Learning about Chinese Characters

Hello everyone! We started our full excitement as we prepared for Dad’s Day! After finishing our gifts for dad, we played with play dough. We also continued making the gift wraps for our dad’s day presents. Today, we selected the letters in our names from a pile and pasted them on the wrapper.
R: R
W: W! (while pointing to himself)
J: here? (asking where to stitch the letters he has)
Z and X (M’s dad and mom) visited Petals to share about M’s heritage and culture. We learned about the province in China where her parents were from, M’s birthplace, the people in her family and the fascinating art form of calligraphy.
X: Hello! Z, M and I were born in Beijing. M’s Dad was born in the Southern part of China. In China we write characters which are derived from pictures. Can you write Chinese characters?
E: I can write both ( Chinese and Japanese).
X: As you can see here, the characters come from pictures.
P: Sun
M: two squares?
i: This is a tree (mu)
Z: People tried to draw pictures based on the shape of the object.
Z showed us some characters that had a picture next to it and we tried to guess what it was.
R: My house have the sun and moon. The (bamboo) panda eats it
E: That is mountain
Z: You can remember the characters from the shape. What do you think this one is? (Earth)
W: Plant
R: Uhm.. I don't know
M: I know in Chinese
Z: How about this one? (Knife)
E/M: dao
R: it’s ouchie
Z: Can you guess this one? (Wood)
E: Stickman!
Z: Where do sticks come from?
R: China
E: Outside
Petals: Wood!
X: These are bamboo brushes
R: C do this too!
X handed us a brush to touch!
P: Thank you
X: This is a container to hold the brushes, you can roll it up. This is the book we used to practice writing. This heavy wood is used as a paper weight. You have to make the pen pointy with the ink before you write. Let’s take another look at some characters.
D: sun
M: Taiyou
X: Ri
M: eyes
X: Mu
Shelley: Mu (tree)
E: Shān ( mountain) Ma (horse) Sword (Jiàn)
R: Yu (fish)
Z: Mén (gate)
X: Our family consists of me, dad, M, Z. M also has both grandparents. What do you call grandpa and grandma (Dad’s side)
E/M: Yeye (grandpa) Nainai (grandma).
X: For grandparents on the mother side , they called them Waigong and Waipo.
Z: The time when M was born, we went to a fortune teller to learn which element she was and then we added a character from that element in her name.
Xi: H means calm and loving and H ( M’s brother) means light.
After exploring M’s heritage, we immersed ourselves in the Chinese language and learned to count from 1-10. We also tried making a Chinese dish- Smashed Cucumber Salad (Liangban Huanggua).

A big thank you for making our day special with the gifts you have given us. We are beyond grateful to all of you. See you all tomorrow!

Love,
Petals