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:

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

王 老 先 生 有 块 地， 咿 呀 咿 呀 呦

tā zài tián lǐ yǎng xiǎo jī yī yā yī yā yōu

他 在 田 里 养 小 鸡， 咿 呀 咿 呀 呦

zhè lǐ jī jī jī nà lǐ jī jī jī

这 里 叽叽叽， 那 里 叽叽叽

zhè lǐ jī nà lǐ jī dào chù dōu zài jī jī

这 里 叽， 那 里 叽， 到 处 都 在 叽叽

wáng lǎo xiān shēng yǒu kuài dì yī yā yīyā yōu

王 老 先 生 有 块 地， 咿 呀 咿 呀 呦

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

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

我 爱 我 的 爸 爸

wǒ ài wǒ de mā ma

我 爱 我 的 妈 妈

wǒ ài wǒ de gē ge

我 爱 我 的 哥 哥

wǒ ài wǒ de jiě jie

我 爱 我 的 姐 姐

wǒ ài wǒ de jiā

我 爱 我 的 家

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.

袋鼠也有妈妈吗？ 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 熊 xióng bear 大象 dàxiàng elephant 猴子 hóuzi monkey

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.