Primary One - Nurturing a love for Chinese #5: Write it! (小书 Small Book)

From an earlier post where I reached out to a friend, who is also Chinese teacher in a Primary school, on sharing some tips on Chinese Composition, came the suggestion of creating a 小书, Small Book. The idea of creating one is to engage the children to reflect and write, and at the same time, in a fun and creative manner!

So I decided to take this on to try with the kiddo and we created 1 小书 so far with another still "work-in-progress". 

For our first attempt, because I did not want it to be so taxing for her, I decided to make it with a 填充 format. To start, we made it as a 6 panel book using this format. I wanted to set her up for success so that she has a positive experience and I made it a fun story with open ended sentences where she can pen down her portion. 

I also cut out a window with a pen knife so that she is able to slot in whichever illustration she fancies for the moment. 

Pages 1 & 2

After jotting down the start of the story, before Dumpling began, I got her to read to me first and we discussed this in Mandarin. I prompted her with questions such as "她是一个怎么样的女孩?", "你觉得她会怎么样做?", etc.

She then started to fill the book on her own. 

I also left the illustration half completed so that it has room to allow for creativity and she can doodle what she likes.

Pages 3 & 4

As part of the objective of this exercise was also to encourage her to converse in Mandarin, I got her to write down dialogue too. It would then allow me to be able to gauge her sentence structure, the high frequency words knowledge (if she is able to recall), as well as to expand her vocabulary range.  

Pages 5 & 6
For these last 2 pages, I wanted to make it fun for her. Because we have loads of stickers at home, I cut out a plastic sheet and drew the face of the girl on. With the plastic sheet, Dumpling can then paste on whichever dress she fancies for the moment, making this activity an interactive one too as she can change the dress design any time she wants to. We also made a "closet" where she cut out dresses for the girl. These dresses can be "worn" by slotting them under that same plastic sheet. :)

If you are keen to make one too, here's what you may need for materials:

- A4 paper (if it is a 4-page book) / A3 (for 6 pages book). I prefer using construction paper as it is thicker
- Colourful pens / markers
- Scissors (may need pen knife)
- Glue stick
- Scotch tape
- Old magazines where you can cut out pictures from

- Optional: scrapbook materials (I bought 2 made-to-go albums for this purpose!) 

So there you have it! Our very first 小书 (Small Book) which is not unlike the lapbooks we have made in the past, only just in Chinese. :) I hope to share our next book soon!

This is an ongoing series on documenting my learning and Dumpling's Primary one journey. 

This is part of a 5-part series:

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

Part 2: Speak It, Use It

Part 3: Watch It!

Part 4: Play It! 

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