kirchara

Our Sagebooks progress used to be super slow, because I was focusing on their pronunciation (reproducing consonants, vowels and tones correctly) instead of comprehension.* I would read to them and have them repeat after me phrase by phrase. They also traced the big characters in front of each Sagebooks chapter with their fingers (pre-writing).

Two years later, after four months of weekly Chinese lessons and near-daily Chinese reinforcement, we follow the Sagebooks suggestion of reading five chapters per session: four review chapters and one new chapter.

e.g. REVIEW the last four chapters in Book 1.1 (也、我、指、五) + LEARN the first chapter in Book 1.2 (两).

The CD has been essential for letting my kids hear native speakers' tone and pacing. My six-year-old rarely makes mistakes with tones, but he's pronouncing the character tones faithfully as if they are in isolation. I tell him that native speakers don't say "I-am-going-to-go-to-the-store," native speakers say "I'm gonna go to the store," and if he reads the tones exactly as they are written, he would sound like a robot.

有人/上山/来我的家.

Initially Brooks inserted pauses at the wrong places for this sentence. I played the CD for him and explained that the sentence is step by step: There's someone/ climbing up the mountain/ and coming to my home.

We've been doing Sagebooks almost everyday** ever since the entire set*** arrived. Brooks passed Book 1.1 assessment**** on July 16th (17/20 characters), and River passed on July 17th (16/20 characters).

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* At 4.5 and 9 years old, their Chinese was near-zero. They would comprehend once they start taking actual Chinese lessons, was my thought at the time. Also, Sagebooks and BetterChinese have English translation right there in the books; I figured they can read it on their own if they're curious.

** We still occasionally read BetterChinese, especially during Chinese playgroups and as the subject comes up (e.g. They needed a refresher on "这是谁?"). Odonata is on hold for now; twelve to fourteen new characters at once is a bit too much. (We read Book 1.2 almost two months ago.)
ETA 10/18/19: We're slowly doing Odonata in addition to Sagebooks and Better Chinese; we're currently on Book 1.4.

*** Previously, we only had four random Sagebooks that my mom bought. Thankfully, one of the four books was book 1.1.

****For Book 1.1, their weekly Chinese lessons have covered eight out of twenty characters: 山、人、大、上、下、手、小、五.
Nine, if you include 一, which does not count toward the 500 character count of Sagebooks.
For Book 1.2, their lessons have covered eight out of twenty characters: 两、十、来、马、去、鸟、天、地.

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My tentative lesson map: ( Read more... )

For playgroup #2's show-and-tell, Brooks shared "这是我的画儿。我画了一只小兔子。" (This is my drawing. I've drawn a little bunny.)

1. Start with the sentence "弟弟画了一只小兔子." ( Read more... )

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Circling Introspective:

- Circling is a hit when it's the two of them together. Before this session, I did 'circling' individually with them with the character 去, but the energy (and silliness) was not there.

- The more outlandish/non-sensical my questions are, the more eager River was to answer "是!" and "对!"

I asked: "弟弟吃了一只小羊吗？"
River: "是!"
Brooks: *pretends to eat his drawing of a sheep*

- When there are two sentences being circled, I need to start with a comprehension check on the first sentence.
I assumed they've acquired the "这是___" sentence structure from circling #1, so I skipped circling it. In actuality, they still need a lot more input of "这是___" sentences.


[ PDF file on how circling works ]