Start of my (books) shopping spree!

After reading tamarind’s Phonics and Reading blog, I decided that I will have to supplement my son’s phonics class with additional teaching at home. I am also intrigued by the Ladybird’s Key Words with Peter and Jane series (P&J). This series of books actually encourages your young ones to start reading themselves! And to think that these books have been around since 1964 and is still widely use before speaks volumes.

Some pre-requisites are still required. Like the child should already be familiarized with the letter sounds and is able to string 2 letters and 3 letters words. Once they are able to do so, you can start to get them to read book 1a, which is very simple to read. By book 10 or 11, the child should be able to read most English story books.

The key part is that they should read themselves and not to read to them. This books are designed for them to read themselves (hope I have stressed that enough). For more information on how to teach your child phonics, and how to use the key word books, you can refer to tamarind’s blog.

So at lunch time, I went in search for the P&J books at Popular Bookstore (PBS) in Singapore Post. To my disappointment, I can’t find a single book. There is this Robin series by PBS themselves though that attempted to do some part of what the P&J series are doing. It’s a 10 books series (P&J has 1a, b, c all the way to 12a, b, c, that’s 36 books in total) and uses more current drawings.

After work, I venture to PBS at Sembawang Shopping Centre. This time, I am very happy to find the P&J series there. A quick look shows that book 1a, b, c, 2a, 3a are missing. So I ended up picking book 2b, c, 3b, c, and all the books from 4 and 5. They cost S$4.82 each. I asked the customer service officer on the book 1, and was told that this series still sells very very well, with many educator purchasing it thus it is always out of stock.

I also found the Chinese version of Doraemon (哆啦A梦 or f.k.a 小叮当), all 18 books in the series. I decided to get the first 6 books to read with my P5 boy to hopefully generate some interest in him to read Chinese books (eventually). They cost S$3.50 each.

I was happy and paid for the items. Then I feel the need to get the first few books missing from the P&J series. So I drove to Northpoint PBS to take a look. Unfortunately, they also do not have them, in fact, they have less than the Sembawang branch.

Undeterred, I went to the Causeway Point PBS to look and finally found book 1b, c, 2a and 3a. Elated, I bought all the book 7 & 8 (yes, I didn’t realized I have skipped book 6 until when I am home).

Here, I also found another set of books for teaching Chinese to my K1 boy call 基础汉字500. It’s a set of 5 books and have 5 levels (of 5 books each) for teaching children to recognize the Chinese characters. Each book teaches 20 Chinese characters with the 25 books it will teach 500 words. I figured that since 四五快读 will take forever to arrive, I might as well get this first and start something with him. The teaching methodology of 基础汉字500 is very much like the P&J series, which introduce one word at a time and allow the child to keep repeating those words from before so as to enhance they recognition of the character. Happy with what I see, I bought the most basic set, which is the 启蒙级。

Still not satisfied as I am missing the 1a book from the P&J, I finally decided to ask the customer service officer in which branch I am able to find the book 1a. Why I didn’t do this earlier? I don’t know, stupid? Haha. After some searching, I was told that it is available in 4 branches. Bukit Pangjang Plaza (BPP), Toa Payoh, Marine Parade, and a branch in Jurong (not sure which part).

I then drove to the nearest one from where I am which is the BPP branch. Indeed, they have the entire series there and I was so happy that I bought the rest of the series right up to book 12 (remember I still thought I already got book 6? So I end up still missing the 3 books from book 6). I drove home a happy man