Early Thoughts - Little Lamb Climbs the Mountain

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 understand yet (eg. the size of the Earth compared to the Sun) and since we are only just starting to read, she can't read most of the words. It does introduce many new words at once, which for a completely new reader may be challenging.

We have been using Sagebooks to introduce words to her, and once we see words we know in these books, I get her to read it. She is getting excited that she can read some words. I do still have to translate the meaning of the words to her though. 

I have heard that this series levels up very quickly, as it is aimed at children in China. So we will go slowly for now and see where this series leads us. 

 

YM


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