Motherly Notes Methods – Nurture Love Educate

Age: Varies depending on level. In this article, ages 4+, 6-8, 9-12

I have been really loving magazines and newspapers lately because when school started, we’re always on the run somewhere and sometimes do not have the concentration to just sit there and read a whole bridge book or get into the depths of a story so we’ve been bringing along short articles from magazines and newspapers because they’re easy to dump in my purse and easy to finish while you’re sitting waiting for violin class or waiting at a restaurant for your dinner. Magazines and newspapers include games and fun facts and also short comics. It has everything from common knowledge to history and science. Kids don’t really get bored from page to page.

I’ll start with the newspapers and move on to their monthly magazine for little kids age 4-7. Everything is compatible with their READING PEN!!!! Yes, there’s a reading pen and

IT ACTUALLY READS WORD FOR WORD WITH THE TEXT! AMAZING!!! 

I always get excited when it reads word for word. I feel that it creates a great character recognition training to follow along with the words while they’re read. 

基礎版 – Lower Elementary Newspaper

This version of the newspaper has some sort of fact piece about daily lives from rent a grandchild to the youbikes that give people a better transportation option in Taiwan to random information like people in India who sew designs on fabric, etc. Then there are some lessons on language inside with games you can play. In the video, I show the pages where you can play the games with the reading pen. This level is meant for lower elementary in Taiwan. The pieces are not hard to understand and they couple in some semi hard phrases for the children to learn within the articles. There’s always a science page about animals and another one about plants. Other than that, there are poems, comics, and other IQ/EQ games that are fun for the kids that age. My older one really enjoys reading this newspaper.

It is good to note that not all pages are read with the reading pen. About half the articles read and the other half you’ll have to read yourself. I think this is good training. This gives you breaks in between where you can listen and follow along and for the others, you need to read yourself and put more time into it.

小學版 – Upper Elementary Level

Since this is for fourth to sixth grade level reading, none of the articles are read with the reading pen. Only 2 pages out of the weekly paper is done through reading pen: Taiwanese and English learning. That’s it. So keep this in mind. In this level, all the topics are similar to the lower elementary version but goes deeper and has more words. One of the new columns in the paper include a “dear editor” sort of portion which WE LOVE … we take the papers out just for this because it’s so interesting. It’s a column where kids ask their everyday random questions. There are questions like:

• I want a pet but my mom won’t let me have one, what should I do?
• I want to differ from my parents on religion, what should I do?
• I don’t want to be nice to my little sister/ brother, what do I do?
• etc.

These questions are questions that most kids ask and so the answers are very intriguing to them. I just laugh. My friend (J.Choi) said the answer to each one is :you’re screwed. LOL!

I really like the part in the back where they have a column on poems and they explain the meaning of the poems to you part by part. I think that’s so educational. Another part my older one loves is the essay submissions by kids. They’re written by fourth to sixth graders so although very very well written, it’s still easy to understand for my first grader and it comes from the viewpoint of a big brother/sister sort of deal.

成長版 – 月刊 – Kindergarten – First Grade Monthly Magazine

At first I wasn’t going to order any of these to try because the cover looked unattractive to me. I judge a book by it’s cover … oops. However, since I have the newspapers and have the reading pen already, I decided to give it a try. Why not? Then I wished I had gotten it two years ago for my little one!!! The reading pen function is like PHENOMENAL IN THERE. You should view the video below and see what it can do! Every single page READS and every person, figure, object in there READS. The stories are read word for word and there’s even a piano option where you can learn a song by just reading the words, sing along with the music, or use the pen and do it note by note!!!!!!!

I was a little blown away by the “not so attractive” magazine I ignored. There’s also sticker exercises and glue type exercises in there that my four year old still loves to do. Who doesn’t like stickers right? Content: I wish I had done this at year two. It’s still appropriate for a four year old but I think their age limit of 7 is pushing it. I would say you can stop at a solid five years of age. The content is very simple and I think for small kids that can respectfully use a reading pen would enjoy this!!!

There are many other newspapers and magazines that I have and I’ll try to review each one. However this one I thought was the most interesting for my kids to read. I also have 國語日報 and 學生周刊 for newspaper options. However, I find my kinds to gravitate towards this one because the articles relate better to real life and it’s written just a tad more informally so the kids have longer attention spans while reading it. Even the upper elementary level one is written with a nice flow of words that’s just right for easy reading.

For the comparison with Mandarin Daily News (國語日報) : 國語日報 周刊 vs. 國語周刊 哪裏不同? Comparing Mandarin Daily News vs. MWM