Joining in the song
As part of our nighttime routine, SPL and I sing songs before he goes to sleep (well, actually, after songs he talks to himself for awhile and sometimes sings other songs — and then 15 mins or so later, he drifts off to sleep). He picks the songs and then I sing them solo — until last night. The other thing to know is that the songs he requests are from our Mandarin music class: "Zi Jien" (the good-bye song), "Ni Jou" (my name is…. song), and "Yi Er San" (SPL’s name for the song — "1, 2, 3" is the translation but I’m not actually sure what the real song title is :-).
The first 2 are actually the easiest as you sing good-bye or my name is and just fill in the blank of a bunch of people (we usually use our family/friends or friends from his different classes — and I’ve found doing this really connects him daily with his family/friends (even though most of you all are far away :-() and helps him learn the names of the kids in our classes.
So last night, he actually started singing the hardest of the 3 songs — "Yi Er San." And he knew most of the words. It was a cool moment 🙂