Kindergarten · Unit 2 · 你好，朋友！

四个声调
Sì gè shēngdiào — The Four Tones

The most important unit of the whole Kindergarten year. In Mandarin, the pitch of your voice changes what a word means — so before students learn many words, they learn to hear and make the four tones with their ears, their hands and their whole bodies.

⏳ 2 lessons · ~20 min each 🎤 Listening & speaking only 👏 Movement-heavy

Unit objectives

By the end of this unit, students will be able to:

  • Hear that two words can share a sound but differ in meaning
  • Show each of the four tones with a hand gesture
  • Copy a single-syllable word in the correct tone most of the time
  • Notice when the teacher deliberately says a word in the wrong tone

The four tones

One sound, four words. This is the example every Mandarin learner meets first:

1st — high & flat 妈mā · mother
2nd — rising 麻má · hemp
3rd — dips low 马mǎ · horse
4th — falls sharply 骂mà · to scold

In this unit

Tones you can feel

✋
Lesson 1 · ~20 min

Four hands, four tones

A gesture for each tone — flat hand across, hand sweeping up, hand dipping down and back up, hand chopping down. Students say and move at the same time.

Start Lesson 1
🐶
Lesson 2 · ~20 min

Mother, horse, or scold?

The listening game: the teacher says one of the four ma words, students hold up the matching picture. Silly sentences make the mistakes funny rather than embarrassing.

Start Lesson 2
🏠
Home practice

The tone song

Sing the four-tone chant once a day in the car or at bath time. Tones live in muscle memory, and muscle memory only comes from repetition.

For the adult in the room

Please don’t correct every tone

Five-year-olds get tones wrong constantly, and correcting each attempt is the fastest way to make a child stop speaking. The goal this unit is awareness, not accuracy — a student who knows tones exist and enjoys playing with them has succeeded completely. Accuracy arrives on its own, usually around Grade 2, from hearing the audio again and again. When your child says it wrong, just say it right back cheerfully and move on.

Unit 2 progress check

A light, no-pressure way to see what’s sticking:

  • Can your child do all four hand gestures in order?
  • Can they tell when you say 妈 and 马 differently?
  • Do they try a tone when they copy a new word, even imperfectly?

All three are about listening, not performing. Producing tones correctly is a Grade 1–2 goal.