Call for good Chinese videos for Children

| Posted on September 9th, 2008 in Integrative Rural Education Program. Print This Post Print This Post

Do you know of good Chinese cartoons or movies for children? What were your favorite movies or TV shows when you were growing up? Let us know!

As you’ve read in Diane’s post about Guan Ai’s afternoon activity groups, we are instituting a bit of fun time at school everyday. Before, they were in class from before 7am until after 8pm, with short breaks for meals and only about half an hour of free time in between. This year, one hour is scheduled everyday for activities that are more fun. On most days, kids choose from a variety of 6 activities, such as cooking, soccer, Chinese yoyo, story time, aerobics, community service etc. One evening every two weeks, the hour is used as a movie night for all the kids and I would like to get everyone’s suggestions for suitable movies or videos to show. For each movie night, we will either show only fun videos OR something educational for the first half and something fun for the second half. We need your suggestions for videos to show!

requirements:
– must be in Putonghua (preferably not dubbed into Putonghua)
– no violence or other things that would have a negative influence on kids
– something that kids from all the primary grades would be interested in (ages 6-13)
– does anyone know of any well made cartoons explaining 成语or Chinese classics like 三字经 that would be attractive to kids? (funny, told in the form of stories etc.)

Thanks for your suggestions!

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5 replies

  1. Kiel Harell (blog author) says:

    Added on September 10th, 2008 at %I:%M %p

    The kids seemed to enjoy the “fun” videos we showed this week (Tom & Jerry, Roadrunner, and Mickey Mouse). While these are American films, they worked well because they have no dialogue to be dubbed in Putonghua. The kids were more focused and better behaved during these short films than when we showed a dubbed version of Pixar’s “Cars” last week. I also noticed a lot more laughter.

    These films are definitely not free of violence; however, it is cartoon violence and I think the students can tell the difference between cats and mice fighting and people hurting each other. What do people think?

    Perhaps we could develop a system for kids to give us feedback on the films. We could have students write reflections on the educational films for relevant classes (science, social studies, etc).

  2. Wei Ji Ma says:

    Added on September 10th, 2008 at %I:%M %p

    Monkey King series
    Doraemon
    Wallace and Gromit

  3. Cheng Tao says:

    Added on September 11th, 2008 at %I:%M %p

    Most of Disney movies are translated into Putonghua version. I can’t image kids missed Kongfu Panda or Wall-E… I think it would be even better if we could get kids into cinema. There are also 爱国教育影片 on air regularly, maybe kids should see them as well, since city kids were organized by school sometimes to see this kind of movie. The old movies like 闪闪的红星 or 小兵张噶 are very very good for kids.

    For 成语 or 三字经 or even Chinese Discovery, you could find those DVD in local DVD shop or go to ask 新华书店, they have a lot. The bigger 新华书店 is, the more they have. So for example you are passing Beijing, you probably want to take a quick shopping in 图书大厦. I guess there are also 教育书店 in some cities, you certainly don’t want to miss this. The Taiwanese actually has translated many scientific movies into Putonghua version, I spot a internet webpage : http://www.books.com.tw/exep/activity/activity.php?id=0000015629&sid=0000015629&page=1 as you could see it is from the website of http://www.books.com.tw that you could also check out.

  4. Zili says:

    Added on September 12th, 2008 at %I:%M %p

    Living in the US, I am also constantly looking for Chinese cartoons for my kids. It is not easy. Like Weiji, I like the Monkey King series. But others, such as Ne(3) Zha Nao(4) Hai(3), may be violent and have complicated traditional ideas that children may not understand.

    For dubbed videos, I recommend the Disney’s 100 Years of Magic http://www.trboy.com/products_vi.asp?classid=1201. It has so many films, and is only 120 Yuan total.

    Please note that the dubbing above has an accent more akin to Taiwan’s than Beijing’s (not that I discriminate one or the other).

    For a more standard putonghua dubbing, you might want to check out the Berenstain Bears series.

    A minor point, at least for my 3.5 year old son, passively watching videos never seems a good way to learn anything (Chinese language, good manners, or understanding in general). As you know, learning via interactions is far better. So I am trying to discourage my son’s TV/video time, but it is getting more difficult. It seems addictive.

    Zili

  5. Kiel Harell (blog author) says:

    Added on September 22nd, 2008 at %I:%M %p

    Last night we showed the first part of a National Geographic film on elephants (in Mandarin) for the first twenty minutes. This film was chosen because it is presented from the perspective of a biologist and talks about how she became interested in elephants and biology as a child. The kids seemed to enjoy it but not as much as the Unlucky Bear (倒霉熊） cartoons that we showed afterward.

    The kids laughed when the elephants peed.

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