Christmas gifts for preschoolers 2022…. with a Chinese literacy twist!

It’s my final blog post for the year!  As always, the entire month before Christmas will be dedicated to a social media free Advent period (so please forgive the spelling errors, as this is being hurriedly typed in the few minutes before we jump on a plane). Given there is still time to buy ChristmasContinue reading “Christmas gifts for preschoolers 2022…. with a Chinese literacy twist!”

Building a Chinese book library at home for children

This post outlines how you can go about creating your own children’s Chinese book collection at home, and what to think about as you do it. It includes the types of books we have by age, genre and author, and also where they came from. Lots of geeky charts and graphs.

Dim Sum Warriors Bilingual Learning System – interview with CEO

An interview with Dr Woo Yen Yen, the co-creator of Dim Sum Warriors Bilingual Learning System 点心侠. Learn what translanguaging is, and how it can be effective and fun tool on a bilingual journey.

Extensive Reading: The secret to learning Chinese

Extensive Reading has been the key to our family’s Chinese learning. It’s about reading widely for pleasure, focusing on of texts where >98% of words/characters are known. This post describes how the approach works, and how stress free it can be. Don’t focus on teaching the child 500 words; focus on setting up a love of literacy for life.

iFlytek Alpha Egg versus Youdao Dictionary Pen 科大讯飞扫描笔 vs 有道

This post is a detailed comparison of iFlytek Alpha Egg versus the Youdao Dictionary pen (科大讯飞扫描笔 vs 有道) in terms of design, accuracy, and other key features.  They are both excellent options, and the race is clearly on between dictionary pen manufacturers in China.