Chinese–English Community Helpers Flashcards

These are picture cards for 60 jobs, from doctor and mail carrier to geologist and pet groomer, and every card is bilingual. The job name is printed in simplified Chinese characters with tone-marked pinyin, and the English name sits underneath.

One helper, three cards

Each job comes three times, marked with one, two or three stars. The one-star card shows the character and the name, nothing else. The two-star card adds the workplace and a short sentence in both languages, like “A pharmacist works at the pharmacy.” The three-star card says what the helper does and pictures three of their tools, so the firefighter carries a fire truck, a fire hose and an extinguisher.

The cover gives ages 3–8 for the set, and the how-to-use page (page 2) matches the three levels to ages 3–5, 5–7 and 7–8. The cards are sorted into four groups of 15, each with its own band color: health and safety, education and service, food and daily life, and building and nature. Next to the doctor and the firefighter, the list also has a translator, a meteorologist, a programmer and a social worker.

After the cards

The worksheets ask kids to match helpers to their Chinese names, English names, workplaces and tools, to write a name from its pinyin, and to cross out a tool that doesn’t belong. Five more pages move out into the neighborhood: draw the streets around your home, interview a grown-up about their job, solve four “who am I?” cases from a place and two clues, and match problems like “The pipe is leaking” to the helper who comes to help.

The games reuse the same helpers. Bingo has four boards and uses the one-star cards for calling. There’s also a memory game, a picture-to-word match, a board game around town played with a die, six role-play cards with a line to say, and a cut-apart puzzle that puts four helpers back at their workplaces.

Printing

The cards come four to a page with crop marks at the corners. The guide suggests cardstock for the cards, plain paper for the worksheets, and printing at actual size so the cards keep their 3.5 x 5 inch size. The card faces have soft colored backgrounds, so they look best from a color printer.

Questions

Is the Chinese simplified or traditional?

Simplified characters, with pinyin and tone marks under each job name. The English name is on every card as well.

Can we use it if we're not learning Chinese?

The English name is on every card, but the Chinese is printed largest, and two of the eight worksheets ask for Chinese answers. It suits families and classes working in both languages best.