CO-FOUNDERS LINDA AUSTIN AND AMY FU

Ni hao, mama, baba!

Wo jiao—my name is—Amy Li-Zun Fu, and I can't wait for summer! What a fun summer I have planned for the campers of Smart Panda Presents Intro to Chinese Summer Camp program. This year, 2010, in addition to running the camp in Pasadena, CA, I’m leading a group of kids (and their parents, family members, and friends) to Beijing, CHINA! Exciting doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel about the curriculum I’m designing for it. I hope you can join us!

With 11+ years of teaching Mandarin and English to children, both in the U.S. and in Taiwan, I've learned a lot about what keeps kids interested and totally tuned into learning Mandarin. I currently teach Mandarin Chinese at Sage Hill School, a college preparatory school in Newport Beach. In 2007, I taught Mandarin at Vistamar School in El Segundo. I’ve also taught for Berlitz Languages, Inc. in Pasadena, teaching Chinese language and culture to children and adults. I graduated from the University of California, Irvine, with a BA in Art History, a BA in Chinese Literature and Language, and a certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). From National Taipei University of Education, I earned an Elementary Grade Level Teaching Certificate.

As the academic leader for Intro to Chinese Summer Camp, I will personally guide your child through FUN and LIVELY days filled with attention-grabbing activities, both indoor and outdoor. Join me Pasadena or Beijing. Let us be the ones to introduce your child to Mandarin Chinese. We'll make it engaging and memorable.

— Amy Fu

camp leader and academic co-founder of Smart Panda Presents, LLC

Dear Parents, Ni hao!

It’s been a dream of mine to have a session in China and this year, we’re doing it! If you’re serious about your children learning Mandarin, consider joining us in either Pasadena or Beijing, China. Better yet.....both! We’ve designed the trip to be a FAMILY vacation with a language learning component led by ever popular Amy-laoshi.

As a mom to two girls born in China, I’m committed to helping them learn Mandarin Chinese. Besides being the language of their heritage, my husband and I believe solid competency of Chinese will yield a wealth of opportunities for them in our increasingly global world.

What better time to focus on Chinese than during the summer, when they’re free of nightly homework and other after-school activities in the regular school year? I started this Chinese summer camp because none existed—none in terms of length and frequency of exposure, and High Fun Factor.

Kids CAN have fun while learning a foreign language. The last two years of camps proved it! When our native-speaking camp leaders spoke Chinese, they listened and had fun responding in Chinese. They practiced writing characters and loved it. Specially conceived activities delighted and induced lots of laughter and held their attention, all while reinforcing the Chinese being taught. We incorporated words, sentence structures, and speaking prompts into each activity, every minute of the day. Hands-on activities involved body movement, teamwork, games, music, and role-playing. We explored Chinese culture, including painting kites and rice bowls, making dumplings and ice cream, listening to folk-tales, and performing a skit on the astrological animals of the Chinese calendar.

And we went on field trips—in a big yellow-orange school bus!  They searched high and low on a visual scavenger hunt of cultural symbols at the Chinese garden of The Huntington Library. They enjoyed a guided tour of the HsiLai Buddhist Temple and sketched spiritual art. They observed and noted various physical features of animals at the LA Zoo, then combined the body parts into a drawing to create their own wacky creature, followed by an oral presentation (in Chinese, of course!) to their fellow campers.

This year, we’re offering the ultimate field trip: A session in CHINA for kids with their families. We’ll be visiting The Great Wall, the Forbidden City, and other cultural sites in China. Enrollment in our Pasadena Session is not required. Check out our Session in China page.

In our Pasadena session, we aim to deeply imprint Mandarin into our kids’ heads while elevating the High Fun Factor even more. Activities that were a hit from years past will be combined with new ones. And our camp leaders will press the kids toward full immersion while keeping it fun and safe. We call it our progressive-partial-immersion program, where each week finds more and more Mandarin spoken in place of English.

So we invite you to join us! Introduce your child to Chinese by joining us for a summer of language and cultural fun!

Xuexi Zhongwen,

— Linda Austin

mom and administrative co-founder of Smart Panda Presents, LLC