Parent Review: BrookieKids Chinese Activity Packs
BrookieKids produce fun learning products for preschoolers to bring Mandarin alive. This is our family review of their latest game package.
Dou Dou Books: Review of new Chinese levelled readers
What are Dou Dou Chinese Readers? Dou Dou Books are “first readers” for young children who are just starting to read in Simplified Chinese. There were meticulously written by an American early childhood education expert, Miss Stella Beaver. Throughout two decades of teaching and researching across top immersion and Montessori schools, she has developed her…
Book Review: Squid for Brains Picture Books
Squid for Brains picture books have fun, readable and accessible content for beginners learning Chinese as a second language. They are designed based on the theory of comprehensible input. combined with a dose of good humour.
Le Le Flash Cards for learning-to-read in Chinese
Le Le flash cards are designed to reinforce learning from the Le Le Reading System.
Little Sheep Goes up the Mountain 小羊上山 Review – Chinese Levelled Reader
Exciting new series of graded readers released in 2020 & 2021, by the same authors as Disney I Will Read, but SO much better! This book set is an excellent choice for any child who is starting learning to read, and it won’t break the budget either.
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.
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…
Comparison of character lists in Chinese graded readers
This posts compares the character lists between three famous Chinese levelled reader series, being Sage 500 Books, Odonata Readers and Le Le Chinese. Posts compares differences and overlap. It outlines outlines key differences, with a focus on the first 500 characters used within each set.
Odonata Chinese Levelled Reading Series: Review
A review of Odonata Graded readers, which area well written series for learning 1200 Chinese characters. The books have a clear layout, large font, and no HYPY, and importantly, will not break the bank (unlike some other famous levelled readers, which are quite an investment). Click above to read more.
Graded Reader Review: Disney I Will Read by Myself series 迪士尼我会自己读第
The Disney “I Will Read By Myself” Learning series 迪士尼我会自己读第 are excellent levelled readers and certainly tick all the boxes of what to look out for in a good Chinese reading set. They engage children using stories and Disney characters which they will be familiar with, and are written in Simplified Chinese, with no pinyin…
Chinese bridging books for children: What to read after your child knows 1000 characters
This post summarises Simplified Chinese bridging books, arranged by length and character complexity. These are the ideal early chapter books to move onto AFTER your child has finished up graded reader sets like Sage, Le Le, Odonata or 四五快读. Get reading to read, read read!
Top apps, books, blogs and learning tools for a child learning Chinese
Top recommendations for books, apps and learning resources to help your child learn Chinese
Habbi Habbi Reading Wand Review
Habbi Habbi is great as a “first Reading Pen”, for toddlers with a bilingual Chinese-English option, hardcover board books, and durable fun design.
How to teach a child to read Chinese (when you can’t speak it yourself)
How I taught my eldest daughter to read 1300+ Chinese characters within 6 months, as non-Chinese speaking parents.
iHuman 洪恩识字Chinese Reading Package and Pen: Review
iHuman Shizi 洪恩识字 is a wonderful Chinese literacy curriculum filled innovative graphics which has taught my children Chinese. There is a set of 130 physical picture books, with a reading pen to learn 1300 characters, which follows the app.
Best Chinese Levelled Reading Books
A quick comparison of five series of Chinese readers for children, to help in your journey of finding books for beginning readers. Compares Le Le, Sage, Scroll, Si Wu Kuai Du, and Pan Asia.
Sagebooks 500: Chinese Levelled Reader Review
Sagebooks taught my 2 & 4 year olds to read Chinese characters, and are either loved or hated by most. Here’s how we made a success of reading Sagebooks in our non-Chinese speaking family.
Le Le Chinese Review: Chinese Reading Pen and Character Learning System
Le Le Chinese is a series of highly-engaging children’ books which taught my child to read 1300+ characters in a fun way! It comes with a pen which can read the individual chinese characters.
Teaching kids to read in Chinese
Becoming literate requires good early learning resources. As parents who cannot read Chinese, it’s taken a lot of research to work out which books our children should be reading. We have deliberately put small doses of Chinese reading into our daily routines, and here are the books and which helped to make literacy possible!
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