What is the Mid-Autumn Festival (MAF)? How and why is it celebrated? What else can we learn about it?
Here are a compiled list of resources. I have reviewed hundreds of websites, books and videos before coming up with this list.
Target age group: 3-6 years old
Song (music and movement, and some counting/ math):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ Tweenies Go Round the Moon. There’re lyrics and the song there.
Click on tweenies then click on songs or just input the song title in the search.
Books (Math/ Shapes, poetry, craft, legends, morals):
1. “Round is a Mooncake: A book of shapes.” by Roseanne Thong and Grace Lin. You can get it from Amazon.com. : introduces shapes and math.
Excerpt: “Round is a mooncake, Round is the moon, Round are the lanterns, outside my room. Round is a pebble, that I found. A bowl of goldfish, that makes no sound.”
2. “Rabbit Mooncakes” by Hoong Yee Lee Krakauer : more for older children, and is about how the Vietnamese celebrate this same festival.
3. “Moonbeams, Dumplings & Dragon Boats: A Treasury of Chinese Holiday Tales, Activities & Recipes” by Nina Simonds (Author), Leslie Swartz (Author), Boston The Children’s Museum (Author), Meilo So (Illustrator): the part on mooncakes tells kids how you can put different fillings into mooncakes, and talks about the full moon too.
4. The Moon Lady” by Amy Tan (Author), Gretchen Schields (Illustrator): This book has a famour author… 🙂 I read her Joy Luck Club before. It doesn’t really relate to MAF actually, but it is a good read. Teaches kids not to be whiny, to slow down, not always be so restless/ impatient, to be careful what you wish for.. The reference to Moon Festival is there, and it does talk about preparations for the festival.
5. “Moon Festival” by Ching Yeung Russell (Author), Christopher Zhong-Yuan Zhang (Illustrator): supposed to be for ages 4-8. I haven’t read this, not sure if it’s good, but it is relevant.
6. “Thank You, Meiling” by Linda Talley (Author), Itoko Maeno (Illustrator): title doesn’t say much, but it is a story about a duck who accompanies a boy to buy lanterns, mooncakes and so on for MAF. Teaches manners and the phases of the moon also.
Science/ nature:
1. http://www.earthsky.org/radioshows/51677/harvest-moon-lights-up-autumn-nights#c004705: Besides information about why the moon is so full and round during this time every year, it also explains MAF is sometimes called Harvest Moon Festival because the moon is so bright and shines all night that people in the past used the moonlight to collect their harvest.
2. http://www.thenazareneway.com/current_moon_phase.htm: Brief explanation of the moon phases.
3. http://apollo.sese.asu.edu/index.html: Telling the kids men have also reached the moon.
Cookery/ food tasting:
1. Simple recipe for those without access to traditional ingredients like the flour. I used to love to make snow-skin mooncakes and would make a lot for giving away to others too. Now I can’t get many of the ingredients. Caution: this recipe would make mooncakes that are not traditional and won’t look like the actual thing, but it’s at least something you can try with the kids.
http://www.dltk-holidays.com/china/easy_chinese_mooncakes.htm
2. Recipes for various mooncakes, but some ingredients may not be accessible in parts of USA. http://www.kitchenlink.com/mf/3/4383
Legends of MAF:
1. http://www.chinesefortunecalendar.com/midfallstory.htm: Chang-E, Wu Kang, Jade Rabbit, Mooncake “origins”. In brief and simplified.
2. http://www.hkedcity.net/resources/common/res_detail.phtml?res_cntr_id=17535: HK’s Educational TV, which can be downloaded. I haven’t used it yet on kids, but it looks very promising.
Art and Craft:
1. http://www.abcteach.com/china/lantern.htm: Making a simple lantern
2. http://www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/chinesenewyear/lantern/: same as above
3. Can also make origami rabbits and print out black and white diagrams from the internet for kids to colour or draw.
A blog that I found has many links and resources. It has interesting ways for kids to learn Chinese and also contains a lot of other Chinese facts/ stories. http://mus-mandarin.blogspot.com/
Chinese poetry and stories:
1. http://www.chinapage.com/Moon/moon-poetry.html: has many poems about the moon, including the famous Li Bai one. But the font was too small, so I didn’t print them out.
2. http://www.cnd.org/moon/: More Moon poetry in Chinese.
3. http://www.sacu.org/poetry.html: I used this for the kids.
Finally, the one thing I always use at the end of lessons…. YouTube video clips.
Why use only at the end? The videos are alive, they are colourful and stimulate the kids the most… hearing, sight etc… If I use them first, they’ll not be interested in writing or reading all that I offer above.
True enough, they were glued to several of these video clips below and watched them repeatedly. I didn’t mind, because their Mandarin speaking skills are so poor, they need more exposure.
We adults have to view everything first though, because there are just too many versions of the stories/ legends, and you may not believe or like some of them. You may not like your young child to watch some of them, like one about Hou Yi being mean and killing many people. So… screen them first. 🙂
Video clips:
1. http://youtube.com/watch?v=_sqlHzkCZu4: Legend of MAF using clay figurines, very creative but the pronunciation of the CHinese names not very accurate.
2. http://youtube.com/watch?v=PBpT0sZppc8: This is very comprehensive. Done by students as their project, and is quite funny too. I like the ending. Gives different legends.
3. http://youtube.com/watch?v=P9iO2eUKb6E: I like the graphics, but you may want to do your own narration because the accent in the original narration is rather difficult to make out. Hou Yi kills people in this video.
4. http://youtube.com/watch?v=lwIxmR31TV4: Nice music and great images, so I use it and narrate it myself to educate kids about the various Chinese items. Has mooncakes, lanterns and some Chinese words.
5. http://youtube.com/watch?v=kCVzBc6BMkM: Should be Taiwanese in origin, narrated in Mandarin. Cute, but if you are short on time, you can fast forward the whole introductory part. Second part has drawings and written story.
6. http://youtube.com/watch?v=dFaP_pB2yME: This is just a commercial for Cartoon Network, but it contains well-known Chinese phrases and kids like the cartoons.
7. http://youtube.com/watch?v=s4hTuIyLeUw: This is more for adults, with slow Chinese music. But I placed it here still, because it has Chinese poems, scenes of China, moon orbit in space, autumn scenery, just in case you want kids to know more.
8. http://youtube.com/watch?v=pvToK9c7NUU: This is very detailed, and I like it because it has English, Hanyu Pinyin, and Chinese words. However, you may also want to turn off the narration after you’ve watched it and do your own. It also contains a Chinese opera on Chang-E, and images of all varieties of mooncakes.
