Utah Mom Organizes “Mandarin-only” outings for kids

Krissy Shull from Alpine had a great idea to organize mini, “Mandarin-only” field trips to some of our local parks, museums and other attractions. This is a great opportunity to give students a chance to practice their Chinese in a relaxed atmosphere with other students from across the state. And through recognition that other kids are learning Mandarin, too, it could serve to reinforce the fun and importance of being bilingual. Shull says her tour group is open to anyone wanting to participate. Or parents can start their own tour groups.

She’ll post dates and times on this Facebook page. Here are some details on the first outing:

When: Tuesday August 4, 2015 @ 1:30pm
Where: Thanksgiving Point Museum of Natural Curiosity
3605 Garden Dr, Lehi, UT 84043
Cost: $2/person ($2 Tuesday price for the month of August)

Instructions:
Plan to get in line around 1:30 p.m. Each family will go through the museum independently or can group together. To encourage the children to interact with other Mandarin speakers you may want to have them bring 10 pieces of colored paper with their Chinese name written on them (2″ X 2″ may work well) to exchange with other Mandarin speakers. Your family may want to wear something with Chinese writing, etc, to help identify yourselves as a part of the Mandarin speaking group.

About the Museum:
The Museum of Natural Curiosity is a large glass-walled building housing more than 400 science- & nature-themed interactive exhibits.

Chinese most widely spoken native language

The Washington Post just published this fascinating series of info-graphics illuminating some surprising facts about language, diversity and global populations. What I love about this series are the layers of complexity. The story isn’t all that long, but it challenges us to question misconceptions about the dominance of English. Chinese, for example, has more native speakers than any other language, followed by Hindi and Urdu,” WAPO reports. English comes next, followed by Arabic and then Spanish.

But cut the numbers differently, and you get a new perspective. We’ve all heard that America is a great melting pot, but it is far from the most linguistically diverse country or continent. Africa wins that distinction.

English is widely used as an official language. It is spoken in more countries than anywhere else and it the most studied.

But the most languages are spoken by only a handful of people, and are at risk of disappearing in 100 years, says WAPO.

Last Chance Chinese Summer Camp

Apologies for this late post — I thought it had already published.

But it may not be too late to sign up for the Confucius Institute’s annual summer camp (for grades 2-6), running from July 27-31. There are several locations this year, including the University of Utah’s Salt Lake City and Bountiful campuses, Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah Valley University in Orem, and Dixie State University in St. George. You can enroll online at: www.youth.utah.edu.

See the attached for more information:

Chinese Immsion Campus Flyer (Wasatch Front)

Chinese Immsion Campus Flyer (St George)