We have been away from Hold the MSG for a while, but we’re back with a bang today with our first cultural episode, teaching the traditions of the Chinese New Year, otherwise known as the Spring Festival. This year, Chinese New Year begins on February 9th.

We didn’t prepare a worksheet for the characters and vocabulary for this lesson, since the focus is on culture, but if you’re a homeschooler and want to turn this into a unit study, please note the following links:

Chinese New Year Study

Chinese New Year Coloring Pages

Chinese New Year Study Resources (book suggestions, video, very comprehensive. This squidoo lens is highly recommended, as it was written by Jimmie, the Notebooking Fairy, who also lived as an expat in China)

Chinese New Year Lapbooking Resources (includes book suggestions to accompany the unit

Chinese New Year Lapbook suggestions (with book suggestions, printables and lots of pictures!)

Here is the recipe for jiǎo zì, as promised:

Chinese Dumplings

Dumpling “Skins”

• 1 cup dumpling flour from your local Chinese shop OR plain flour
• ¼ cup water
• A pinch of salt

Filling:

• 50 dumpling skins
• 1 lb. ground meat (pork, chicken, beef or lamb)
• cloves garlic, finely chopped
• ½ tablespoon ginger, finely diced
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon white pepper powder
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons sesame oil
• 2 tablespoons green onion
• 2 tablespoons celery, finely chopped (optional)
• bowl cold water

Directions:

Wrapper:

Combine flour, salt and water and mix. Knead until shiny and elastic for 10 minutes. Add more water or flour until you reach a consistency that is firm without being too wet.

Cover in plastic wrap or put in a plastic bag for 30 minutes in the fridge. Roll the wrappers by pulling off little balls and rolling until thin, about as thin as pasta, and about three inches (7.5 centimeters) in diameter.

Brush the edges of the wrappers lightly with water (With store-bought wrappers, this is a necessary step, but can often be skipped with freshly-made ones.) Place a teaspoon of filling in the centre and fold in a half moon shape. Press closed ensuring they are sealed.

Boil until wrapping is plump and dumplings float to the top of the water (check one for doneness).

Filling:

Combine all ingredients.

This week, after a bit of a break, we are back and learning how to answer another much-asked question: What country are you from?

To answer that question, we’ll learn how to say the names of these countries:

• Canada
• China
• America
• England
• France
• Germany

If your country isn’t listed, drop us a line using the “contact” button above, and we’ll do a lesson add-on with your country  name.

If you want to print out the cool flags of the world colouring sheets we used in this lesson, please visit this link.

And don’t forget to pick up the handout that goes along with this lesson. It will teach you the stroke order for writing the Chinese characters we use this week and give you a chance to practice writing for yourself.

Consider signing up to for updates to know when new material posts on our site. (Psst–over there, on the right.)

Until next week, zài jiàn!

We have been dealing with some issues with our visas and residency permits. This has kept us very busy and we haven’t had time to post. 

The good news is, the problems are on their way to being completely solved and we now have permits for the next few months.

We’ll be back and posting again by next week. Thanks for your patience.

This week, we learn how to ask and answer where is someone or something. We also learn just how important the tones in Mandarin are, and how simply changing them can change the meaning of a word!

But don’t worry. We make it easy. If we can do it, so can you.

Don’t forget to pick up your handout! Until next week, zài jiàn!

{Post-publication clarification: A reader made the comment that “where” and “there” are hard to differentiate. Note that when two third-tone characters form a word (like nǐ hǎo or nǎ lǐ), the first character of the word changes to second tone. This makes the expression much easier to say. Watch the end of the video again with this clarification in mind and see if that helps differentiate the pronunciation. Note also that in our home in the north there is a change of sound made to the end of the word, so optionally people say nǎ ér (blended together into one sound). In that case, it’s actually easier to pronounce and differentiate. This is non-standard Mandarin, but IS the Mandarin you would hear spoken if you visited Beijing, for example.}

This week, our “unsocialized” homeschool students ask strangers in the market “What is this?” and “What is this called?” in Mandarin Chinese. Learn along with us!

We also have a new cameraman! So get ready for a slightly bumpy ride as we take today’s episode out in the warmer almost-spring weather.

In one scene, see if you can hear people imitating our children’s speech as they speak Mandarin, and compliment them on their Chinese. Now that you’ve been listening along for four weeks, you’d have enough Chinese to impress them too. In fact, we often receive compliments on our Chinese after speaking just one word!

Learning Chinese is that easy and fun!

If this is your first week joining us, please start at Lesson One: Greetings to make sure you learn all the concepts, as the lessons build on one another.

Don’t forget to pick up the handout for this lesson. Until next week, zài jiàn!

Nihǎo and welcome back! This week, we learn how to say “How old are you?” and how to answer that question. We also learn the numbers 1 through 10 and how to use those numbers to count all the way to 99!

As always, we also learn a little about Chinese culture and what it’s like to live in China.

Come join us on our learning adventure and don’t forget to pick up your handout!

 Until next week, zài jiàn!

Welcome back! We hope you enjoyed last week’s lesson and that you’ve been practicing how to say “hello” and “goodbye” in Mandarin.

This week, we’re learning about Chinese names, the meanings of Chinese names and how to say, “What’s your name?” in Mandarin.

It’s warming up here in our city, so some of our video is outside, but inside we had houseguests occupying one of the warmer rooms in the house–the room that will serve as our homeschool room once the dust settles–so we relocated for this lesson.

Just like last week, the video has instruction from us and samples of native speech with lots of opportunity to practice. You’ll soon see that speaking Mandarin is not as hard as you thought! Be sure to check out “The Basics” above for more information on how to speak Mandarin Chinese.

Enjoy!

The link for choosing your very own Chinese name is:

http://www.cultural-china.com/Kaleidoscope/cultural_tool/Chinese_name/index.html

Don’t forget to ask a parent to help you enter your personal information. AND don’t forget to pick up your handout for this lesson.

Until next week, zài jiàn!

Welcome to Hold the MSG! We will be posting weekly lessons in Mandarin for kids. Lessons will be brief and teach key concepts. There are associated handouts for each lesson if you want to practice writing the Mandarin characters we learn. For this week’s handout, click here or click on the Handouts tab in the menu bar.

We are still suffering from jet lag and fighting sleep-deprivation-related sniffles, but nevertheless, here is our first lesson: Greetings.

We hope you enjoy learning with us!

This site will launch: 1 year, 1 month, 28 days, 19 hours, 13 minutes ago