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#2: Chinese Myths and Legends

Throughout China's long and rich history, its people have produced many fascinating myths and legends. But what exactly are myths and legends? And why do we have them? In this volume of the Chinese Culture Active Learning Series, you will read fantastic myths and legends from the rich traditions of China.

Myths and legends discussed in this volume:
Pan Gu - Creator of the World
Huang Di - The Yellow Emperor - The Ancestor of the Chinese Race
Yao - The First Sage King
Shun - The Second Sage King
Yu - Conqueror of the Floods
Fu Xi - Inventor of Writing, Fishing, and Trapping
Nu Wa - The First Heroine in Chinese History
Shen Nong - The God of Farming
Yi Yin - The Wise Counselor
Meng Jiangnu - The Power of Love

Book includes teacher introduction and planning strategies, bulletin board resources and ideas, class discussion topics and projects, approaches to active learning, student information sheets, student activities, and references and resources.

Included CD-ROM (Win/Mac) features story-telling in English and Mandarin (Chinese Myths and Legends), additional teacher tips and charts, more student handouts and activities, photos, internet resource links, and puzzles.

The Chinese Culture Active Learning Series is endorsed by Huang Youyi, Vice President of China International Publishing Group and Vice President of Translators Association of China, and Lin Wusun, Retired President of CIPG, Senior Editor and Translator.

Price: $18 plus shipping/handling. Click here to order books from OCDF online, or you may order by calling 309-829-8202 (toll-free: 1-866-460-OCDF). Visa and Mastercard accepted. Checks in US dollars accepted for phone orders.

Reviews

As with all in this series, the book which introduces this topic is accompanied by a CD ROM. In addition to containing all the worksheets, lesson planners and teacher strategies for active learning in PDF format, the CD ROM carries a wealth of further resources to help inform teachers and parents designing lessons and activities on Chinese Myths and Legends.

The additional materials are the core of this innovative series. They allow for story telling/listening, additional student handouts and activities, materials for interactive bulletin board work in class, teacher tips and resources. Basically the CD ROM underpins the series ethos that leaning about culture is an active learning pursuit, involving not simply rote learning but hands-on activities that in turn allow students to grasp, compare and contrast what makes Chinese myths and legends same and different to ours in the West. Moreover, the material is scaled so that careful teaching allows the materials to expand from learners at K through to Grade 8... the series can follow students as they grow.

As always the stories told on the CD ROM are available in Chinese as well as English. It matters that students hear the story in the original even if they don t understand the words thoughtful teachers will accompany the story reading with role play or other activity so that the story is brought alive.

The stories behind the myths and legends of China are complicated without resources to help children understand them. And so in the book and on the CD ROM we find many activities that help children grasp the meaning. For example, Pan Yu s Creation of the World legend is given a wonderfully symbolic activity to enhance understanding of the legend: students are helped design a FLIPBOOK which of course brings to life the creation of the world in quasi-cinematic form. And for the legend of Fu Xi, the inventor of writing, we find an accompanying classroom activity which looks at his notion of Feng Shui. The children are encouraged to re-arrange their class room to bring good Feng Shui to it. And the legend of Shen the Second Sage King is brought alive in an exercise in which children write a story round his life, thereby producing their version of his life and legend.

As with all in this classic series, Chinese Myths and Legends draws children into the detailed mythology of China, but in a hands-on fun way that will make learning remain with them far longer than rote learning could. Moreover, it allows students to consider and understand how many myth and legends the world over are similar, and most likely have arisen by a deep felt need to explain events and catastrophes in the past. As indeed happens even now in the present. This is a crucial part in helping children understand our global humanity.

--Sheena Macrae, co-editor of Adoption Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections

 Our Chinese Daughters Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with offices in Bloomington, IL and Beijing. OCDF Publications is devoted to ensuring educators and parents have access to high-quality, accurate Chinese culture education resources.

Contributors to this volume include Donna Breniman (West Lake Middle School, Apex, NC), Li Fugen (President, Dolphin Books), Dr. Jane Liedtke (CEO, OCDF), Dr. Jason Patent (Stanford University), Sui Hong (OCDF), Sun Xiaobing (OCDF), Georgina Van Dort (Western Academy of Beijing), Michelle Wu (The Spence School, New York, NY), and Megan Zaroda (OCDF).

Updated 03.12.2010