My Early Start: Learning Chinese

Learn Chinese "head, shoulder, knees, and toes" song

Some customers of the Early Start Mandarin dvds have asked for the lyrics of the "heads, shoulders, knees, and toes" song in pin yin.  We've posted under the Resources tab on our website, MyEarlyStart.com.  The song is in Volume 4: My Healthy Body,  and we've asked Hope to sing it again here.  Enjoy!

Book Expo America in New York City

Well, we made it back from yet another great Book Expo America show!  It was a quick trip, and although we did not exhibit this year, it was still well worth our time and effort.  We met with several distributors, including digital distributors like Overdrive, that will mean more extensive distribution of our Early Start Mandarin dvds to schools, libraries, and retail stores. 

We visited the children's pavilion, which had many vendors with wonderful books for children.  There was also a Spanish language section and an Arabic section.  Maybe there will be a Chinese pavilion in the near future?

It is always wonderful to visit New York City. It's always so exciting to travel around town on the subway and walk around the various neighborhoods.  We had a wonderful dinner at Da Silvano Restaurant in Greenwich Village, and another at The Kitchen Club restaurant in SoHo.  We even saw Nicolas Cage being filmed on 6th Avenue!  We'll be waiting for the movie to come out!

Now that we're back home, it's back to work!  We'll keep you updated on our next exhibit.

Dragon Boat Festival and Eating Zong Zi

I remember as a child growing up in Taiwan enjoying the preparation for the annual duan wu jie or dragon boat festival, usually in late May sometime.  My mom and aunties would spend a lot of time shopping and preparing to make the traditional food eaten during this holiday, call zong zi.  Once they had all the raw materials of glutinous rice, pork, mushrooms, and peanuts mixed in a big washtub, they would sit around on little stools to fill lotus leaves with the rice mixture.  All the cousins would wait around eagerly for the first batch of zong zi to be made, and then steamed.  They were delicious!  After we filled up our bellies with the savory ones, we then waited again for the sweet ones, usually made with red beans.  My mom and aunties always made plenty for family and friends.

I hope my kids will have wonderful memories around Chinese food.  At the very least I have our Cooking with Kids dvds (Celebrating Chinese New Years and Exploring Chinese Food, Culture, and Language) I can show them.

I found a great article Zong Zi - the Traditional Chinese Food, by Rhonda Parkinson on About.com with a recipe on how to make zong zi. I hope you will try it and let us know how it goes. Enjoy!

Teresa

Heading Off to the Book Expo in New York!

We're so excited!  Kelly and I leave Thursday morning for New York to attend the annual Book Expo America.  The annual book fair brings together authors, distributors, publishers, and basically anyone else that has anything to do with books.  This will be our third year attending.  The last two years, we exhibited our Early Start Mandarin dvds at the expo.  However, this year we decided to just attend.  We'll still have the opportunity to talk to a variety of people in the industry, and we'll have more time to enjoy New York!  The first year we exhibited, we received many comments and questions on "why Chinese?"  The second year there were a couple of other exhibitors with similar products.  Now, just a few years later, I'm sure there will be many exhibitors offering Chinese learning materials for children.  We can't wait to see everything! We'll update you from the show.