Many friends have asked me when to start writing or learning the phonetic system in Chinese and in my article My Journey in Teaching My Children Chinese, I mentioned that I always started them early. Toddlers have very less refined motor skills but if they try, they’ll be able to trace anything big. I made these ㄅㄆㄇ worksheets, laminated it and then had the kiddos trace these whenever they felt like it. It was more of a fun project for them instead of homework. I laid it out on the table daily and they loved “coloring” as they say and loved wiping off the writing afterwards. My only point was to get them used to stroke order and not really to test them. After a few months of tracing and tracing, they somehow just learned to write it and memorized all the sounds with the flashcards and the magnetic tiles we made How My Children Started Reading Chinese and English Before 3 Years Old. I didn’t formally “drill” them on the phonetics until three years of age where we pieced all the sounds together to make word sounds but the ground work was laid before three years of age. Before they’re three, I find the concept of piecing it together was a more abstract subject but not impossible as they learned to read English words before three and that required piecing sounds together. Chinese just required a little more work since there are different tones involved so we waited until three to piece them together formally.
These sheets are available for download for free along with other free worksheets in our Facebook Group!
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