Motherly Notes Methods – Nurture Love Educate

Age: 5+

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My beloved book set is BACK!!! Not back but MORE has been produced? I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting for them to complete this set to buy and FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY IT’S COMPLETE. I feel like Gollum rubbing the ring in my hands and saying it’s “mine”… hahaha….

As a reminder, here’s my first post on the first 36:

Book Review: 小小地球人 Little Earth 36 Book Set

I did an introduction of the rest of the set here in case you’re too tired (or lazy) to read the first review:

I went ahead and introduced two of the books inside to show you as an example of the inside of the books and what they entail. I really love:

1. How many different facets of every topic they can bring in. Things you thought were “boring” topics suddenly become soooooooo interesting. Don’t like stones? Think again. It becomes fun when they bring in all facets of stone, how it’s used, where it’s from, etc. Don’t like bamboo? Don’t give a care about the air? Think again and you can see how it relates to you or how it can be fun! To categorize, here’s what the company was targeting:
   1. 自然冒險王: 自然 (nature)
   2. 科學魔法箱： 科學與應用 (science)
   3. 生活和健康 ： 生活 (life and health)
   4. 請問錢先生 財經 (economics/money)
   5. 世界真奇妙 文化 (culture)
   6. 嗨美麗寶貝 藝術 (arts)
   7. 推理543 邏輯 (logic)
2. Randomness of the ideas in there. Having the same thing in depth sometimes (not sometimes but all the times) can be boring for kids (and adults alike) and I love the randomness of how they introduce each topic in there. For example, they can go from different kinds of stones to stone colors on your birthday and how stones can make colors and even stones in your body??? The activities that they spread out in each book is very impressive too from mind puzzles to math games to just random questions about life!
3. Wide age range that can read this. My confession is… I don’t know half the things taught in here. I sometimes start reading with my kid and end up totally silent on the couch reading to myself! Ooops…. I find many things done in detail to be very very insightful! On the other hand, we started with this set when my youngest was only four years old… yes… four! She was holding the pen and pointing it at everything and having it read to her. She was able to read through zhuyin at the time as well but not as fast. It really help her solidify science terms at an early age.
4. Magazine/Encyclopedia/Both? It’s both magazine like and encyclopedia like. Not sure how to classify this. It’s not a magazine because it doesn’t really come every month going into the future I don’t think and it’s not dated… it’s hard to have it be outdated due to the information but yet it’s not an encyclopedia either because it’s not boring. It’s structured like a magazine with games and problems to do but yet you learn more form it than an encyclopedia! It’s a good hybrid! 
5. Information on each page is A TIME SUCK… yes, that’s a good thing. So don’t be fooled. Just because there are only a few words sometimes on a page doesn’t mean you don’t spend a long time on it. EVERY SINGLE THING (almost) reads with the pen!!!! You spend (or your kids spend) a long time just pointing the pen at everything. I just LOVE IT!!!! I love having my kids interact with the book and having a good hour of reading time just totally enthralled in the material because they can : listen, read, and think …. almost on a set rotation schedule. Works wonders for me!
6. The Chinese learning newspaper like pages!!!! I love the sections where they teach idioms or phrases or like poems! OMG! Not only do my kids learn about a topic, they can learn literary terms with it??????? SCORE! See this in the videos I posted.
7. Math and logic puzzles that hold my kids interest. Ok, at first I thought the math in any magazine wouldn’t be so interesting. I was wrong. They have different levels of puzzles and math in each one so that every child has something to do and it’s something they want to do. They help make math relate-able which is something that’s hard for schools and parents to do… my kids don’t even know they’re doing math in there.
8. Topics get slightly harder? Ok, it may just be me but I find the topics from 37-60 to be slightly more advanced than the first 36 which I guess makes sense as your child grows. Concepts are more abstract like air and spicy and the color black. Something that’s harder to conceptualize. However, they do it so so well! It’s easy to understand with their illustrations. 
9. Interesting encyclopedia. I find this set of magazines and encyclopedia to be the LEAST dry!!!! I do find it so fun to read and learn. There’s something in there to interest any kid really. There are stories or culture or science or games…. etc. etc. etc. !

Here’s an example of a book inside about stones:

Pictures:

Here’s an example about anything that’s sticky including animals:

The book titles are as follows:

• 37紙
• 38岩石
• 39茶飲
• 40橋樑
• 41黏貼
• 42牙齒
• 43捷運
• 44空氣
• 45竹子
• 46鹽
• 47玻璃
• 48編織
• 49風
• 50鎖
• 51豆子
• 52袋子
• 53鳥
• 54黑
• 55書
• 56菇
• 57海洋
• 58辣
• 59溫度
• 60 真菌
• Download the reading pen files here: http://www.earthcitizen365.com.tw/pen/index.php?catid=34

My kids are still loving this set after the last year of having it. There’s still so much to learn!