Since it is the Chinese New Year, we have a good excuse to do another Chinese-themed tea. As with the previous Chinese tea we had during the Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节), our Chinese New Year tea was filled with traditional Chinese snacks:
- Peanut butter mochi (花生米糬)
- Sesame mochi (芝麻米糬)
- Peanut dainties (花生酥)
- Mung bean patties (绿豆酥)
- Fuzhou cyrstal puffs (福洲水晶饼)
- Pandan rice cake (香兰叶糕)
Alongside enjoying the snacks and drinking rose tea, Tiger learned a new poem -- <<春晓>> (Spring Dawn) by another Tang dynasty poet, Meng Haoran (孟浩然).
This poem depicts the poet's contemplation upon a dawn in springtime. Given that the Chinese New Year is also called the Spring Festival (春节) as it marks the beginning of spring in the Chinese calendar, learning this particular poem seems very appropriate.
Besides memorising and reciting the poem, Tiger also learnt how the poem can be depicted as a painting and a song,
as well as a piece of music that is popular during the Chinese New Year.
This post is linked up to:
Wow, that study is quite impressive.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Phyllis. The poem is a very timely one (for spring time) and it's great that there are so many resources to support our learning. :-)
DeleteWe are definitely due for a Chinese tea! Thanks for this great reminder, I'm going to pick up Dim sum this weekend.
ReplyDeleteDim sum is a great idea, Marie! Hope you enjoy your Chinese tea nad have a lovely weekend! :-)
DeleteMmmm.... now I need to go heat some water for tea. I'll have to show my son the videos, he'll love them.
ReplyDeleteI hope your son enjoys the videos! :-)
Deleteooh! great Chinese tea! I don't think I even have a place to buy that stuff near by. :( I've never thought of teaching Chinese poems to my son! Honestly, I don't know anything about Chinese poetry and very little about traditions/holidays! And I can't read Chinese either...All this makes it even harder to teach my kids about our heritage! I'm going to look around your site for ideas!
ReplyDeleteI bought our snacks from a grocery shop in Chinatown, so if you have a Chinese/Asian supermarket or grocery shop near you, you might be able to find similar items there. :-)
DeleteAs for ideas to teach your children the Chinese language and its culture, you might find some ideas if you go to the "Chinese" tab of my blog : http://thetigerchronicle.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Chinese
The other suggestion is approach learning Chinese as a totally foreign language for you and your children, so that all of you learn together. It sounds to me that your best approach is to treat yourselves like Westerners who want to learn Chinese as a foreign language/culture and take it from there. :-)
Thanks! I will check out your Chinese tab! We have not been very formal in our learning Chinese so far...but eventually would like to be. I've just been exposing them to it verbally and through videos (albeit, very small amounts, compared to the amount of English they hear all day). I'm hesitant because we're only in year 2 of homeschooling, and still trying to find out 'rhythm' in terms of schedule and timing. Seems like alot of our other academic work takes up a lot of the day. We haven't quite figured out how to be efficient (I suspect my son has ADD)! So right now, during snack-time is our 'Chinese' time. Definitely not enough for real learning! What kind of schedule to you keep? Like is Chinese covered every day? I'll dig around on your website and see if it's posted. i'm just curious how other people manage. I know every family is different, but I like seeing examples to get ideas.
DeleteMy son used to attend a weekly Chinese class for 2 hours, but he has stopped attending recently so we are doing Chinese lessons by ourselves using those 2 hours that he would otherwise be going to class for. In addition, we spend about an hour on Chinese every day (when we are at home) doing supplementary exercises such as beginner readers, reciting poetry, reviewing his lessons, looking at aspects of Chinese history/culture etc.
DeleteAs you are just starting out on homeschooling, my advise is to get into a comfortable rhythm/routine first with the "basics" (whatever that is for your family, e.g. 3Rs) before adding on anything else otherwise you risk being overwhelmed by trying to take on too much at once. If you treat Chinese as the subject "foreign language", maybe that will help you to figure out how and when to do it.
Looks yummy! I hope to send my girls to Saturday Chinese school in the fall. :) Right now, most of their learning comes through music and videos.
ReplyDeleteHow exciting that your girls will be starting Chinese school soon! I'm sure they'll learn a lot from going to the classes. :-)
DeleteOh, how fun!! We love tea parties and I love the Chinese snacks!! I am featuring this post over at Crafty Moms Share for the Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop this month.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for the feature and for your kind comments, Carrie. :-) Themed tea parties seem to work well for us, so it would be a nice idea to try. :-)
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