Storybox - a great tool in our Chinese Home Learning

I have been out of action for a while because Dumpling had high fever but I am happy to say that I am better rested this week. :)

One of the earlier "craft items /projects" I did with C is to make a story box for retelling and the "acting out" of Chinese stories. This was when Dumpling was about 2.5 where she started babbling more in the language and I knew that I had to participate more in the Chinese front to encourage her interest.

The challenge I had was, how to make it fun and engaging? I did not want to take on the role of serious learning such as word recognition, etc., then because I wanted to leave that to her school. My focus was more on getting her exposed to the sound / tonation of the language, just reading loads with her and perhaps do more craft related things.

I came upon a blog entry on someone using an old box as a theatre and that triggered a thought that I can get Dumpling to do this up as a storybox based on "丑小鸭" - Ugly Duckling.
This is also a great way to recycle an old box. We spoke about what materials to use and how we were going to use each of them.

I had help from her in cutting. 

Thereafter, Dumpling pasted this to resemble the tall grass at the riverbank.

Thereafter, we discussed which panel to use to create a 'pond'. 

I precut the ducklings and had her fill in the missing parts - great way to understand spatial relationship.

Our little scene from Ugly Duckling - 丑小鸭! :) After the storybox was completed, I would then read out the story where she acted out using the various duckling cut outs (we also had "eggs" too) for the various scenes.