While the original plan of the Centre was to focus on the teaching of adults, we explored the teaching of Chinese background children as early as 2014, and on 29 January 2015 we began teaching a class of three children, which a fourth soon joined. This class continued through two terms, the Centre being closed the following term. During 2016 we ran two children’s classes through much of the year, and from 2017 to 2020 we generally ran three children’s classes in Darwin.

Children taking these classes already have some knowledge of spoken Mandarin, but they are studying in English-based schools. These classes are thus designed to strengthen their spoken Mandarin as they ensure that the children also develop their ability to read and write Chinese.

Teaching children is more challenging than teaching adults because it is important to keep them entertained and thus attentive. We depend heavily on songs, stories and activities, and we don’t expect the children to sit passively in their seats for long times. In the following picture students are interacting with a video based on a simple counting song.

In the preceding picture a student practices writing the character 人 rén 'person' during a lesson that focused on how some characters developed as pictures.