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”. And the children can also choose to learn Chinese characters with Pin Yin or characters only.

“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. These are the values and 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 organized 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 1: Family
● Story 2: Playing at Home
● Story 3: Following Instructions
● Story 4: Bored
● Story 5: Getting Ready for School
● Story 6: Going to School
● Story 7: Going Swimming
● Story 8: Sharing
● Story 9: Moving to a New House
● Story 10: New Place

Contact us if you have any questions:
App Developer: CCS Group Ltd Singapore
Audio: Malay Performance Arts Association Singapore
Author: Shuna Sun
● Email: iloveguobao@gmail.com.
● Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BaobaoandGuoguo/