Tag: easy reader

Products, Teaching

Tiny Chinese Preschool Vol. 1 Book Release!

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Tiny Chinese Preschool was a concept I came up with while trying to teach 3 children Chinese over their summer break. I felt the material I had was too hard for my 2 year old, who could barely hold a crayon, so I wanted to create something more simple for his age group.

I started with some simple characters and used those characters over and over in simple worksheets. I made flashcards of those characters and played games with my child. Tracing and writing characters was especially problematic, but after some testing, I finessed a way that my child could color in parts of the character a stroke at a time to help him better recognize the character later. I could see real improvement in his reading, and he was even using the characters to talk to me in day to day life! And after nearly two years of hard work, I’m proud to present my best Chinese learning book ever!

It is now available on Amazon! You can buy it here.

This is a book of worksheets and games for preschool children ages 2-5. The first chapter focuses on preschool skills like cut, color, circle, mazes, tracing, and hidden pictures. The following 8 chapters integrates those preschool skills in learning two opposing or matching character pairs, like big and small, fast and slow, sleep and play. While learning these characters, online audio (now available through QR code scanning for convenience) can help guide pronunciation. The last two chapters are a review chapter and an easy reader mini-book, where every character learned is now integrated into a fun story. This is an excellent entry level workbook for children and their parents just beginning to learn Chinese.

Here is a peek to the inside pages. Each page is full-color, bright illustrations, and appealing to children.

As part of Tiny Chinese Preschool’s book release, I will hold a live video of Tiny Chinese Homeschool’s Facebook page on September 26th, 2023 at 11:00 am ET. I will let you see the inside of the book and demonstrate how the it works. I’ll be there to answer any questions. I hope to see you there!

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Tiny Chinese Preschool Book Launch!

Products

Chinese Easy Readers Launched!

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It’s official! These books are launched! To celebrate, I explain the sale and contest, show a preview of the book, and answer some FAQ in the video below! If you don’t have time to watch, check out the summary below that!

FB Live Book Launch Video

Tiny Chinese Easy Reader books strive to take original and classic stories and simplify them so there are just a few words/characters on each page. Pair this with the online audio, and this becomes a fun, no-stress way to learn some Chinese. Each book includes 3 short stories!

These books are different from the Chinese easy reader books out there because:

1. There are parent tips at the beginning to help guide the reader into just focusing on a couple characters or a couple phrases.

Tips for Parents

2. The traditional Chinese characters and pinyin are far apart from each other on the page. This is very purposeful so pinyin can be used as a pronunciation reference, but not as a crutch. Eventually, the reader can just look at the characters to read the book.

Pinyin and Traditional Chinese Characters are far apart.

3. There are games in the back of each story so the learner can review what he/she has learned. This helps take the words in the book and apply them in a different context.

Let’s Review Game

Both Tiny Chinese Easy Reader books are on sale right now from $10 to just $7.99. The sale is good for just a couple weeks, so be sure to order before March rolls around. This sale is to reward any first buyers/early birds that help these books take off!

Last time, I had a book giveaway–which helped garner excitement about the release, but didn’t have good return in getting reviews. So this time I want to do a “Most Helpful Review Contest” where you can leave a review for the book on the Amazon product page and get a chance to win a $50 Amazon gift card.

What counts as a helpful review? A review that shows you have actually opened and used the book is good start. Talk about if you like the audio elements. Talk about the review games. Post a picture or two. Discuss your kid’s reaction to it (if you are doing this for a child) and what age/language level they are. Even if you have things that didn’t go well for you, write about that too so other people in a similar situation will know what to expect. This contest ends the same time the sale ends, so if you plan to participate, get the book in the first week of the sale and review it in the second week so you have enough time to form an opinion about it. The review can be for the paperback or kindle versions!

I will looks at all the reviews for both easy reader books and choose the one that is most helpful on March 4th, 2020 – I will make a post here and on the FB page to announce the winner! After I notify the winner, he/she will be emailed an e-gift card to spend on…well, whatever the winner wants! If you are buying these books anyway, please take the time to leave your thoughts on the product page. There is nothing that is more helpful to a product’s success than good, honest reviews.

Thank you, to everyone who popped in here to support the launch. It means a lot to me. I hope these books make Chinese accessible to you, and make you chuckle here and there.

Happy Learning!

-Enge

Products

Coming Soon!

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Exciting news, Tiny Chinese Homeschoolers! Two new books are coming in a couple months! These were inspired by easy/early readers that my daughter (age 5) loves to read because they are simple enough for her to read without any help. So I gave myself the task to write stories that utilize only 15 characters or less. It is a lot harder than it seems!

After months of writing, illustrating, tweaking, kid testing, they are almost ready, Here is a sneak peek of the covers!

These books teach characters through repetition and rhyme–it’s a very naturalistic approach. There are parent tips before each story. At the end of each story, there is a word list for easy review, and an activity or a game so readers can test their knowledge. It’s really approachable and fun!

The best part is that these will be available both in paperback and Kindle-version. The Kindle-version can have audio attached, so kids can have the book read to them if they like. I’m working on the audio right now, and I’m trying to make it interactive and immersive. Maybe there will be subliminal messages playing quietly–just kidding! I think this will be a game changer and connect people to Chinese like never before.

Does this sound like something you would read to your child at night? What classic stories would you like turned into a Tiny Chinese Homeschool Easy Reader? Let me know! And I’ll keep you posted for the book launch. As always, happy learning!

Love,

Enge