Have you seen these Chinese coloring mats that have been popular in Singapore? Play乐学 (PlayLeXue) sent us these fun, reusable Chinese coloring mats that can also be used as dining placemats!
Disclaimer: We received these products in exchange for an honest review. All opinions and photographs reflect my family’s experience.
Review of washable Chinese coloring mats
These coloring mats come in various designs that reinforce popular Chinese children’s songs and common Chinese characters.
As you probably know, I have a soft side for kid-friendly resources that feature Chinese characters!
I believe that a Chinese print-rich environment can remind all of us to speak Chinese more consistently.
Since we live in English-dominant community, Chinese activities help our family speak the minority language.
With Chinese words visible around the house, we also have a better chance of memorizing Chinese characters.
What are the Chinese coloring mats made of?
Made in Korea, each design is printed onto food-grade platinum silicone with fade-proof black ink.
According to the Play Le Xue website, this type of silicone is meant for utensils and kitchenware.
The Chinese coloring mats are convenient for restaurants, waiting rooms (eg, doctor’s office), road trips, and air travel!
What can you use to draw on the coloring mats?
The Chinese coloring mats can be decorated with non-toxic, dry erase markers (whiteboard markers) for hundreds of uses.
If you already have a whiteboard or easel at home, you can use the same Expo or AmazonBasics dry-erase markers.
How do you clean the resuable Chinese coloring mat?
The non-toxic dry erase markers clean easily with wipes or water and soap. My toddler can independently wash the mats on his own with baby wipes.
Although we haven’t tried this yet, you can take these dining placemats outside and deep-clean them in the dishwasher at home!
Learn Chinese from coloring mats
When you’re on the go, you can easily roll up the coloring mats and put them in your diaper bag, handbag, or backpack.
Here are 3 designs that my son and I enjoyed coloring while chatting in Chinese!
1. Chinese stroke order coloring mat
The Chinese stroke order coloring mat measures 43cm x 28cm and teaches 19 Chinese strokes.
Chinese stroke names are in simplified Chinese. For phonetic support, Hanyu Pinyin is under each Chinese character.
Dotted lines with an arrow head indicate the stroke direction.
A Chinese character with the stroke is also provided for context.
Between the stroke and the Chinese character is an illustration of the relevant word.
They would pair well with Play Le Xue’s acrylic Chinese stroke order puzzle (reviewed here).
2. Two Tigers 两只老虎 Reusable Colouring & Dining Placemat
My son is very familiar with the famous 两只老虎 / 兩隻老虎 (Liǎng zhī lǎohǔ / Two Tigers) song!
This Chinese tiger song is part of our Chinese nursery rhyme musical sound book!
Lyrics are in simplified Chinese, and my son enjoyed coloring the animals with thick dry-erase markers.
This mat measures 38cm x 24cm, slightly smaller than the Chinese stroke order mat.
To show compassion for people and animals who may have physical differences, when we sing 两只老虎, we change the last line from 真奇怪 (zhēn qíguài / so weird) to 没关系 / 沒關係 (méiguānxì / it’s okay).
3. Trishaw 三轮车 Reusable Coloring & Dining Placemat
Last but not least, this detailed coloring mat features the Chinese song 三轮车 / 三輪車 (Sānlúnchē / Tricycle).
Lyrics are in simplified Chinese, and I think the intricate design would be suitable for older children to color.
This mat measures 38cm x 24cm, same as the Two Tigers Chinese coloring mat.
Share your bilingual parenting experience!
Do you have these coloring mats? What do you think of them?
Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments or something inspiring to motivate other parents to teach their kids Chinese in a positive way!
Where to buy Chinese coloring mats
You can buy the Chinese coloring mats from the Play乐学 (PlayLeXue) online shop in the link below.
Play乐学 ships internationally.
Singapore residents can use code chalkacademy5 for 5% discount on orders of $60SGD or more. Valid one per customer until December 31, 2020.
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JOAN says
I love that idea of changing the lyrics to the two tigers song (to MeiGuanXi). A lot of times my daughter will ask me to improvise lyrics to that tune also, so we sing about her two uncles (Liang ge Jiujiu) and we get to incorporate different vocabulary while having fun singing!!
Ruth W says
One benefit of speaking Chinese with my kids has been that I can help give them directions on how to behave properly without them necessarily being “outed” and overly embarrassed in front of their non-Chinese friends. “What should you be doing right now? Please do it. Thank you!”
Sihui says
I’m a reader from Singapore. I use post stick to write words stick around the house for my girl to look for ir。 She can learn as well as has a fun game.
