Last week Tuesday, it was my turn to teach the children Mandarin. I was teaching opposites. Before I started my lesson, we went through the revision of family members: 爸爸，妈妈，哥哥，弟弟，姐姐，妹妹, 和, 我爱 (father, mother, older brother, younger brother, older sister, younger sister and I love.).
I always thought that learning through playing is the best method of teaching and decided to lead action-based class. First, we learnt boy vs girl. By getting them to split into two groups; a group of boys (男) and a group of girls (女). I also got them to stand up if they were a boy/girl whenever I said it in Chinese. Next, I made them find an opposite sex partner to stand next to.
Next, it was big vs small. This is an action exercise where the children had to jump like a big starfish which is the shape of big (Chinese character 大) and closed all limbs which is the shape of small (Chinese character 小)
The third words were many vs few. I used two paper plates filled with sweets and got the children to point which is many (多) and which is few (少). They were all so excited when they see the sweets.
Next, I taught them up (上) vs down (下). Each time when I said up/down, the children had to stand up/down on the chair. They all loved this action as they able to move around and get a treat each time they got it right.
Lastly, we learnt open vs close by asking them to demonstrate open (开) and close (关) the door.
To embed the knowledge of the lesson, I had to tied in the action words with a Chinese song called finding friends. This is my first time teaching Mandarin and I hope I will be able to share my knowledge to other children.