Age: 5
Grade: Primary (3-6yrs old)
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Tonight marks a momentous occasion. Astroboy insisted on reading through a whole picture book by himself.
This last week, we started back up on Sagebooks and whipped through the first 2 books again and finished the 3rd book today. So we’re up to 60 characters with many that he doesn’t quite remember. On top of that we’re doing zhuyin class again. One of the other new thing we’re doing is for Astroboy to pick a picture book for me to read to him, and for me to pick a book to read to him. The book I’m choosing is always a higher level, more likely beginning reader books because my goal this year is to up his comprehension level.
Anyways, tonight, he picked Little Chicks’ Christmas 小雞過耶誕節. It’s a set of books by a Japanese author. The books are are really cute and kids as young as 2 really enjoy them. There are many 1-2 sentences per page, if that.
Astroboy insisted on painstakingly sounding out the zhuyin for the words he doesn’t know. Thankfully, with 60 characters under his belt, he does know maybe 1/4 to 1/2 of some sentences. Good thing for me, I didn’t insist he actually do that and just read words that I thought would be too hard for him to sound out. It was actually him who kept stopping me and telling me he wanted to read himself. I’m noting this because it’s always less stressful when I’m not pushy, but half the time I can’t help myself.
I’m not in a hurry for Astroboy to read zhuyin, and consequently, be able to read long books with zhuyin’s help. With Thumper it’s always been a matter of putting characters to words she already knows aurally, and it’s so much simpler that way because she’s constantly guessing the next word by context.
With Astroboy, he was trying to sound out even Chinese character he does know, that is the precise reason why I didn’t really want him to learn zhuyin. But since his sister is doing it, it is what it is. And of course the other thing is that he could not guess the next character. He read 耶誕老公公 (Santa Claus) so many times, and each time he just re-sounded out the zhuyin, he couldn’t take that leap to know that when he reads Santa the next thing will always be Claus.
I’m starting to think maybe I just have to accept that Astroboy will learn differently and this is the path he will take.
So yeah, 小雞. Great series of books! Books.com.tw sells a set. Apparently the book titles are translated as Piyopiyo for the little chicks part.
- 小雞逛超市 Little Chicks goes to the market
- 小雞逛遊樂園 Little chicks goes to the amusement park
- 小雞過生日 Litle Chicks’ birthday
- 小雞過耶誕節 Litle Chicks Merry Christmas
