Mandarin Songs Singapore Children Can Grow Up On

A song is the only form of Chinese revision a child will do a hundred times without being asked. The words come with a tune, the tune comes back on its own, and the words come with it. For a child in an English-speaking home, a small library of Mandarin songs does something no worksheet can: it makes Chinese a sound the child owns rather than a subject the child is tested on.

Primary 1 and 2: the songs every classroom sings

Start with the songs the child will meet at school anyway, so that home and school reinforce each other. Three that every Chinese teacher in Singapore uses:

• 小星星 — the Mandarin words to Twinkle, Twinkle. The tune is already known, so the child's whole attention goes to the words.
• 两只老虎 — two tigers, to the tune of Frère Jacques. Usually sung as a round, so the words go past several times.
• 数鸭子 — counting ducks on a bridge. Numbers and the classifier for animals, in a chorus that repeats.

At this age, sing along. A parent who does not know the words can learn them from the child, which is the best possible arrangement for the child's confidence.

Primary 3 and 4: songs with stories in them

This is the age for the animated film songs and the sung poems. The theme songs from 熊出没 and 喜羊羊与灰太狼 are known to every child who has watched them and are entirely singable. The short films of 中国唱诗班 set classical poems to music; a P4 child who has sung a poem will recognise it in a P6 comprehension passage.

Primary 5 and 6: Singapore's own Mandarin pop

Here is the part most families overlook. Several of the biggest names in Mandarin pop music of the last twenty-five years are Singaporean, and a P6 child can discover that the singer their cousins in Taiwan and China listen to grew up in Singapore, went to a Singapore school, and sings in the Mandarin they learn in class. That is a discovery worth making.

Older still, and worth knowing: in the 1980s Singapore had its own Mandarin folk-song movement, 新谣 (xinyao), written and sung by students. 梁文福's 细水长流 is its best-known song and is still sung at school events; 小人物的心声 is another. These are Singapore's Chinese songs in the most literal sense — written here, about here — and a child who learns one has a piece of local history in their head.

How to use songs so they do something

1. Lyrics on screen, in Chinese. Most music videos and lyric videos show the characters; watching them scroll past while singing is reading practice that does not feel like reading.
2. One song a fortnight. Let it become the car song, the shower song. Depth beats breadth — a song sung fifty times is learnt; fifty songs heard once are noise.
3. Ask what a line means, once, when the child is already singing it. Not a test — a conversation. The child who has been singing 细水长流 for two weeks is ready to be told what the phrase means, and will remember it.
4. Let the child choose from the shortlist. A song they picked gets sung; one you picked gets skipped.

A caution on pop lyrics: they are written for adults, and some are about heartbreak in ways a ten-year-old does not need. Listen to the song first. The early albums of the singers above are gentle; choose from those.