我的家
Wǒ de jiā — My Family at Home
Kindergarten’s family words become family sentences. Students learn the three characters they’ll use more than any others — 我, 你, 的 — and build their first written sentence with them.
Characters this unit
These six turn up in almost every sentence in the rest of the program.
你
的
家
好
是
好 is worth a pause — it’s a woman 女 beside a child 子, and it means “good.” The first character students meet that is built from two other things rather than drawn as one picture.
Unit objectives
- Read and write six high-frequency characters
- Build the sentence 这是我的妈妈。
- Use 的 correctly to show belonging
- Introduce four family members aloud and in writing
One word does all the work
English has my, your, his, her, our, their. Chinese has 的, added to whoever it is:
我的 my · 你的 your · 妈妈的 mum’s
The first sentence students write
我 and 你
Me and you — the two characters that anchor every conversation, written and read in a pointing game.
Adding 的
Turning “I” into “my.” Students label objects around the room as 我的 or 你的.
This is my family
A drawn family portrait with a written caption under each person — the first thing students produce that reads like real Chinese.
家 means both home and family
There is no separate everyday word for “house” versus “family” — 家 covers the building, the people and the idea of belonging all at once, so 回家 means both “go home” and something closer to “return to my people.” The character itself is a pig under a roof, which tells you what counted as a household in ancient China. Children usually find that very funny, and they never forget the character afterwards.
Unit 4 progress check
A light, no-pressure way to see what’s sticking:
- Can your child write 我 and 你 from memory?
- Do they put 的 in the right place?
- Can they read their own family captions back to you?
我 has seven strokes and is genuinely tricky — it’s the hardest character in the unit by some distance. Expect it to take a while.