Wow, this school year will mark our 4th year homeschooling!
Thumper
Last Year, Thumper started the school year reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in Chinese. That’s about a 2nd or 3rd grade level, and Level 4 in Chinese reading level. She spent the rest of the year jumping around, re-reading the Reading 123 series, the Dahl series, starting but unable to finish books like Harry Potter, Little House on the Prairie, picture books, etc. People remarked that her spoken Chinese improved so I tried not to worry that she is seemingly stuck around the Reading 123 level (Level 2-3).
Because our focus was on learning to read in English, the Chinese reading was just me providing reading time and allowing her to read whatever she wants. The rest of our Reading 123 and the Reading 456 series came at the end of the school year and she binged read the rest of the Reading 123 series and maybe a book or two of the Reading 456 series before she gave up.
We restarted homeschooling in earnest this month. Here’s a snapshot of what she’s doing now.
Reading – We’re reading 世界的故事 Story of the World this week for our Read Aloud time, for fluency and learning new characters. The book has no zhuyin and other than not sounding very fluid, she does pretty well with the word recognition.
She probably knows 1200+ characters, thus reaching my character goal for last school year. I don’t really know. We tried taking the Anki 
tests but I had to stop after about 1000 because I couldn’t find time to consistently go through the deck with her to see what characters she knows. Our problem right now seems to be, no interesting books to read with illustrations in our library.
I’m keen to move her to the higher level text because I know she can comprehend them. This week I realized that I need to ease her into the transition between shorter funny books high on action, to long novels that are very descriptive. So we’re going to try another book in the Reading 456 series. Hoping this will help.
Zhuyin – No longer a problem.
Writing – Started on Skritter, but again she found it boring after awhile and dropped it. When we restarted this week, she quickly realized that she forgot most of what she learned. Basically, she wasn’t writing. I realized two things last year: 1) Writing practice needs to be consistent and 2) I can only handle one major consistent thing at a time, in this case, learning to read in English. So our focus will be on writing this year.
She’s now alternating writing in English and Chinese in the Travel Journal she’s keeping. So far we’ve only done English. Let’s see how much she complains when she has to do the Chinese.
Listening – We’re listening to Island of the Blue Dolphin from ximalaya.com after dropping it for a few months. This is a book in the Cross Century Set I bought from Eastern Publishing. The book itself is about 5th grade level, perfect as a read aloud for a 3rd grader.
Speaking – I’m constantly amazed at the vocabulary coming out of her mouth and I know it is a direct result of reading. Though the Chinglish is slowly creeping back and every once in awhile I hear the English grammar in the Chinese. I’m not too concerned since we’ll be going to Taiwan in a month.
As with my usual optimism at the beginning of the school year, I’m pleased with the progress we made last year. She basically went from not reading to about a 3rd grade reading level in a year plus. Once again illustrating with a good comprehension level it’s easy to catch up.
I feel that we’ve now hit a plateau where we can no longer coast on our existing knowledge of Chinese. She has to read in order to hit that next level of higher vocabulary through literature and also start reading non-fiction. This type of Chinese vocabulary is not as easily gotten from watching TV or through our daily conversation.
Last year she wasn’t too keen on Chinese at the beginning of the school year. Our year of hanging out with other children who only speak Chinese (in co-op and playdates) have helped.
Astroboy
Last year, we just started on Sagebooks and were learning zhuyin. He could not hold a pencil properly to write.
Reading – We’ve (mostly) finished Sagebooks. Yay! I’ll talk about why it’s “mostly” another day. He enjoys reading picture books though have not moved up despite my attempts to ask him to read Level 1 books.
The other day, I had him read Little Bear again. This is the series he started reading when he finished learning zhuyin last year. Half way through, I asked him, “Do you understand what you’re reading?” Because he consistently reads the tones wrong. He said, “No. I don’t understand some of it.”
Thud.
Given that I thought the content and vocabulary simple, it finally registered on my brain that 
he really really really needs to work on comprehension. I know it’s my fault because I don’t read enough to him.
We’re currently reading Lucille by Arnold Lobel. That was the other problem I had, too few books in the Level 0 section, the books that come after Little Bear and Frog and Toad. I was waiting to go back to Taiwan.
You can see from the video how he pauses on characters from Sagebooks because he’s reading the zhuyin instead of the character.
Zhuyin – Needs to work on tones.
Writing – Can write his name. We’re not working on this right now. I can only do one large skill at a time and last year it was Sagebooks, this year it’s English phonics.
Listening – In general, at level. He is still stronger in Chinese than English. I know this is contrary to what I just said about his lack of comprehension. But day to day, he sounds fine to me. He can understand 糖姐姐說故事 but really cannot understand any other audiobooks, other than picture books, that I throw at him.
Speaking – A half year of reading picture books has improved his Chinese vocabulary. Sadly, I don’t spend as much time talking to him as I should so it’s always hard to gauge.
My poor neglected second child. The lack of comprehension thing hit me hard. I’m trying really hard now to read to him every day. He’s not interested in listening to long audiobooks like his sister at this age. I’m still trying to figure out what his learning style is and how to meet it. Right now it seems that he just wants to play with others, to socialize.
That actually isn’t a bad thing, wanting to play instead of work. Because with play comes speaking practice. And maybe that is why he wants to play. I’m just racking my brain hard on how to do that while also schooling Thumper.
