kirchara | Entries tagged with recommendation

Here is a list of historical fiction and nonfiction books that M read and enjoyed in third grade and fourth grade:
(The list is chronological by time setting)

1. Sees Behind Trees (Powhatan, 16th century America/post-Columbus)
2. The Kidnapped Prince: The Life of Olaudah Equiano (18th century, nonfiction, based on Olaudah Equiano's 1789 autobiography)
3. I Thought My Soul Would Rise and Fly: The Diary of Patsy, a Freed Girl (1865, post-Civil War)
4. Sugar by Jewell Parker Rhodes (1870s, sugar plantation, Chinese laborers, Louisiana)
5. Hidden Figures (1930s to 1960s, nonfiction, Black women in NASA)
6. They Called Us Enemy (1940s, graphic novel autobiography, Japanese American internment camps)
7. Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes (1950s, post-Hiroshima, short nonfiction, based on the life of Sadako Sasaki)
8. The Watsons Go to Birmingham (1963, Civil Rights movement, 16th Street Baptist Church bombing)
9. Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom (1965, short nonfiction, Selma Voting Rights march)

Promising, not read yet: Troublemaker by John Cho (1992, L.A. Riots)

Seven of the above nine books we read as part of the Oh Freedom US history curriculum.

Living Mandarin is a curriculum expressly written for non-native Chinese speakers. The textbooks use both traditional and simplified characters. The curriculum is not text-heavy, so you would need to add at least one set of leveled readers to teach your child.

The textbooks have traditional characters, simplified characters above the traditional characters (as needed), pinyin under the Chinese characters, and zhuyin to the right of the traditional characters. Traditional characters and zhuyin are black, simplified characters are gray, and pinyin are red. In addition to zhuyin to the right, they also included an older form of romanization underneath pinyin (as needed) in green. I bought levels 3 (my kids' approximate level) to 10.

The text is written horizontally from left to right, beginning from kindergarten levels all the way to level 10. The horizontal orientation is great because most Chinese reading pens only scan horizontally.

The sets I bought did not come with music CDs* or an e-Pen. When you purchase directly from their website, the sets come with CDs. If you can read Chinese and are teaching your children yourself, the CDs and e-Pen are probably not necessary.

* not good music

Living Mandarin sets so far goes up to Level 10 instead of 12:

- Teaching bopomofo (1 textbook + 1 workbook)
- Kindergarten levels 1 to 3 (1 textbook + 1 workbook per level)
- Levels 1 to 10 (1 textbook + 2 workbooks per level)

According to their website, ( Read more... )

You can look at some of the inside pages here:

- My Instagram post
- Issuu pages on their website. Click on each book and click on the "試看試聽" (Take a look/give a listen) tab.

( Pros and Cons of this curriculum )

I am pleased to find that level 3 is the correct level for my kids. I cover the pinyin with a reading ruler when they read and only uncover it when they do not know the character(s). My kids seem to automatically read the simplified characters and do not find the zhuyin distracting. My older one quickly figured out that zhuyin includes tones.

We have been doing Mandarin regularly since summer break. I am hoping this schedule will continue for a while, before things get hectic again. We rotate between Odonata (currently reviewing Book 4.4), SageBooks (reviewing Book 3.4) and XQKD (Book 3 Lesson 3). Sometimes we sing/learn a Chinese song or do a game/activity in Chinese instead.

We go over each textbook lesson in two sessions, and both workbooks in two sessions. For now, I plan on skipping up to half of the writing exercises to cut for time.

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

Xue Qian Kuai Du teaches children to recognize characters by reading a set of leveled literary readers. It's similar to Odonata in that they introduce several new characters at once. Compared to other leveled readers that I've seen, XQKD is superior in that it's more literary (the text often feels rhythmic and lyrical). XQKD also includes poems, nursery rhymes and riddles.

Xue Qian Kuai Du: Revised Edition* comes with:

- four textbooks (totaling 45 stories)
- one I-can-read-by-myself reader (12 short stories)
- four exercise books

- 600 character flashcards (thin and one-sided)
- two wheels of character radical games
- a game instruction booklet
- two list booklets (radicals, antonyms, idioms etc.), and
- some stickers.

There's a QR code that you can scan for audio of the 45 stories. The speakers have a Beijing accent; the background music is soothing.

( The textbooks include some 'How this character came to be' pages )

If you cannot read Chinese, I wouldn't recommend this as your first/only curriculum because it has no pinyin.

For those doing Sagebooks, this set would make a beautiful addition/supplement to the Sagebooks curriculum. I bought my set for $35 from JD.com (including shipping to the US; you probably can get a better deal during the November 11th sale).

If your child has learned 100 Sagebooks characters, they should be able to pretty easily read Stories 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3.

How we have been doing XQKD so far: ( Read more... )

Here is the progression of new characters in Book One: ( 122 characters in 9 stories )

For Sagebooks parents, here are the new characters in XQKD Book One: ( New characters beyond Sage Level 1 )

In total, there are 14 characters in XQKD Book One that are not covered by Sagebooks 500.

