Little Crab Educational Press

12/17/2024

Did you know that mandarin oranges (橘子 / jú zi) are a special part of Canada’s holiday season? 🍊🎄 Keep swiping to learn about their sweet connection to Canada and Vancouver!

How do 橘子 = jú zi play a role in your holiday celebrations? Share your favourite tradition with us in the comments! 👇

12/11/2024

Some lucky person is going to get to work for an awesome business owner! 🤓

12/08/2024

Today I learned there is still time to purchase gifts that will arrive in time for Christmas when you are shopping on Zazzle. They have created a handy dandy page that shows you last-chance-to-buy dates listed by product type. You can easily find that webpage by tapping this post in our smart.bio and looking for it in the blue ribbon at the top of the page.

Are you feeling ready for the holidays or are riding that last-minute vibe?

11/23/2024

Looking traditional Christmas gifts with a Mandarin twist? Looking to keep your children's Mandarin language skills sharp over the winter break? We've got you covered.

👉 Find + tap this post in our smart.bio to visit our website and see all the goodies we have to help you check a whole bunch of stuff off your list this holiday!

11/21/2024

Most parents get that kids learn through play, but it can be hard to give them the freedom to do that when you are encouraging a specific outcome.

If you have a kid who loves puzzles and games, we recommend utilizing activity books specially designed to promote learning through fun, engaging exercises.

At LCEP, our core team is made up of two certified language teachers and a professional designer, so we know what we're doing when it comes to creating just such a resource!

👉 Find + tap this post in our smart.bio to discover all the play-based learning resources we have to offer (including our newest release - our ABCs of Christmas Dual Language Activity Book!) or send this post to a friend who is on the hunt for new workbooks to keep their kid engaged in learning over the winter break!

11/19/2024

Tap the smart.bio link in our profile where you will see a blue button that says “Visit Our Little Audio Library”: The Library is a free resource for anyone to use and it houses all the audio complements for our books (plus some super useful bonus materials for Mandarin learners and the Mandarin-curious!).

The vocabulary in the curated word list for our ABCs of Christmas line is provided in the form of a dual language podcast episode in Mandarin and English.

The library is ever-growing so, when you are there, be sure to pop down to our email subscription sign-up toward the bottom of the page to get notified when anything new is added to the Library. (BONUS! That sign-up also gets you access to Our Little Freebie Library filled with free resources and products for parents helping their kid learn an additional language, Mandarin teachers and tutors, and independent language learners!)

👉 Tap your way to free learning tools!

11/10/2024

If you’re a language nerd like us...
..you probably love it when you learn a new synonym that makes your speaking, or reading or writing and of course, listening comprehension of your additional language more flexible and fluent! Here are some useful  for the word ‘list’ and learn how to express different types of lists in Mandarin!

📝 What’s on your holiday list? Share in the comments!

❓Or respond to this poll: Have your kids started making their Christmas lists already?

10/21/2024

🥁🥁🥁Our flipthru videos are (finally!) up on YouTube:

See the flipthru of "Let's Pretend! - Ràng Wǒmen Jiǎxiǎng - 让 我们 假想!" from Little Crab Educational Press and take a delightful journey into the world of make...

10/21/2024

🎺🎺🎺Our Flipthru videos are (finally!) up on YouTube:

See the flipthru for Little Byron - Xiǎo Bái Rèn - 小白任, (2nd edition) the flagship storybook of Little Crab Educational Press (LCEP) is Little Byron - Xiǎo B...

10/15/2024

Anyone who is not in the bookselling/publishing industry may not know what the WBRA is: WBRA stands for Western Book Reps Association, and we were thrilled to participate in their most recent book fair last week. Alongside publishers of all shapes and sizes (like .and.co.books and many more), we had the privilege of introducing ourselves to a number of booksellers, librarians, trade, and gift retailers across Western Canada.

This event was truly inspiring and motivating for us, and we are so happy we had the opportunity to participate. We want to thank the organizers of the week-long virtual event and we look forward to participating in in-person ones in future as well!

08/30/2024

Pretty much everyone in the English speaking world has likely heard this paraphrase of a late-1800s American philosopher’s quote, but we are offering it up today for two reasons.

First, a focus on “the journey” relates strongly to something we say all the time in the content we make for Instagram, on LinkedIn, for Pinterest, and on our blog: No one ever “finishes” learning ANY language - not even their own native one - so we can’t be so hard on ourselves when we are learning additional languages. With languages, there truly is no final “destination” because you never learn every 👏 single 👏 word 👏 in a given language. There is always more to know.

🙋‍♀️ If you needed to hear this today, drop a hand-up emoji in the comments.

The second reason this idea is resonating with us hard today is this is our first post in months. We’ve been showing up in Stories, sure, and continuing to Comment on posts from others; we haven’t made new content for Instagram in what feels like ages. As boutique business owners with day jobs and primary caregiver duties for our collective 5 children, each of us women who make up the core Little Crab team is always walking the line between this business for which we feel so much passion and our daily lives beyond LCEP. The summer has posed all new challenges with our older kids being out of school and care schedules for our younger kids changing drastically. We have been busy - don’t get us wrong - but between the new book we put out this month, doing direct outreach to Mandarin teachers across North America (and running two prize draws to thank them for participating in a classroom resources research project) and ramping up our attention on a different platform - - we simply had to put down our Instagram-content-creation-strategy-pencils for a time. We have been having some “getting real” conversations about how we can be more consistent in showing up in every way we want to that is realistic and sustainable. And we are finally starting to feel like we are homing in on a rhythm.

🫠 If you’re a part time business owner, solopreneur, or full time entrepreneur, throw an emoji in the comments that captures your mood today lol

06/29/2024

06/18/2024

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✨CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS✨

Annick is looking for illustrators living with physical disabilities for picture book work. Please share your portfolios and help spread the word! [email protected]

06/08/2024

📻 It's here! Now you can hear! 🎧

Here's what this is all about:

In April 2024, Xianjing Zhang and I did an interview with Host Joyce Lee from Fairchild Radio 1430 AM in Toronto and now we have the segment recording! The show, called 一期一會 (English translation is "See you on Sunday"), starts off in Cantonese but since neither Xianjing nor I speak Cantonese, our answers are in Mandarin. Our introductions start at about the 35 second mark, if you wanna skip the intro (though I really like Joyce's voice. She was SO. KIND. and fun.)

** Caveat:

To be totally honest...

They did a very flattering editing job on my speaking parts. I had many "ums" and "ahs" that you cannot hear in the edit that aired. But that said, as an in-it-for-life Mandarin student, I found the challenge of speaking Mandarin on a Cantonese-and-Mandarin radio program to be a welcome test of my ability to plan and prepare and squeeze out time to study even when life is insanely busy (so it feels, most of the time).

Oh yeah and I totally forgot that Chinese radio speeds up everyone's talking...Have you ever noticed that? 😄

Have a listen:

Wanna hear something kinda fun and unusual? In April 2024, Rebecca (朱婷 / Zhū Tíng) and Xianjing (张娴静 / Zhāng Xiánjìng) did an interview with Host Joyce Lee from Fairchild Radio 1430 AM in Toronto, am1430.com, and here is their segment. The show, called 一期一會 (English translatio...

05/31/2024

If you're a parent who invests time in your child(ren)'s literacy, a language educator, a language learner or someone who is curious about becoming one, this is for you:

Welcome to all that Little Crab has to offer