My Early Start: Learning Chinese

More countries looking to expand their Mandarin programs

Ten years ago, friends and some of my family members were puzzled that I chose to send my children to a bilingual Mandarin-English school.  At the time, there were only a handful of schools which taught Mandarin in elementary schools.  Only a few non-Asian students attended my children's school, but times have certainly changed.

School districts across the country are trying to add Mandarin programs so that children in the United States can learn Mandarin Chinese. I have recently come across articles, which describe that other countries also recognize the fact that their children should learn Mandarin.

Here's an interesting article from the United Kingdom:   Children Must Learn Chinese

And a report from Australia: More Australian Children Should Learn Chinese

As more schools are adding Mandarin programs, parents are helping to prepare their preschool children with Mandarin DVDs, cassettes and television programs.   Our Early Start Mandarin DVD series has continued to sell well in the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States and Australia.  As the interest in Mandarin continues to grow, we have seen our sales expand to countries such as the Philipines, Singapore, Holland and France.

Fabulous New Chinese Dragon Tshirt!

We have added a fourth design to our popular t-shirt collection.  Our
colorful dragon looks great on our vibrant orange
tee.  All of our shirts are made from 100% cotton.

All of our designs (pig "zhu," cat "mao," dog "go," and dragon "long,") are
in Chinese and English with great graphics.

Buy one today for yourself on our website MyEarlyStart.com   Our
t-shirts come in many sizes for both children
and adults.

Let us know which design is your favorite!

Learning Chinese with your Kindle

My business partner and I just purchased Kindles so that we can keep up with the news, our favorite blogs, and, of course, to catch up on all the reading we've wanted to do since college.  We're hoping that the Kindle will become a great tool for learning Mandarin and other languages, too.  So far, I have only found one publication (Beginners Guide for Learning Chinese) for learning Mandarin.  Let me know if you've purchased this.  There aren't any reviews on Amazon for it, so I'd love to hear from you if you are familiar with it.

Online Resources to Complement Learning Chinese

My husband and I don't speak any Mandarin, but my children began studying at a Mandarin-immersion school more than 10 years ago.  In an effort to help my children adjust to a Mandarin-speaking environment, I searched for ways to help introduce the language at home. 

Ten years ago, I was unable to find anything on the internet, which is now one of the best sources for Chinese-learning tools.  There are dozens of great videographers on youtube.com, who post frequent, short lessons.  One of my kids' favorites is AskBenny.com.  (See a short clip here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXxYpSC6yLk&feature=related).

Chineselessons.com is a great resource for learning pinyin and bopomofo.  As I understand it, Pinyin is a writing method, which is romanization of Chinese characters.  Bopomofo is used mainly in Taiwan as a system to teach pronunciation of Chinese characters. (Feel free to correct me if I have this wrong!)

For younger children, the web is a great resource for downloadable pages to reinforce character memorization.  Gigglepotz.com will definitely be a younger child's favorite spot for learning Chinese, downloading pages and exploring new topics related to China.  (Visit the site at:  http://www.gigglepotz.com/china.htm)

A brush-painting set is a must for both younger and older children.  Painting the Chinese characters is fun and great re-enforcement for memorization.  My kids still love to practice new characters, as well as paint landscapes, with their brush painting sets.  (Check out this link about brush painting: http://www.nanrae.com/lesson-pg1.html)

Some of the best sites for purchasing flash cards, workbooks, dvds, and other Chinese-learning tools are AsianParent.com, Childbook.com, AsiaForKids.com and Chinasprout.com.  I find that giving my kids exposure to a variety of learning tools keeps their interest.  

Filming with preschoolers

We have now filmed 8 DVDs and certainly have learned a lot during the process.  Our first script included many scenes of small children, animals, props, impressive action sequences, etc.  We soon learned that it is extremely difficult to have a cat cooperating on set with a child, and that cookie crumbs really show up on close-ups.  We also learned that a 5 second scene can take hours to film, especially when working with a two year old, whose nap was cut a bit short.

One thing Teresa and I didn't anticipate was the hilarity of it all.  We have funny outtakes from our 8 DVDs, which provide hours of laughter for us.  We may have been frustrated during the 50th take of a shot, but we can now laugh at those priceless moments.

Global interest in learning Mandarin

Teresa and I formed Ni Hao Productions three years ago, to provide other families a fun way to introduce their children to Mandarin.  We had both searched for similar DVDs, but neither of us liked the selection we found.  I think that my children would have found their transition to a Mandarin immersion school much easier, had they had some exposure to the language beforehand. 

Our first DVDs were released in June, 2006 and the positive response has been overwhelming.  We have shipped our DVDs to families in almost every state and to most of the provinces in Canada.  Most recently, we have received requests for our products from families in Hong Kong, Australia and Canada.  We are thrilled that two new vendors have begun carrying our products, www.xihaha.co.uk in England, www.AsiaBookRoom.com in Australia. 

We love our most recent review from Karen Cheng in Australia!  Please visit www.karencheng.com.au to read it!

I don't think that Teresa and I had expected our company to grow this quickly.  We are thrilled that Bao Bei and her little peng yo are edutaining children all over the globe.

BEA (Book Expo America) 2008 in Los Angeles

What an amazing event!  About thirty thousand people from all over the globe attend the BEA convention every year.  This was a wonderful opportunity for us to meet many of our distributors, customers and librarians.  We have continued to have a very positive response to our DVDs.

I remember when we first started Ni Hao Productions that people would ask us, "Why should my kid learn Chinese?"  Now, we constantly hear, "This is exactly what I need for my kids!"  It's thrilling to provide so many children with our DVDs and to have Bao Bei fans around the world.

Next month, we'll be attending the Home Media Expo in Las Vegas.  We look forward to meeting many of you there!