I love to see my students’ facial expressions when they say, “I like characters. It’s cool, like pictures!” I heard this not only from older students but also the kindergarteners. Since Chinese characters are quite photographic, it is tangible for students to establish the storytelling skills to recognize the characters and do handwriting practice with various materials.

For kindergarteners, this method also helped them try the handwriting of the characters with a bit more strokes. However, the introduction of these characters is always associated with pictures, songs and chants. After this interactive practice, students have the opportunity to express their own understanding of the characters with their own handwriting and picture drawing to show the meaning of the characters.

Please look at the photos above of the kindergarteners’ work, and of course, you can tell the story behind each of the character. Quite simple, isn’t it? But each piece of the work reveals a great step leading toward another level of student learning experiment.