It’s a shame that I’m a yellow banana and every time Alycia or Sherilyn asks me “mummy, what Chinese word is this?”, I feel ashamed to tell them “mummy’s not sure” or “wait, let me check out the dictionary“. Alycia and Sherilyn’s pre-school emphasizes on Mandarin a lot and the standard of Mandarin taught to pre-schoolers is high as the school is working towards preparing the pre-schoolers for primary school.  The pre-school even sets Ting Xie or spelling in Mandarin for 6 year olds every week and Alycia will have to memorize writing her Mandarin characters starting from next week onwards. On top of Ting Xie, she also has English spelling and Ejaan (spelling in Malay) every week and I’ve started to drill her with spelling this week. It’s really putting the stress on me… and she’s only in kindergarten!!
Right now, I’m already very lost when it comes to coaching the gals in their Mandarin homework. I’d asked the gals’ koo por (the hubs’ aunt) to help me buy a Chinese-English dictionary so that I can refer to it for help. While the dictionary helps to explain the meaning of a word, it doesn’t help much with the pronounciation and sounding of each word (though there is hanyi pinyi).Â
Alycia can write her Mandarin characters pretty well but most of the time, I think she does not know what she’s writing coz when I asked her what word she’s writing, she tells me that she doesn’t know. Sometimes her teacher writes the meaning of the word in hanyi pinyi but sometimes, she doesn’t.
I can foresee Alycia will have a hard time coping in a Chinese school primary school next year when she enters Primary 1. I will definitely send her for Mandarin tuition classes.
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Nowadays learning standard in kindergarten is very very high…it is almost up to the primary 2 standard…
What they learning now will be cover too in early primary…so don’t stress up so much now…it is too deep for them…
Our time is starting to learn ABC…hai…
she born in year 2003? next year will go Primary 1? Yeah…the mandarin is quite tough for them, sometime when my son bring back the homework i also feel stress for them. i am still ok as i am from Chinese school. u can ask all the blogger mummies if got any problem in homework. 🙂
hey,
my hubby is ang mo, myself have only 6 years of primary mandarin background, not the pin yin one…is the po fo mo fo type…and with learning the traditional & simplified writing too… but it does help me when I need a job in abroad, being many companies enter into the China market, knowledge of mandarin is certain help!! Therefore, my hubby said our gal will not go to the international school, she much go to the Chinese school and not only for the 6 years primary…which mean now we have shortlisted to Kun Chen School @ Jln Syed Putra, or the Chinese Taipei School @ Bkt Rimau, Shah Alam, for her to learn the 3 languages!!
For Alycia mandarin/chinese tuition, perhaps you can try this school… I’m not sure how good there are, found it thru the website, while I’m researching the pre-school for my little one for next year..who turn in 2 years old… she is a Dec baby too!!!
Smart Mandarin Kids
112A-124A, Jalan Kasah,
Damansara Heights,
50490 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Tel +6 (012) 3450688
Email onny@smartmandarinkids.com
http://www.smartmandarinkids.com/index.cfm?url=about
ONLINE dictionary – you can used the stroke or pinyin
http://www.zdic.net/zd/
(once you find the word that you want, click on the speaker sign…it teach you the pronounciation too!!)
* FIND the word via STROKE 部首检å—
* PIN YIN SEARCHING 拼音索引
hope its help.