Help Your Child Connect With Their Language, Culture & Family Stories

Introducing the next generation of Cantonese and Mandarin learning flashcards — designed by @bilingual.baobao for heritage families and second-language learners.

Keeping A Heritage Language Alive Is Not Always Easy

Many parents want their children to connect with their family language, but finding the right resources can be challenging.

Children often grow up surrounded by English, while parents and grandparents want more opportunities to share their heritage language naturally.

Learning a language is not only about vocabulary.

It is about:

• conversations at home
• family connections
• cultural identity
• shared memories

Created From A Personal Understanding Of Language & Culture

@bilingual.baobao is a project from Selina, a qualified British-born Chinese and English language educator who lived and worked in China for 12 years. With a background in modern foreign language teaching, she has seen what works and what doesn't when it comes to learning a language, especially for young, second-language learners.

After unexpectedly returning to the UK during COVID whilst pregnant, and staying in the country after her son Bao Bao was born, she realised the limited resources available for second language Chinese learners – especially in Cantonese. So she got together with her husband, Sean, and together they launched Ickle Bao – a brand creating products that embrace the shared cultural heritage of ESEA and Chinese communities.

From A Small Idea To Hundreds Of Families

Our first edition, launched in September 2023, proved that families wanted better resources for learning Cantonese and Mandarin. The product was printed locally, but the cost of manufacturing small batches was high and we could see room for improving the product if we brought the production in-house.

We invested in printers, card, laminate, cold-rollers, guillotines and cutters, and set to work. Version 2 was launched in 2024, each card hand-crafted by ourselves and has already been bought by hundreds of families looking to nurture a Chinese learning environment at home.

The feedback has been incredible, and we're immensely proud of the products we managed to create from our own home with our own hands.

However, producing every pack manually meant we could not reach as many families as we wanted. Each pack takes at least 45 minutes to craft (when nothing goes wrong), plus the time to pack and ship an order. It meant the price had to reflect the time put into each pack, on top of the cost of materials, equipment maintenance and shipping, and meant we were more often busy with production when what we'd love to have been doing is spending our time letting the world know about our products.

With Version 3 our goal is to make a better product at a lower price - something that can be shared more widely with every family that's trying to connect with their heritage. And by working with regional distributors and fulfilment centers around the world we're also aiming to expand our reach globally by reducing shipping costs and time.

 

Why Kickstarter?

Previous editions have shown that families love our flashcards.

Now we want to create Version 3 at a larger scale.

Kickstarter allows our community to support the next stage of the journey by becoming the first families to receive the improved edition.

We'd love you to be part of our journey to join families around the world helping children connect with Cantonese, Mandarin and their wider cultural heritage.