Dong Miller says
One benefit I feel I got from teaching my kid Chinese is I spent a lot of time searching books online and the libraries. That ends up with tons of books in the house, both for kids and adults. And we spend almost no time on TV and video games, which I view it a very positive change. After the hit of so many books, my 3 year old loves her books so much. She can read by herself for more than half an hour and would accept any topics and languages. If she feels bored, she would run to her bookshelf and grab a book!
Clarissa Lin says
I try to sing Chinese songs to my little one after lights are out at bedtime (she lies in bed for a couple of hours before actually falling asleep). She enjoys them and managed to learn a Tang poem within a few days just from asking me to sing it repeatedly! I was very proud of her, since she’s only two 🙂
Ruth says
I’m a non native chinese speaker. Grew up in a mostly mono lingual (English) home. So this whole journey of trying to create an environment where my child can learn and engage with a language other than english takes so much effort and intentionality. Especially when I’m the only parent (and the parent who disnt grow up w chinese) trying to speak/read chinese to her. I’ve also been wrestling with if I should introduce Hindi to her – because that’s what I grew up learning but again not very fluent. So I’ve been very encouraged by Betty’s persistent efforts with her kids in teaching not one but two languages!!!
Jean says
My 3-year-old son is a kinesthetic learner – not the type who sits down and looks at words (unlike my daughter). To teach him Chinese characters, we act them out. For example, for ‘大’ (big), we jump and stretch our hands out as wide as we could. He remembered it straightaway!
Rose says
I am a non-native Chinese speaker mom from Melbourne. I grew up in the Philippines using three languages: Chinese ( Hokkien and Mandarin), English and Different Filipino dialects ( at least three) . Learning these languages from young was challenging and I remembered our school is Montessori- inspired from nursery to year 10 ( we call this fourth year high school) and taught us these languages mainly two subjects of Chinese as our first subjects in the morning classes. Our class proper starts 8am to 12nn then 1pm to 4:30pm, every Monday to Friday. Then after school, we have a chinese tutor from 6pm to 8pm, also every Monday to Friday. Sometimes our tutoring have Saturday morning from 9 am to 12nn. Our schedule is very hectic learning the chinese language. But it is worth it! I hope to come park in teaching my son while living in Melbourne, teaching these languages, focusing on Chinese. Thank you Betty as chalk academy is the first blog that I read when I started my research for environmentally rich Chinese language recommendations. So far I have indeed started my son’s curriculum. At present he still 3 month old and I am exposing him by talking Chinese ( not baby talk) and listening and singing to audiobooks and Chinese songs.
Shanna says
Mandarin and Cantonese are my mother tongue, Spanish and English are my husband’s mother tongue. It’s a struggle to keep up with four languages with my 1 & 3YO. My parents and grandparents don’t speak English and they live in China. Teaching my kids Chinese is the only way for them to communicate. There are so much to learn from other parents. And thank you for creating these wonderful products!
Sue says
I changed my Netflix to Mandarin and the cartoons are now in Chinese and my kids are enjoying this a lot.
Kevin says
Our three year old son loves singing and composing his own silly lyrics. (He knows the Two Tigers Song too! ). We often encourage him to tell us about his day using his words and lyrics, and silliness and imagination are totally allowed to keep him interested. Hopefully he can spread the love of speaking Chinese and singing to our five month old daughter as well. Thanks!
Jaime Chan says
As my Chinese is not good i have use ximalaya app to do story book reading to my kids!
Jie Leng says
A journey of thousand miles begins with a single step. Have patience, be kind and proud of your child.
Stephanie says
Learning a language is all about socialization. Baby and kid’s brains are wired to pick up language when the language engages them in some way. Finding ways to engage in language, especially as a non-Native speaker, is challenging and rewarding.
Eliza says
My daughter used to refuse to speak to me in Mandarin but when I made it a point to speak to her in Mandarin daily, she eventually stopped asking me to switch to English and she even started replying me in Mandarin. I’m so glad I persevered and I want to encourage all parents who are trying to teach their children Mandarin. Don’t give up!
Jea says
Studying chinese is my daughter’s daily bonding time with my husband. I don’t speak Chinese but he does. He’s also been studying so he can stay ahead of her. It’s so nice to see them enjoy learning together.
Dorothy Lee says
I love the idea of a coloring mat for the table! Our toddler is always looking for things to do during meal time, and we often have him choose between eating on his own (therefore no toys/books), or being fed (can read books since he’s hands free). It would be so nice to have something where we don’t have to worry about damaging (like expensive books!).
