Learn the Chinese Word 车/車 (Chē / Car) with Road Tape!
To teach my children the Chinese character for car 车 / 車 (chē), we used road tape to give a fun context to the transportation word!
Learning both simplified and traditional Chinese characters
My 4-year-old daughter can read about 700-800 simplified Chinese characters, and she’s been interested in learning traditional Chinese characters through her 巧虎 workbooks.
On the other hand, my son is only 1, but I personally think it’s never too early to immerse children in a print-rich learning environment!
I also want him to be exposed to both types of Chinese script. Moving forward, I am going to try to include both sets of characters in our activities as we learn them.
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Simplified Chinese 车 versus Traditional Chinese 車
In our children’s play area, I used road tape to teach that the word car can be written in 2 different ways.
车 (chē) is the simplified form, while 車 (chē) is traditional Chinese!
Personally, I don’t understand why the Chinese character for car (车) was simplified by the Chinese government.
It is almost the same number of strokes as 車!
Plus, 車 is supposed to be a pictograph of a car from a top-down, birds-eye view perspective!
Anyways, back to the activity…road tape! 🙂
Road Tape Chinese Activity: What you need
- Toy vehicles! Our kids love the Melissa and Doug vehicle & road signs set! The set includes road signs plus a police car, ambulance, garbage truck, fire engine, taxi, and school bus.
- Play road tape
Road Tape Chinese Activity: What to do
These are the easiest instructions ever!
- “Write” 车 and 車 with the road tape!
That’s it!
Now it’s time to play and learn!
Our road tape was easy to affix smoothly to the floor.
If you need to reposition the road tape, it peels off very easily with no sticky residue.
Also, the tape roll we bought was generous. If you want to use the tape for other activities, you can create shapes, numbers, or other letters!
Sibling activity success!
Since my children are 3 years apart, coming up with activities that satisfy their different needs and interests can be challenging.
I was so happy to see both kids having fun playing with the road tape together!
Both kids had a blast driving and “tracing” the toy vehicles on the Chinese character roads!
Extra learning 车/車 (Chē / Car) activities – matching game
I also wrote the simplified and traditional Chinese characters for car on our easel so that my daughter can compare how they should normally look.
Then, I created a simple matching exercise that we often do on our easel.
My daughter likes matching games, and this was an effective way to compare simplified and traditional Chinese characters for different types of vehicles!
Have you tried this Chinese Road Tape Literacy Activity?
If you try Learning About 车/車 in Chinese with Road Tape, please let us know in the comments!
My kids like to see what other kids are doing for Chinese learning!
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- Paper Airplanes: Reading Practice Games for Kids!
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