Our First Month of Learning

 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 knows, and me reading the other words. I think if we'd just started with Little Lamb, I would have had to do/plan a lot more extra teaching around the introducing words in the book. As it is, we keep learning words with Sagebooks and get to enjoy the stories in the Little Lamb series.

I know Sagebooks also recommend reading the books 5 (!) times per day, but I don't think that it's possible for us as a family. I've only managed about 2 'lessons' per day before Yan finds it too much. I've printed out some of the words she knows for her to play with and she's been enjoying that too. We are also still managing to read one Mandarin book per day that's more complex, and she's been surprisingly receptive.

As for me, when I'm alone with the children I now really do try to just speak Mandarin. I'm having to translate what I'm saying less and less because I think they are starting to understand me in context. They read my body language and tone and kind of guess what I'm saying. Even if I'm asking a question, I do find that Yan is able to answer most of the time. I'm thankful words manage to come out of me most days, but I still have to pause often to think about what I need to say. I often slip back into Cantonese or English if I'm in a rush. I also don't always remember nouns (eg. 'tap' most recently), so I have to keep looking words up. It's nice when my husband is around because he's like a walking dictionary and will helpfully try to provide the words that I'm missing (although we've had a good laugh recently because his Mandarin also probably needs brushing up on). I've also started listening to podcasts and watching TV shows in Mandarin to help brush up my skills. I watched a show recently that I really struggled to follow once I switched to Mandarin subtitles. I'm kind of glad to be able to join the children on this learning journey. 

YM