Upon tamarind’s recommendation, and successful purchase of my 1st order from Dang Dang (it is in ‘SHIPPED’ status now), I decided to get a set of Chinese book for my P5 boy. The book recommended is 不一样的卡梅拉.
But my order didn’t go through, it says connection time out. So will wait for a few more days before I try to pay again in case the payment already went through and they have not update. Shall wait and see.
UPDATE: Everything went on smoothly and the books are on the way.
Of all the information I read recently, this one really stands out.
How to Raise a Bilingual Child by tamarind
In it, she detailed her experience in teaching both her kids to read Chinese. By 7, her girl is reading thick chinese novel of 150-200 pages with a few hundreds words on each page. Her boy at 6 years old is reading long chinese passages of a few hundreds words.
Impressed by it, I continue to read on and see what she did. She gave valuable tips on what to do, and what not to do. What resource to get, and books to recommend. I will not repeat them here but encourage you to read her blog for the details.
In another blog entry, she shares how she teaches Chinese at home. The resource she use to teach is the series call 四五快读。It is from China and can be purchase from either Dang Dang (direct from China) or Shine Kids (Singapore book reseller).
The series is a set of 7 books and by the time you finish book 6, your kid will most likely be able to read quite well.
In my excitement, I immediately brought the full set from Dang Dang, along with one of her recommended book series 小猫当当系列 which is recommend for kids age 2-6. I bought the individual titles of the 7 四五快读 book instead of the set because it cost cheaper, which I later find out to be S$3-4 difference. It will cost around S$31 to buy the 7 books.
Buying from Shine Kids will cost your S$41.50 + S$6 delivery fees. But you do get your books much faster. The average delivery time for Dang Dang is from 5-7 weeks. So it is going to be a long wait, but the books there (many other great books) are really cheap.
Upon advise by tamarind and many parents from the forum, I used my Amex card and payment was a breeze. Immediately after payment they indicated an ‘OK’ word, but later direct you to a page that says your payment has problem. Do not worry, it is normal and within a day you should receive an email confirmation from them that they have received your payment.
As a first time user, they will also send you a separate email to ask you to verify your order (for security reason). After they verify your info, they will proceed to prepare for shipment (which is the stage I am in now).
If everything goes well, I should receive my shipment in early Mar 2011 (what a wait!). While other books can wait, I do regret not finding the Shine Kids site earlier (I also saw it AFTER I ordered). I will probably be willing to pay a bit more just for this set of 7 books, while I am willing to wait for the rest of the story books.
Have been visiting Kiasuparents Forum a fair bit this few days. Got quite a bit of things to read up, especially on parents either sending their kids to language schools, or choose to teach them at home.
Came across a very interesting sharing by fellow forum user “tamarind”, who selflessly shared her experience in teaching her kids both English and Chinese. She even detailed her experiences in her blog to share it with the world. Many other parents also shared their experiences and it has been a very informative, inspiring and interesting read.
After taking the weekend to consider, we decided to gave up the I Can Read (ICR) assessment and go for the Mind Stretcher (MS) one instead. The reason is as what I said before, distance and term fees. We figure that with the cheaper term fees, we can send Darien to both English and Chinese classes. Also, MS seems to be well known for their English classes. And with the centre within walking distance, we will be more persistant to send him for long term.
On Sunday, we decided to take the time to teach Darien basic letter sound to get him reading for the assessment at MS. Ok, the truth is my wife did the teaching while I listen, because I have never gone through phonics myself :p
Monday came and it’s time for assessment, and the teacher informed us that he should be able to skip the Foundation class and shoot straight for the Elementary class. Mind you that in their general suggestion, Foundation is for N1 and Elementary is for N2, and he is already in K1. But we are still very happy (as the Foundation class don’t start till Mar) that with one night of learning he can go to Elementary class, we thought for sure he will have to start from Foundation. How little faith we have. Heehee…So we signed him up for the phonics class immediately.
Next is to decided where to send him to Chinese class. Besides Berries World (BW), the next most popular (at least in my research) seems to be Tien Hsia (天下). But the general consensus is that they are more academic. Reading through their K1 program, it seems to involve quite a bit of fun play so we went ahead to book a (free) trial lesson on this Sun. The fact the the centre is right next door to MS is a plus. And since BW’s time couldn’t fit with us, we want to give 天下 a shot.
After procrastinating for a long time, I finally decided that I need to do something different for my 2 sons education.
You see, when Denver was young, he has the luxury of attempting at classes like music appreciation at Yamaha, have an active lifestyle at Tumber Tots, learn English at I Can Read, etc. One mistake we did was not giving him enough exposure to the Chinese language. He ended up hating chinese and thinking that he is an English boy.
Fast forward to today, Denver is in P5 now and his Chinese is getting worst by the minute. Than there is Darien, which have not attended any class before, and is now at K1. He can’t speak Chinese and also thinks that he is an English boy.
I begin to panic, and think that it is time to give Darien more exposure to both languages. So this week I started to research on the Internet to see where to send him to for some language classes. For English, top of our mind is I Can Read (ICR), so we booked an assessment test for him this coming Sat.
For Chinese, everyone seems to be recommending Berries World (BW). We called up the nearest centre to try to book a (paid) trial lesson, but the timing will not fit, it’s all on weekday and will be too rush for Darien after coming back from childcare. So we are in a fixed.
In the meantime, we are debating if we should let him go to ICR, as the term fees are quite high, and the effort to travel can be a turn off in the long term, especially doing the time where I can’t send Darien and my wife got to do it (by public transport).
I than remember receiving a brochure from Mind Stretcher (MS) and went in search for it. It does have phonics class and we decided to book an assessment with them to see which level Darien is at. The assessment will be on next Monday. So we will have to decide if we are to go for assessment at both ICR and MS or just choose one. A few more days to decide.