* The old edition of 学前快读600字 does not include many of these extras. Many of the stories in the textbooks are also different. Here's a comparison of the revised and old editions (The review is readable using Google translate).

List of the story titles in the four books: ( 学前快读600字（修订版） )

You can look at some of the inside pages here:

- My Instagram post
- A Sohu.com review comparing the revised and old editions. The revised edition is the book/page on the left, the old edition is on the right.
- A Zhuanlan Zhihu review comparing Xie Qian Kuai Du: Revised edition with Si Wu Kuai Du. The reviewer prefers XQKD, but SWKD has an easier/lower starting point.

Summary of important purchasing information:

- Product name in Chinese: 《学前快读600字（修订版）》(XQKD 600: revised edition) or 礼盒版：学前快读600字 (Gift box edition: XQKD 600)
- Where to buy: Product listing at JD.com. You will know right away what your shipping fee will be. The product weighs 2.68 kg, according to JD.com.
- How to Buy Simplified Chinese Books from JD
- You can also buy XQKD at taobao, but you will need to do your own research on which store/seller is reliable etc. and pay for expensive shipping.

You can teach your kids Shakespeare from as young as seven. Brooks was 5.5 years old when he had these lines memorized, just because he’s heard River repeat it so often:

Captain of our fairy band,
Helena is here at hand,
And the youth, mistook by me,
Pleading for a lover’s fee.
Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!

Here is what River (then 8 y.o.) wrote about A Midsummer Night's Dream:

Oberon, who is furious at Titania, wants the Indian boy to work for him as a squire. Titania replies, "No, this is the son of a beloved friend." Oberon angrily takes revenge by making Titania fall in love with the first thing she sees, a man with a donkey's head. Puck mistakenly puts the flower's juice on the wrong person's eyes. Instead of making Demetrius fall in love with Helena, he ends up making Lysander fall in love with Helena. Since Titania is in love with Nick Bottom and isn't thinking right, Oberon successfully takes away the Indian boy. After he has the boy, Oberon reverses the enchantment on Titania.

I use three books to teach River Shakespeare:

1) Ken Ludwig’s How To Teach Your Children Shakespeare

2) Mary & Charles Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare (This book preserves Shakespeare's language. Don’t get any other Shakespeare “summaries” because it’s useless)

3) my college textbook The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Longman, ed. David Bevington).

Bonus: Gareth Hinds’ Romeo and Juliet graphic novel, which uses actual Shakespeare lines. (The wedding night scene is tame and truncated, FYI.) I personally love his recasting of Romeo and Juliet as other races to show that Shakespeare is universal.

Below is a timeline of River’s Shakespeare journey, from age seven to twelve:
( 7 to 12 years old )

More information about the contents of the books below:

1) How To Teach Your Children Shakespeare by Ken Ludwig
The book website has free audio recordings of the 26 Shakespeare passages in the book.
Get a hardcover because you'll be using this book for years. The edges of the hardcover is intentionally ragged, FYI.

( List of plays and passages in HTTYCS )

2) Tales from Shakespeare by Mary and Charles Lamb
The comedies are rewritten by Mary, and the tragedies are rewritten by Charles.
Your library probably has a copy you can borrow. If you're buying a physical book, be careful to get a good quality one, because some versions are just poorly photocopied pages bound in a book.

( 14 comedies and 6 tragedies )

3) The Complete Works of Shakespeare
You need a college textbook. Don't just get a random compilation because you need lots of good and reliable footnotes. Earlier or later edition doesn't matter; mine is 4th edition (there are now 7 Longman editions). Renting a textbook isn't that cheap so you might as well buy a used, older edition textbook.
The pages of my Shakespeare book is as thin as Bible pages.

+) Gareth Hinds’ Shakespeare graphic novels. We've only read his Romeo and Juliet graphic novel so I don't know what his other Shakespeare graphic novels are like. Merchant of Venice looks promising though.
The paperback is very high quality and have nice thick covers so you don't need to get a hardcover version (unless you want to).
Hinds has also written & illustrated Macbeth, King Lear, The Odyssey, The Iliad, Beowulf and Poe: Stories and Poems.

On the weekend of the Dragon Boat Festival.

Another six-year-old joined playgroup, so we have five kids total.

1. SONGS:
1a. 我的朋友在哪里 (Where is My Friend?)
Show/teach them the ASL gestures for 我的 (My), 朋友 (Friend), 在哪里 (Where) and 在这里 (Here).
1b. Teach them 小白兔，白又白 (Little white bunny)

2. INTRODUCTION:
Introduce their sibling instead of themselves.
"这是我的RELATION. 我的RELATION叫NAME. 我的RELATION AGE岁了."

I modeled the introduction by introducing V as 我的朋友. The kids did a round robin introduction.

3. SHOW AND TELL:
"这是OBJECT." One or two additional sentence about the object's color/size/physical characteristics. Ask follow-up questions as appropriate.

