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It’s important to make learning fun for small children. They’re still learning how to interact with the world, so they need to be engaged and interested in what they’re doing. Games are a great way to do this because they can help you teach your child about the world in a fun way. It can be really helpful for language learning, too, because it makes it easier for kids to understand new words and concepts when they’re playing a game that uses those words or concepts.
Now that we’ve covered why we think it’s important to use games to make learning fun, we want to take this opportunity to share three language-learning games that will help your child improve their Chinese skills.
Create a set of flashcards with Chinese characters and their English translations. You can easily use paper or cardboard that you have at home.
Have the child match the Chinese characters with their English translations.
As your child matches the cards, get them to recite both the English and Chinese ones out loud.
If your child has been learning Chinese for some time, you could also use Sagebooks Study Card to play matching games. Here are two common activities to try.
Match Bushou (radicals) – have your child match characters of the same bushou.
Match rhymes or homophones – have your child match characters that rhyme or are pronounced the same.
(click on the activity name below to access the full instructions)
Find the Character Game – a fun way to engage your child in repetition to enhance their retention of the characters.
Radicals Bingo & Sorting – a game to tackle radicals
Matching Characters Activity – practice reading hand-writing and printed characters, use a timer to up the challenge.
Homophone Card Games – with cheatsheets to help you set up the game.
A study of “de” – use cards and worksheet to tackle this specific grammar.
Print out or draw eight pictures of common objects and label them on the opposite side in Chinese. (Example: You can draw things like apples, books, pencils, a television, etc. On one side of the paper is the drawing, and on the other side is the word in Chinese.)
Have the child tell you the meaning in Chinese. Have them flip the picture to see if they are right.
To make things interesting, for two of the drawings, make an error in the character that you write. See if your child can spot the mistake. If they don’t, it’s ok. If they do, give them a reward!
Review what the correction should be together.
This is a great way to practice both verbal and problem-solving skills.
The career for a day game is fun because all that your child has to do is choose who they want to be for a day. This can be a doctor, a chef, a teacher, an engineer, etc. Anything they want.
Their role for the day is to try to speak as much Chinese as possible that would be related to their new career.
This is a fun way to incorporate role-play with language learning.
You can even help them create a costume so that they can feel a part of their new identity for the day.
As we have seen with these three games, language learning can be fun and effective at the same time. It can be used to stimulate the child’s mind and let their imagination run wild, all while learning and improving their Chinese skills.
Did you enjoy these games? Tag us on @SagebooksHKHub to let us know which one you play!
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