Yan Mummy

 We are currently about 3 weeks into starting the Sagebooks Beginner Set Book 1 and about month into starting Mandarin. It's been going surprisingly well so far! I definitely haven't been able to do anything close to 1 lesson per day, more like 2-3 lessons per week. So far we are on lesson 10. There have been a couple of times where we've done two lessons in a row, but I'm trying not to overwhelm Yan. She's taken to it amazingly and reading off sentences like it's nothing. I don't think she fully understands what she's reading yet (like when she reads in English!) but I'm sure understanding will come in time. So far I really think the Sagebooks curriculum is designed very well. It's so structured yet simple that learning seems to come easily. I've been supplementing Sagebook lessons with reading together from the Little Lamb series, and that seems to work really well. We read the Little Lamb books together, with Yan reading the words she know...

Little Lamb Climbs the Mountain Graded Reader 小羊上山 儿童汉语分级读物 （第1级） This is a graded reader that originates from China, by the same person who wrote the Disney Mandarin Levelled Readers. It only uses about 60 words and it comes in a set of 10 books.  The books are beautifully illustrated, and each sentence per page is quite short. There are some activities at the end of the book to engage children with. There is also a parent manual to explain how to use the books (although be warned that it is completely in Mandarin) and a little poster with all the 60 words on them. There are meant to be 14 levels of books in this series.  It is also so cost effective ! The entire set with 10 books cost RMB99 (£11) for us. Again, this is without shipping as our friend brought this back for us. But it's also sold on Bamboo Bilingual for £23.99.  So far we have only cracked open the first book, and my daughter loves it. I think some of the concepts may be a bit too in depth for her to under...

Two graded reader sets that I've ordered have just arrived! So I'm going to post some early thoughts I've had since having a look at both readers sets. Basic Chinese 500 Beginner Set (by Sagebooks Hong Kong), Simplified Chinese Version 基础汉字500 启蒙级珍藏套裝 This seems like the most recommended option when searching online, especially from families home schooling their children. This set of graded readers uses the premise of teaching one unique character per lesson, then getting the children to read 3 sentences using words they have previously learnt and the new character. The entire course is meant to teach a total 500 words, and this is divided into 5 book sets (Beginner, Budding, Building, Confident and Fluent Readers). I have just purchased the first set, the Beginner Reader Set. It teaches 100 words and this is again divided into 5 books (each book teaches 20 characters). Their suggestion is to teach one new lesson per day, and repeat up to 4 previous lessons prior to startin...