Asian Festival of Children’s Content 2016

Having Fun with Languages

14 – 15th May 2016

More than 200 children and their parents enjoyed a weekend of storytelling activities celebrating their mother tongue languages – Chinese, Malay and Tamil. The activities were part of the Fun with Languages programme organised under the 2016 Asian Festival of Children’s Content (AFCC).

Chinese Programmes

Founder of Sprout Language Centre, Liang Huiyu, led the “Making Parent-Child Reading Fun!” workshop for 7-9 years. 28 parents and children learned about adding more fun and learning into a parent’s daily storytelling routine.

“Appreciating Crosstalk” for 7-9 years, drew a crowd of 38 participants. It highlighted Crosstalk (or相声), the traditional Chinese comic drama form, to teach children more about Chinese language and culture simultaneously. Kow Xiao Jun and the Young People’s Performing Arts Ensemble, a Mandarin Theatre Arts company, entertained the audience with crosstalk performances and later shared the basics of Crosstalk through interactive workshops.

“Picture Book: Fly with Your Imagination!” for 4-6 years was led by multimedia designer and illustrator Ace Khong. He shared with 35 children about the imaginative world of picture books, including his own two books. The children also tried their hand at creating their own picture books.

The “Storytelling and Hanyu Pinyin” session for 4-6 years by Sin Joo Ee, Senior Lecturer of Early Childhood Education at SIM, capped off the Chinese programmes. 31 children gathered to learn Chinese from Dr Sin through fun activities like storytelling, rhymes and role-playing games.

Malay Programmes

Instructors from the drama school inwardBOUND performed a Malay Book Dramatisation of “What Sallamah Didn’t Know” written by local author Sharon Ismail. 17 children joined this session for 7-9 years to learn more about drama and language.

13 children attended “Building Vocabulary through Activities using Storybooks” for 4-6 years. In the session, Malaysian author Noraminah Omar shared with the children about the creative components of stories and how to pick up new words from storybooks.

inwardBOUND performed another Malay Book Dramatisation, this time of former president S R Nathan’s book “The Crane and the Crab”. The drama group performed in front of 11 children.

Tamil Programmes

“Storytelling in Tamil for Children with ABC Engagement” by Mrs Tamilarasi Subramaniam, a Master Teacher for Tamil Language at Academy of Singapore Teachers, attracted a large group of 23 children and parents. In this session for 4-6 years, the children learned various storytelling techniques, and applied them to create and perform a story in groups.

“The Telling of Many Tales”, facilitated by Praveena K Cartelli for 4-6 years, practices storytelling in the family. 8 children attended and had fun creating stories together in this session.