Motherly Notes Methods – Nurture Love Educate

Age: 3-6

######DISCOUNT CODE #####

Now sold on Gloria’s Bookstore:

【全新再版】亮亮的成長 (免運)

Shipment date: August/September 2018, sold until sold out

Use the coupon code: motherlynotes

Special Pricing: $65 including shipping , $10 rebate if you pick up at her warehouse in Sunnyvale, CA

Join our Facebook Group to learn more about this set! Click here: Motherly Notes Facebook Group

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This is a large set of 30 books and 6 CDs. Each book is roughly 24 pages long and VERY VERY LARGE FONTS! Here are the titles:

You can click to enlarge the photo to see the titles more clearly.

This is a great starting set for small kids starting age three. I wouldn’t buy it for kids older than age 6 due to the content. My four year old reads at ease with it and actually finished all 30 books rather quickly. It has everything kids go through in their lives from being selfish to being a picky eater. Each book has roughly 150-250 characters and is great for a FAST read for starting readers.

The font is quite HUGE. To compare the fonts for you, here are a couple side by side comparisons. I took 小雞去露營 (which has normal picture book fonts ) and I took another book with slightly bigger picture book fonts and then there’s Vicky’s set which has GINORMOUS fonts.

Here’s another example of the font compared to the chicken book. It is kind of mind blowing of how big the font is even in the photos. It’s even larger than the font I am typing on the screen right now!

The size of the book as compared to the chicken book as well as a normal “bridge” chapter book from Ferris Wheel is below. The size is easy for kids to hold in their hands to read:

The set is divided into three categories with 10 books each:

1. 個性篇 – Personality Traits – titles include topics such as admitting you’re wrong, being bossy, being greedy, being stingy, being smart, etc.
2. 學校篇 – School Stories – titles include going to school, being safe, friends, classroom activities, not littering, playing baseball, etc.
3. 家庭篇 – Family Stories – titles include celebrating new years, getting sick, having pets, going to the dentist, being afraid of the dark, getting lost, celebrating Christmas, etc.

Why I like this set:

1. Develops Confidence – It’s great for developing confidence for beginning readers since it’s a fast read and the words are big so they don’t seem intimidating. The zhuyin (phonetic assistance) is clear, large, and easy to read if you’re learning zhuyin. My four year old was in sheer awe of the size of the font.
2. High Frequency Words – it has a lot of high frequency words in the books. You can do this set after you’ve done a good 100-200 characters and then add on words to your learning library at a healthy pace after that with these books.
3. Use as a Curriculum – I don’t like textbooks and frequently try to find story books to use as curriculum instead. If it were for my children (when we were still learning high frequency characters, I would do flashcards, writing worksheets, games, stickers, etc. for these books because each book doesn’t introduce that many new ones or I could pick and choose the new ones.
4. Healthy Everyday Topics – They state on there it’s for EQ. I think it’s more common sense items so I really like it for that three year old who is starting out to know these concepts. For example, don’t litter, being responsible for yourself and the world. They have topics on when to admit when you’ve done something wrong. I like how the stories are healthy and you probably won’t find anything that’s inappropriate. A few books don’t really relate to our family but that’s bound to happen since every family is different.
5. Words on ONE Page, Pictures on Another – This is my pet peeve. For learning Chinese and systems, I love black characters on a plain white background so the words are easy to see and read. I also like it when words are on one page on it’s own. There’s a trick I use in teaching Chinese that’ll I’ll share later.
6. 30 Books!!!!!  – There are lot for you to go through if you’re using it as a curriculum or practice reading! I frequently find it hard to find more books of something when it works so if it’s working for you, it’s a good thing there are 30 books in this set. However, if it’s not working for you, then of course you’re stuck with 30 books, lol.
7. Price: ok, so I’ve negotiated a super duper cheap price for these. If you want a set, join in our super secretive (j/k) Facebook group to find out how to get it for a great discount: Motherly Notes Facebook Group. 

What I Don’t Like:

1. Not Exciting – Let’s face it, stories for three year olds are… not exciting sometimes when they are written as “readers”… However, I already found this to be more bearable (for the adult) than some other early readers. I have to say this again, this is GOOD FOR KIDS STARTING AT THREE!!! It will make sense for your three year old to read with you and use cooperative reading method to learn the chinese. You can see a video on that here in this link:  My Journey in Teaching My Children Chinese (Teaching Children Chinese From Age 0-5)
2. Illustrations Not Gorgeous – Ok, maybe I’m being super picky here but why do all readers have the same type of illustration? They’re not the most beautiful in the world but again, I find it way better than let’s say, Sage Books (which I really don’t love the illustrations to).
3. Hardcovers – This is a personal preference but I feel like readers can just be in paperback binding because it takes up so much space on a shelf to house 30 books! LOL!!! That’s a problem for me, I know, but hey, it’s my page, I get to complain a bit.

Trial Reading

Want to see how my four year old reads it? I listened to her read one on her own and she was engaged and understood the topics inside so it definitely is very appropriate for smaller kids (3-6) and she even did the questions in the back, LOL! She wanted to read out the questions herself. I’m guessing because the characters are big, she thinks that’s part of her responsibility as well. Most of the times questions in the back are in small print for the parent to read but in this case, they put it in large font just like the font in the story portion. This may be a good practice for reading comprehension on top of character recognition.

Character Calculation?

Ok, so I’m not completely nuts yet to calculate the number of unique characters in here but I’ve estimated that you learn more than 500 characters if you use this as a curriculum. It goes above and beyond that 500 high frequency word list. I think this is a much more “interesting” set to use as a curriculum. It won’t be learning one word a day on a schedule like the Sage set but you can structure it to be so! I may end up creating something from this set so that we’re learning new characters from this set and use it as a mini Chinese learning curriculum. Will share that in our Motherly Notes Facebook group when I do it!

CD Sample

I’ve played a CD sample for you from the set and here’s the “ta da” moment: FINALLY CDS THAT FOLLOW THE WORDS ON THE BOOK VERBATIM!!!  Even the character voices in there follow it. I found CDs in other books that have character voices love to add in extra narration but this set doesn’t do that.

 

Sample Story Pages