Motherly Notes Methods – Nurture Love Educate

Age: 6-9 independent

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This newspaper is one of the oldest and really the standard in Taiwan. I think they’re the first ones that started off newspapers for kids and it was set as the standard for outside reading for a “kid newspaper.” Over the years, many more newspapers popped up like 國語周刊 Book Review: 國語周刊 (基礎版, 小學版), 國語月刊 (成長版), Chinese Weekly Newspaper for Kids (MWM) and more recently 學生周刊 (review to be put in later). They hall have their strengths.

This particular paper has stuff I really like:

• beautifully written pieces
• formal language exposure
• healthy topics
• mix of topics
• 16 pages of just the right length

Things that are just “okay”:

• speaks to the adult, not particularly the child – language is more formal which is great practice for the child but yet they may not to keep interest as long
• more facts based, less opinions and fun (which is the draw of outside reading)
• not as interactive as the other papers

I’m okay with it not having a reading pen. However, I find my children gravitating towards other newspapers that have a little more variety in the set up of the pages. For the “training” first grader, the attractiveness of a page means a lot and whether it grasps their attention should comes first in priority. Although beautiful to look at, I find that it has less real life images and there are more illustrations. In addition, because the pieces are written so formally, kids find it hard to relate to themselves. The activities inside have you creating sentences with phrases, etc. but yet don’t give you enough boxes or enough space to write on, etc. (unlike 國語周刊). I’ll do a comparison of the newspapers in another piece.

In general, I think it’s good to have a few of these to practice the more formal language. As to whether a kid growing up in the states will be “self driven” to pick these up, chances are slimmer. At least for my kids, they don’t gravitate towards this one…

Mandarin daily news: https://www.mdnkids.com/weekly/small/20190114-20190120.html

For a comparison of this with 國語周刊: 國語日報 周刊 vs. 國語周刊 哪裏不同? Comparing Mandarin Daily News vs. MWM