What attracted me to the set was that it is thematic and this makes it easier for me to use with Dumpling. The activities in this series seems to be short which is great for kids at this age.
There are 8 sets in this series with each consisting of some picture/word cards and 2 books. One book is story based (a few short stories) and the other is mainly poems / rhymes with some simple activities designed for the parent / teacher to have some quick Q&A with the child and to encourage the child to discuss the story.
The word cards complement the poems as they are the key words which are presented in the poems (though not all are listed).
I saw firsthand, how simple rhymes and songs help Dumpling with her grasp of the Chinese language and that primarily was half of what contributed to my purchase.
In her class, the children are exposed to songs being play softly in the background (sublimal programming perhaps?) and each week, the children learns a new rhyme / song (at the minimum).
From such activities, Dumpling's grasp of vocabulary has improved. I personally felt that this also contributed to her speaking in short sentences more and very naturally.
How we use this at home was that I would scan and print an enlarged version of the poem / rhyme so its easier for Dumpling and I to share. After going through it, we would then play some games. This is usually either a picture / word match or a word hunt game.
On the left is how the word cards look like.
The downside of this set is that I wish the word cards were printed on thicker art card though it did have perforation which makes "tearing" easier (I shudder to think how much cutting is involved if they are not perforated!). Additionally, to play the picture match game, you will need to make a copy of either side because the cards are printed back-to-back with pictures on one side and the words on the other. So you will need the extra set to match the words with the pictures. Hence for Dumpling and I, we needed to prep a bit before using the set. I bought this set of materials from this facebook seller: http://www.facebook.com/#!/unikidsbabies
Here, Dumpling attempts to read the short rhyme (read to her on 2 occasions prior and she was able to grasp it quite quickly so I do think the rhythm and early exposure are seem to be useful).
Here, Dumpling attempts to read the short rhyme (read to her on 2 occasions prior and she was able to grasp it quite quickly so I do think the rhythm and early exposure are seem to be useful).
It consists of word / picture match. The next page can be a memory word game where you print 2 copies with the next page on stringing the words together which forms some of the sentences in the rhyme. I have also included some writing exercise. Please leave a comment if you have the set and find this useful or have other suggestions to share. :) Lastly, I also prepared some very simple learning aids to help with word recognition (so that I know she's not just reciting / memorising) and for her to build short sentences together. I have uploaded the learnings file here.
