Fascinating! I assume Mandarin is one of the other two languages your kids are learning, in which case you may be interested or have already seen Chineasy app and book, for a similar experience with Hanzi.
Very handy. My math education would have gone much better if my notes weren't full of "lambda is the half stickman; sigma is upside down Q or broken E" and other really silly things
Anyway, some of my strongest language class memories from college are from translating parts of the Odyssey and New Testament.
Huh? A simple web search shows many, many, many results.
Can you share what you found?