Nurturing a love for Chinese #4 - Play it!

Having established a regular habit of reading Chinese titles, singing together with Dumpling and speaking more Mandarin to her, the routine somewhat became a tad more 'natural'. To extend the usage of the language, I started doing crafts and played games to her where we communicated in Mandarin. 

Here's a fun idea which we enjoyed very much when Dumpling was young. I'd recycle some old cardboard boxes and we will make our own paper 'puppets' and act out the story as I read a loud. If your kiddo is young, the objective is to expose them to the sound of the language as well as to various vocabulary - 贴纸，黄色， 鸭子，大灰狼，小猪，木屋，石砖, etc. to asking them questions (and thus encouraging them to think and reply in Mandarin) 池塘里的水是什么颜色？

As Dumpling gets older, I am trying to get her to communicate more in Mandarin and in complete sentences. We are using the below for a Chinese story telling game!  

In each box, there are 9 different dice with 6 pictures on each side. We'd pick out 3 (randomly) and roll them and form a story based on the images. 

"有一天，一只小蜜蜂迷了路。辛好它找到了一台手机，可以打电话回家."
(A bee lost his way one day. Fortuntately, he found a mobile phone and was able to call home)

The next player can then roll another 3 dice and continue the story from there:

"当小蜜蜂要打电话时, 却发生了一件奇怪的事情! 一阵大风把它吹到埃及去！" 
(Just as he was about to make the call, something strange happened! A gust of wind swept him up and blew him to Egypt!)

Of course, Dumpling is not that fluent in Mandarin and there are many terms which she is not sure of. And that's the entire aim of this game - to expand her vocabulary, to let her imagination run wild and most importantly, have fun using it! :) 

This is part of a 10-part series:

Part 1: Read Read Read (books of a different kind)

Part 2: Speak It, Use It

Part 3: Watch It! 

Part 5: Write it! (小书 Small Book)

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