Muzzy

As you know, my daughter is Chinese. Even before we traveled to China to bring her home we planned on incorporating the Chinese culture into our lives, for her sake, and ours as well. As a family we celebrate the Chinese New Year and the Moon Festival each year. The Empress knows dozens of things about her country of origin and continues to ask about it and be fascinated by it. We decided early on that we would give her every opportunity to learn Mandarin, if she was interested in doing so. For Christmas this year T gave her the Muzzy Chinese Language Program. It is put out by the BBC and recognized as the best language program for children.

She loves it. Really loves it. Each evening she watches at least three sections before bedtime. It is in cartoon format and thus attractive to children. That being said my first impression of the program was, this is weird. It is all in Chinese with English subtitles. I wondered how in the world does a child learn the language when she can't read the subtitles. But it works. It is meant to be repetitive. The Empress gets it. The other day when I was dropping her at daycare, she said something to me in Chinese. I asked her what it was she was saying and she said, "Good Morning." And...by God, it turns out that she was indeed saying good morning in Chinese. The really neat part of the whole process is that our magnificent daycare has also decided to teach Muzzy. The kids love it.

Muzzy might be a fuzzy green alien that likes to eat things like clocks, but he is one cool dude in my opinion.