Archeolon Turtle

 This is a drawing for another English / Chinese book I am working on; 恐龙国, Kǒng lóng guó (Dinosaur Land).

Lingua, Frank.A

Introducing Mr Frank.A Lingua, Languages teacher extraordinaire! A multi-poly-glot of numerous languages who currently teaches at St. Jerome's College. He cheerily takes on many of the challenges and complexities that many of his fellow languages teachers also face on a daily basis.

Chinese Dragon Boat Festival

Hot off the press!

A title page for Junior and Middle Primary, celebrating the Dragon Boat Festival.

Teaching Chinese with Rudi the Orang-utan

G'day! Check out the link below. I use a few of my Chinese flash cards in the show, too!

https://youtu.be/rkGlQTChe6Q

Chinese Flash Cards

I've been working on a few flash cards to use with my online classes this term. Here's a few samples. The Grade 1/2 classes are looking at the theme: Food (starting with fruit). The Grade 3/4 classes are looking at the theme: Vehicles & Transport. 

Rudi's Favourite Fruit

 

As the majority of the world starts looking to conduct education online, this is a work sheet I have created for my Grade 1/2 classes in Chinese. Rudi the Orangutan is showing the students some of his favourite fruit. Rudi is a puppet who used to help me teach Indonesian when I was working at Rochester Primary School. He is now making a a new appearance with my younger students. They find it funny how Rudi is fluent in Indonesian, but now he has to learn Bahasa Cina (Chinese)!

Chinese Brush Painting

My wife gave me a Chinese brush painting set for Christmas. I've finally been able to set aside time to begin having a go. Today's lessons was learning the different brush strokes and developing darker and lighter areas. This was followed with having a go at painting pictures of bamboo. Not too bad for a first attempt. I finally worked out how to form the leaves by the time I had finished. A bottle of strong ink given to me as another Christmas present from my younger sister a few years ago came in handy, too.

Xin Nian Kuaile 2018 (Happy New Year, 2018)

Drawn a year ago for Chinese New Year. This was a lot of fun to draw, and based on the Chinese paper cut art.

Kevin Koala in Shanghai - Part One

This is the first Kevin Koala comic where I used Comic Life 3 as a means of adding text.

Numbers & Greetings worksheet

This is a part of a Numbers and Greetings worksheet I drew for teaching Chinese. I was quite happy with how it looked. Simple but very effective.

Chinese Food Nouns work sheet

The illustrations for this one were quick as well as fun to draw. Adding colour with poster textas adds to the visual appeal.

Chinese Student visit to Cobram Anglican Grammar School

Hot off the press this week for some visiting Chinese students to the school. This was great fun to draw. The blue and green colours of the dragon represents growth and learning while the native koala can be found residing in the red gum forests around Cobram/Barooga.

In addition, the dragon has nine green scales down its back. The number nine is considered a very lucky number in Chinese culture.

Chinese Language Award - Second Edition

This is the same award as shown earlier, but with clouds added. One of my students, who migrated from China a few years ago, suggested that I add traditional Chinese illustration clouds. It certainly improves the picture!

Another activity for Chinese this week. This is a cut up sentence activity aimed at Middle Primary.
The completed sentences read; 
Zhè shì wǒ de lóng. Wǒ de lóng shì huángsè de. Tā de míngzì shì Qiáng dà. 

Chinese Language Award

Hot off the press... A Chinese Language Award for school.  This involved a little research, too. For example, the colour of the dragon, the number of claws and the little globe that it is chasing.

This took a little while to complete, due to the detail, but it is certainly worth it.

Kevin Koala in Shanghai - The final product

Here's the final product with pinyin added.

From concept to reality - Kevin Koala in Shanghai

Last year, I was privileged to travel to China. While I was there I was very inspired by the city-scape of Shanghai.

From a photo of the Shanghai CBD, I made this sketch.

From that sketch, I then utilised the idea to become the first panel in this Kevin Koala comic strip.

The next step will be to add dialogue. Stay tuned...

Shanghai fascinates me because of how development has gone on there in the last 30 years. This photo dates back to 1990;

Which is pretty much what my grandfather saw when he visited Shanghai in 1980.

Chinese Characters

A while ago I came across a fun activity of writing your name in Chinese characters. Each letter of the English alphabet had an equivalent character that looked similar in appearance. Here's my initials (GPB) below.

Chinese Numbers 1 to 8

I've always found that a good way to learn another language is to teach it. These are a sample of Chinese number cards.  They can be used for memory and snap.