè                     3 is like an ear listening to music
Sì xiàng xiǎo qí yíngfēng piāo                   4 is like a little flag dancing in the wind
Wǔ xiàng xiǎo gōu néng diàoyú               5 is like a hook for fishing
Liù xiàng wōniú pá ya pá                          6 is like a snail crawling
Qī xiàng liándāo gē qīngcǎo                     7 is like a sickle to cut grass
Bā xiàng húlu téng shàng guà                  8 is like a gourd hanging from a vine
Jiǔ xiàng kēdǒu shuǐzhōng yóu                 9 is like a tadpole swimming in the water

Or you can find other versions on youtube /tudou etc.  Here is one:

The pinyin lyrics to this version are:

Yī xiàng qiānbǐ xì yòu zhǎng             1 is like a pencil thin and long
Èr xiàng xiǎoyā shuǐshàng piào       2 is like a little duck floating on the water
Sān xiàng ěrduo tīng shēngyīn        3 is like an ear listening to sounds
Sì xiàng xiǎo qí suí fēng yáo             4 is like a little flag waving in the wind
Wǔ xiàng yī gōu guà yī mào             5 is like a clothes hook hanging clothes
Liù xiàng dòuyá liězuǐ xiào               6 is like beansprout grinning
Qī xiàng liándāo gē qīngcǎo             7 is like a sickle cutting grass
Bā xiàng máhuā níng yīdào              8 is like a twisted fried dough twist
Jiǔ xiàng sháo zǐ néng chéng fàn     9 is like a spoon for dishing out rice
Líng xiàng jīdàn zuò dàngāo           0 is like a hen’s egg for making cake

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