First Grade
In first grade I plan on introducing English phonics, and start getting some practice in both English and Chinese writing. Otherwise we will continue mostly as we have been doing.
Chinese
For Chinese reading, I plan to continue using Mandarin Companions and going through the different levels. After that, we will either make do with picture books and bridge books we have at home, or we will work through 四五快读 to increase character recognition. This should bring Yi up to 800-1,000 characters.
For Chinese writing, I am looking into the 中文字母口訣 developed by Greenfield HK. This is a set of motions to help children remember the order and combination of strokes in a character. I do not plan on purchasing their curriculum. I have watched some of their material online, and think that I can implement enough of it on my own. I do not plan to do any dictation (听写/默書) in the first two semesters, and aim simply to become familiar with stroke order and the mechanics or writing/copying.
This website has a variety of quick Chinese worksheets. We will probably do a sheet now and then.
Chinese history and literature
We will continue with 寫給兒童的中國歷史 throughout the year, reading a chapter every other week. I expect we will get most of the way through volume 4. My plan is for the set to last through elementary school. But since it gives a pretty high level overview, I hope to supplement with materials that would allow Yi to build connections with a handful of historical characters. I have ordered a volume of 漫画史记 . Generally, I’m reluctant to use comics because many of them offend my sense of aesthetics, but the samples of this one seem to draw the reader in. And there are not many children’s books covering this portion of history. We will try out the volume I ordered, and if it works well I will purchase another 2 or 3 to use throughout the year.
We will continue with 中華經典民間神話故事 by 風車圖書, and will add 國語文啟蒙全集：彩繪神話故事(1) published by 台灣麥克. It is a set of two volumes, but the stories in the second volume are less common, so I opted to purchase only the first volume.
Weekly, we will be reading 2 or 3 short poems from the collection 蜗牛 by 林良. We will also be learning a classical poem every 3 weeks, for a total of 12 poems over the course of the year. I picked our classical poems from this list: https://resources.hkedcity.net/resource_detail.php?rid=1878848613
With all the mythology and ancient history, I feel the need to add some modern stories as well. We will be reading whatever Chinese books I happen to purchase throughout the year.
English
My husband and I were both taught to read using Sam Blumenfeld’s materials, so we will continue the tradition and use Alpha Phonics with our son.
For handwriting, I am leaning towards the Getty-Dubay’s Basic Italic series. This is closer to how I learned to write than many of the other handwriting books out there.
Math
A combination of Math and Confidence and Beast Academy with a little Family Math thrown in has been working great. We will continue with this plan.
Science
For science we will continue with Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding, taught in Chinese.
We also purchased The Nature Connection: An Outdoor Workbook for Kids, Families, and Classrooms by Clare Walker Leslie for the summer, and I hope to continue using it throughout the year. My plan is to read a small portion every week, and try to do the activity or take notes when we go on walks in the neighborhood. Readings in English, and activities and follow-up discussions to be in Chinese.
I hope to get my hands on one of the Among the ___ People books by Clara Dillingham Pierson. Our family lives in Michigan, and these are short animal stories written about 100 years ago by a fellow Michigander.
We will also be reading Paddle-to-the-Sea by Holling C. Holling and learning some Great Lakes geography.
I have considered adding some of the 我家 series written by 童嘉 and published by 親子天下. There’s one on turtles and one on edible plants. I go back and forth on these. I don’t want to overschedule. I am a dream of raising a pet turtle while reading the turtle book. These seem somewhat simplistic compared with English resources available out there. We’ll see.
Western Literature and History
In the early years I want to prioritize exposure to Chinese history and literature, and will go light on Western studies. But we will be covering, over the course of three semesters, Polish myths (we have some Polish roots in the family), American tall tales, and Grimm’s fairy tales. We will likely try our hand at some Polish dishes as well.