Prevention is better than Cure

One of the things I've learnt while embarking on this journey is to start young. If I had started coaching DS from young, even before he's entered formal education, his results would probably have been very much different now. Well, no point crying over spilled milk, that's just not my style.

To prevent history from repeating itself, I'm now coaching my 2 little DDs proactively. DD1 was sent to I Can Read (ICR) program to train her to be able to read English independently and ultimately have a strong comprehension ability. I'm trying to introduce phonics to DD2, but not too sure how well that will go, as my phonics is really at a "half pail water"（半桶水）stage. Will probably send her to ICR later too.

The better thing to teach them now will probably be Chinese (actually I find teaching Chinese a breeze, compared to teaching phonics). This will, hopefully, better prepare them when they take Higher Chinese in primary school in 2-3 years time.

Besides compiling a list of words they're currently learning in school, I am using a few other resources.

"基礎漢字 500 启蒙级 (Beginning Reader)" Readers Series



I got to know this series from a parenting forum. You can get the series from the Popular Bookstore. This series teaches a new word in every unit and progressively add on one new word in the next unit.

E.g. Unit 1 山 --> Unit 2 高山 --> Unit 3 高高的山

Each sentence is accompanied with a picture (and English explanation) to let the child have a clearer understanding of what she's reading. There are 5 books in the Budding Reader series. DD1 and DD2 are both at book 1 now. We started this about a week ago.


小太阳阅读计划

I recently chanced upon this series from our National Library. There are 4 different levels in the full series, with 6 books in each level. The concept is very much similar to the Budding Reader series introduced above, except that each book in this series has a storyline. The stories revolve around the brother 杰杰 and the sister 佳佳 which may be more interesting for kids.


Word Cards

I was lucky that I didn't throw away the word cards 字宝宝 DS used in P1 and P2. I extract the words the two girls learn in school or from the readers series and compile a list of words they should recognise. These cards come useful to test if they really recognise the words. At this stage, I am concentrating on word recognition. The writing will probably play a more important part when they're in K2.


Hopefully by starting them early, they will have a better command of the language in their formal schooling. I do not enforce that they have to complete a certain numbers of words in a specified period. I go according to their individual pace. Lots of patience and encouragement will motivate them to want to learn more, which ultimately makes things a lot easier.