Baobao Guoguo App - Part 2

Baobao and Guoguo is an interactive app designed to help young children learn Chinese. The stories were created by a Chinese teacher working at Singapore American School. Reality plus a bit fantasy in children’s world, there are altogether 100 stories each for Chinese beginners and intermediate learners. This brief introduction discussed this app’s features, story values and themes and topics.

App Features
This app engages children with animation, interaction, audios, music, fun treasure box, and interesting children’s stories. Other than enjoying the stories, one important feature is that children can learn to say the objects appearing in the background pictures. There are two modes in each story: “Read to Me” and “Read and Play”.

“Read to me” is auto play of the whole story with animation, narration and music. Children can just sit back, enjoy the animation, look at the characters, and listen to the story being read and pages being flipped automatically. Parents can also use this mode for bedtime stories.
“Read and Play” is an interactive mode. In this mode there are two sub-modes: “Treasure Hunt” and “Read Myself”. In the end of each story there is a “Treasure Box”
●Treasure Hunt: By tapping the small hands pointing to different objects, the Chinese names of the objects in the pictures will be shown with audio and characters. It is a fun way to enlarge children’s vocabulary.
●Read Myself: Children can tap the story text and read the story with the narration sentence by sentence. This is a good way to enhance the children’s reading fluency and recognize characters.
●Treasure Box: A vocabulary list with English, Chinese and audio.

Story Features
Baobao and Guoguo, two Maltese dogs, symbolize children attending international schools. They go to school and learn how to make friends. They have birthday parties and grow desired characters and values. And they travel overseas too! Values and characters were the first things the author considered when creating the stories. As an elementary Chinese teacher, the author knows story is an effective way to nurture children’s principles and values. The followings are values and desired characters involved in the stories:

Perseverance, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Honesty, Compassion, Open-mindedness, Thinker, Risk-taker, Communicator, Inquirer, Principled, Well-balanced, Reflective, Knowledgeable, Curiosity.

The stories were created under different themes. Here is a sample of different themes:
◆Who we are: ourselves, body parts, family, and friends
◆Where are are in place and time: nationalities, foods and drinks, our own houses, shops, places, parties, play dates, sleep overs
◆How we express ourselves: feelings, culture, dealing with issues and conflicts
◆How we organize ourselves: schools, holidays, transportations,jobs.
◆How the world works: curiosity and enquiry, looking for answers.
◆Sharing the planet: sharing, collaborating, solving problems

The 100 stories were organized in 5 series and 20 stories in each series. Here are the titles of stories in Series 1:
Story 11: Unfair
Story 12: Getting Sick
Story 13: Getting into Trouble
Story 14: In the Principal’s Office
Story 15: Pretending to Be Sick
Story 16: We All Love You
Story 17: Birthday Party
Story 18: Good Manners
Story 19: Going to a Field Trip
Story 20: Graduation Party

Summary
In summary, Baobao and Guoguo is a Mandarin Chinese App designed for children to learn Chinese in a fun and interactive way. This App was created to help young children learn Chinese and help underprivileged children to get education. All revenue from this App will be 100% directed to Namaste World Foundation Singapore, a Nonprofit organization striving to create a better world for children.
Contact us for any questions:
App Developer: CCS Group Ltd Singapore
Illustration: NewAir Advertising Agency China
Audio: Malay Performance Arts Association Singapore
Author: Shuna Sun
Website: http://baobaoguoguo.com