The kids brought interesting objects. River shared his sheep minifigure: "这是我的小羊。我的小羊是白色的。" A shared her drawing of a galaxy.
Brooks also shared his drawing: "这是我的画儿。我画了一只小兔子。" (This is my drawing. I've drawn a little bunny.)

( Read more... )

4. READ-ALOUD: ( Awakening the Dragon: the Dragon Boat Festival )

Plans for Playgroup #3:

( Plans for Playgroup #3 )

For English reading & writing, I highly recommend Logic of English Foundations. The books, workbooks, sandpaper cards & game cards come in manuscript OR cursive. The game cards are print + manuscript OR print + cursive.

My six-year-old did Level A and 25% of Level B before kindergarten. He's most likely beyond Level B now, but we're going through it anyway this summer to make sure his foundation is solid. You won't need levels C & D unless you're homeschooling, because their kindergarten and first grade teachers will take over teaching them reading.

Foundations can be overwhelming if it’s your first time teaching kids reading/writing. Otherwise, it’s designed to be open-and-go. It’s pricey, but it teaches reading AND writing AND spelling. Both Brooks and I find the workbooks, games & activities engaging.

Here’s my low-budget recommendation: Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading. I vastly prefer it over Teach Your Child How to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, which has nonsensical/uninspiring sentences and passages. When using EZ Lessons with River, I ended up making my own sentences (mostly Curious George stories). If you're going to spend that much time and effort, you might as well go with Ordinary Parents' Guide instead.

☆ 08/100 moments in multiples of 50 words

Cathy Duffy reviews Foundations (Logic of English): One of her top picks

“Foundations is a little more advanced than some other programs if you begin with A and B at kindergarten level. […] A covers some first-grade level standards as well as those for kindergarten while B covers even a few standards for second grade.”

Cathy Duffy reviews The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading

“The only extras you need along with this book are flashcards and a magnetic board with alphabet letters or tiles.”

P.S. It might cost you $0 to use Ordinary Parent’s Guide because your library probably has a copy in circulation.

P.P.S. Although I highly recommend All About Spelling, I feel All About Reading is nowhere as comprehensive as Logic of English Foundations.

Last week Brooks sang the vowels "a" and "o" in the middle of a reading lesson. "They're vowels," he said. "Can we sing 't'? T - t - t. No, 't' is not a vowel. It's a consonant," he concluded.

We have been going through Denise Eide's Foundations Level A since Brooks turned four last December. Almost every day we do read aloud time and then a reading/writing lesson for 6-10 minutes, or more. Nearly three months later, we are on lesson 17 and he has learned 9 phonograms.

Unlike 100 Easy Lessons, Foundations spend a long time laying down the foundation (pun intended) before tackling reading words. Students learn the "magic C" alphabets/phonograms first, because those are the easiest to write (a, c, d, g, o, qu). Compare this to learning 'm, s, p, a' first, where students will be able to read 'am, map, Pam, Sam' immediately.

In this program, reading words come at level 21 (after Review #4), and it is reading through spelling/writing. Foundations is more daunting compared to 100 EL and All About Reading. Then again, three months ago I would never imagine M sorting vowels and consonants by applying the singing test on them.

P.S. 'How to Develop Phonological Awareness' at All About Learning.

☆ 05/100 moments in multiples of 50 words

I told J that in Shakespeare, comedies mean happy endings, and therefore there’s always a wedding in Act V. I gave them the example of Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Me: "How about Twelfth Night? Who do you think get married in Act V?"

J: "Olivia and Cesario."

Olivia/Cesario's Willow Cabin speech must have made quite an impact on them ;-)

I have been using Ken Ludwig’s How To Teach Your Children Shakespeare with J (then-7-y.o.) since summer 2015. They have learned passages from MND and Twelfth Night (Orsino's "If music be the food of love," Viola's "Conceal me what I am," and the willow cabin speech.) The book also provides summarized plot of the plays for context.

J did memorize several poems before we dove into Shakespeare. Both of us knew that they were perfectly capable of memorizing entire poems, including long ones.

☆ 04/100 moments in multiples of 50 words

I came across June Oberlander’s Slow and Steady Get Me Ready in a blog post about making room time CDs for little ones. We had the opportunity to try out one of the activities* earlier today.

Instead of making a cardboard egg puzzle, we simply used colorful plastic Easter eggs. I set one egg on a "wall" (a heavy book standing on its side), then made the egg fall and come apart while singing this rhyme:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Could not put Humpty together again.

My two-year-old Brooks quickly took over, making the eggs fall and "break" and putting them together again. When the eggs fall, he would exclaim "Oop!" because Brooks is one dramatic toddler.

For extra verisimilitude, you/your kid can decorate the plastic egg with goggly eyes/sticker eyes and mouth.

ETA 04/13/15: Brooks put playdoh in one end of the plastic egg to make it a wobbly egg. After Humpty fell and broke, he said "egg!," and gave it to me to "eat." X-D

* Age 2 - Week 1

☆ 02/100 moments in multiples of 50 words