How to bring your children together to learn Chinese classics overseas

Just as many parents in China are racking their brains to get their children to learn authentic English, Chinese parents overseas are also struggling to get their children to learn Chinese. As these children grow up overseas, English gradually becomes their mother tongue, and learning Chinese becomes a hard task for them. There is a lack of Chinese language environment, a lack of learning materials, and the Chinese language is not as convenient as the English language, but in the end, the most important thing is that there is no experience of Chinese culture and sense of identity.

When our son Xuan Xuan was 2-3 years old, we chose the Chinese classics as our Chinese teaching materials, hoping to open the door to Chinese history and cultural thinking through the study of the Chinese classics in a limited period of time, and at the same time interspersing literacy learning. We recite "Disciple's Rules", "Sound and Rhythm", and Tang and Song poems as children's songs, which are catchy, rhythmic, easy to sing, and easy to memorize. Every weekend, we had Chinese studies classes with children of similar ages, and with the guidance of the teacher and the company of the children, XuanXuan kept up the program very well, and I originally thought that as long as I kept up the habit of reciting every day, I would be fine. Unexpectedly, when Winston moved to the UK at the age of 4, he experienced a painful struggle to integrate into school life because of the language barrier and unfamiliarity with the environment, and soon became resistant to learning Chinese. The reason was simple: he thought that what he was trying to learn would not help him make friends at school, that he could not find a sense of identity, and that there was no one to talk about it except his family. There is no shortage of people who have gone through the process of "mother roaring, son whistling" and ended up in tears and frenzy when they learned Chinese, and we eventually had to stop.

Not coincidentally, in a Chinese food festival held in London on the banks of the Thames, we were attracted to a group of children stopped, they are bold, confidently dressed in Chinese dress, in the coming and going of Chinese and foreign tourists before singing the "Classic of Poetry - Qin Feng - reed reed reed " in the "reed reed reed pale, white dew for frost. The so-called Iren, in the water side ..." , and with the Thames blowing in the breeze, the song is graceful and beautiful, I was moved to tears, this is the continuation of our Chinese culture overseas ah! This has given me confidence to bring my children to continue learning the Chinese classics. I joined the study group and found out that there is a group of like-minded mothers in the UK who are spontaneously playing a small role in organizing a group of children scattered around the country to learn the Chinese classics online through online video every morning, hoping that these Chinese classics can be passed on to our next generation even overseas. The curriculum is based on repeated recitation, strung with historical allusions and idiomatic stories, and supplemented with literacy. With the heart of "caring for others as we care for our children", the girls work hard to teach and encourage the children to learn the characters and punch cards every day.

Over the course of two years, the children*** learned The Hundred Surnames, Disciple's Rules, The Thousand Character Classic, The Great Learning and The Book of Filial Piety, etc. With the children's gradual interest in Chinese culture, the classroom content was gradually enriched to include more explanations of traditional festivals, the 24 Solar Terms, and other traditional cultural content, as well as interspersed with introductions to ancient poems such as The Book of Psalms, and even more so during the Double Festival this year. In this year's double-festival celebration, we organized an online poetry recitation activity for children to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival. Parents also play their own strengths, adding twelve earthly branches of the Tuna Gong **** rest and a selection of English masterpieces class.

Father Xuan Xuan, who has loved Chinese studies for many years and has gained some insights, was naturally included in the class, explaining to the children every Friday. His vivid and detailed explanations not only helped the children better understand the traditional classics, but also stimulated the interest of the accompanying parents, who often joined in the discussions, mobilized and improved the children's motivation to learn, which was unanimously praised by both the parents and the children. In order to enable more children overseas to join in our study and share their own insights and feelings, the "Reading Chinese Classics with Winston's Father" lecture series was conceived. We will use the most classic Confucian writings as the basis, combine them with the commentaries and insights of many sages and philosophers throughout the ages, along with historical stories, as well as the realities of today's society to explain the classics from the distant to the near, in a simple, concise and in-depth way in language or manner that is easily understood by children and in a way that is easy to understand by children. In a simple, concise, in-depth and simple way, children can easily understand the language or way to explain and interpret. Let's all walk into the hall of national education and culture together. I believe that the seeds of the classics that we sow in the hearts of our children will one day grow into big trees.

Why do we choose to let our children learn the Chinese classics at an early age? The best way to explain this is that the classics of Chinese literature are valuable and philosophical books that contain common sense and teach common sense and behavior in life. Such as "Poetry", "Tao Te Ching", "Xiao Jing", "Analects of Confucius", "University", "Medieval Times" and other classics of the classics, cohesion of thousands of years of Chinese civilization and traditional culture, reflecting the Chinese people's broad and profound cultural essence; fluent, powerful, rhetorical rhetoric, coherent, catchy; rich in content, containing such as astronomy, geography, history, governance, cultivation, morality, ethics and other rich knowledge! Throughout the ages, countless children and teenagers have learned from these books, cultivated their emotions and improved their cultivation. Letting children read these most valuable books at an early age is like learning from the wise, standing on the shoulders of cultural giants from the first step of their lives and starting their lives from a high starting point. Teaching children to recite the classics from a young age is not only in line with the nature of children's learning, but it also lays the foundation for a lifelong refined personality by inculcating them with 5,000 years of culture from an early age. Reading the ancient people, with the sages, is a manifestation of a person's noble spiritual state.

While children abroad will naturally learn and imbibe Western civilization, through the study of Chinese culture and traditional classics, children can learn to compare and contrast, learn the essence and advantages of Chinese and Western culture and traditional classics, and learn to be tolerant, open-minded, appreciative, reverent, and respectful, so as to create a new, more international, and broader future for themselves. The future is more international and broader. We wish every child who has experienced riding the wind and waves a hot life.