Linlin says
It’s been hard but also very rewarding to brush up on my Chinese and learn a lot of new daily life and parenting vocabulary, and I’m so glad I switched to speaking Chinese with my baby before his big language explosion. This blog was a big inspiration, it helped me get over the anxiety that my Chinese isn’t good enough and just start speaking, thank you! And now just a 6 months later, more than half of my toddler’s early spoken language is coming out in Chinese, it’s so fun!
Carol says
My girls loves to sing, so I teach my girls Chinese nursery rhymes to encourage them. They also need to know how to say their favourite foods or else I don’t understand what they are saying.
Rebecca McKay says
Great post! My 2.5 yr old son and I are stuck indoors with the virus scare (we live in HK), and I’ve just started doing matching games with our chinese flash cards. I pull out apple toys, numbers, clothing pieces, anything random I can find that will match the flash cards we have. My son enjoys the new activity and I can introduce/reinforce vocabulary, which is hard for me during natural conversation, being only so-so in Mandarin.
Leidy says
We started our journey to learn mandarin over a year ago, and I found that engaging through play has been the most helpful in learning more words and simply using the language. My oldest (7) has aquired a lot more vocabulary, thanks to the inspirational posts, materials, and resources that we now have access to. Thank you for all your hard work.
Terence says
I would show my friends the Chinese books we’ve bought and how Chalk Academy helped us decide which ones to get. It’s great to have a community who shares ideas and inspirations.
Vivian says
For me growing up, I was always embarrassed of being chinese and embarrassed of the way Chinese sounded so I refused to speak it in public in order to fit in. Now that I’m an adult, I see the value of being able to speak my mother tongue and being immersed in the chinese culture. I have mixed twin boys and I never want them to lose that part of their heritage and culture. I hope they grow up and appreciate the fact that they have two different sides to them.
Jennifer says
I’m learning that creating an environment where my children see Chinese as an “every day” language makes a huge difference. It’s hard work, but it’s good to work with the team of extended relatives, wherever they live.
Vaishali says
I carry a Mandarin visual dictionary with me wherever I go, even around the house (tip inspired by Betty Choi but with a physical dictionary!) and my toddler enjoys bringing it to me when I don’t know a word, and we learn it together. I enjoy the process of learning alongside my toddler and the main deeper benefit is that we spend even more time together because of the necessity of time to develop the minority language!
Mary says
I love this idea, woyld never have though to get a placemat with chinese on it. Great post, thankyou
Shor D says
Thank you for having this wonderful blog. My Chinese is very poor and I need to coach my 6 and 2 years old kids. With your inspiration and guide. It is really very helpful and enable me to know more sources to Chinese.
Clara says
Thanks for sharing the colouring dining placemats. They are such a great idea to increase Chinese exposure! I love reading graded level readers like the Odonata Preschool series, and singing nursery rhymes with my little one for more Chinese exposure.
Angela goh says
Speak mandarin at home and ask ah ma to sing to baby m. His favorite is 两只老虎 and 拔萝卜. Don’t be afraid cause mandarin can be very fun too.
Angela goh says
We speak mandarin to baby m at home and sing to him. His favorite is 两只老虎 and 拔萝卜. We also have colourful flash card in both English and Chinese, making it easy for my husband whoose Chinese is bad.
Shu shui says
We speak Mandarin at home and read chinese books as well as sing Chinese nursery rhymes to our toddler, hope that this will let him have some interest in the language.
Ricca says
Oh, I was diving on your blog and just acknowledge there is a giveaway.
But despite of that, I really love the idea of this dining placemat.
Since my little one start talking in mix languages, I’m also searching a source like this to make her learning journey more fun.
Thank you for reviewing this, Betty..
Mei Chen says
One thing that helped my child to learn the four or five tones in Mandarin is using the arms and body to imitate the tones. For example, 1st tone- bring arms out like an airplane, both arms parallel to the floor. 2nd tone- arms are diagonal with right arm facing upward and left hand facing downward. 3rd tone- both arms facing upward in a V-shape, 4th tone- opposite of 2nd tone, right arm downward and left arm upward. 5th tone- make a circle or O-letter with hand and put it on top of your head. Fun for beginners and toddlers!
Geri says
I would try to speak to my little girl in Mandarin, read Mandarin books to her and sing whatever Mandarin songs I know since I’m more comfortable in English. Being bilingual is definitely a skill and an asset I will love my girl to have.
Elena says
With my grandchildren, I’ve learned that keeping Chinese fun instead of mandatory helps with retention. They are willing and interested to learn on their own and are more confident. They also see how we, the grown-ups, use Chinese in business and understand the practicality of learning the language. Surround the children with a loving and supporting environment, from there, they’d grow! (Reminds me of how one of our lime plants revived after some gentle words.)