Our family relies heavily on Ambleside Online for the Western/English portions of our homeschool. It is a very rich curriculum, and as we have used it, I have really appreciated how it incorporates different perspectives on history from even the early years, and encourages our children to truly engage and contemplate the complexities of history in an age appropriate way.
However, as we are a multicultural family, we also deeply value Chinese history and literature, and make substitutes freely to fit our family priorities. We use a mix of Traditional and Simplified resources. My eldest has just started his 4th grade year, so the books listed here are mostly untried ideas. If you have used any of these resources, or have other resources you like, please share with us!
Chinese books can be hard to source when living abroad. Chinese books also have a short life span, and can go out of print easily. Furthermore, every family has different needs and emphasis. If you are also setting out to homeschool bilingually, it is unlikely that you will be able to, or desire to, replicate our book list. These are only ideas of some possibilities. Please use what you have available to your family.
August 2025
Spread over grades 4-6
The Hong Kong education Bureau has compiled a list of 100 classical poems and 50 pieces of classical prose as supplementary reading for elementary students. Starting in earlier grades, we read a piece each week, I give a brief explanation of it, and then we read it aloud each day of the week. We plan to continue this practice throughout grades 4-6.
I have a collection of 唐宋傳奇 with both the classical prose (文言文) and modern translations. These are stories that one encounters over and over again throughout Chinese history, often in theater form. Over the next few years, we will read about a dozen of these stories from the first volume, which contains the better known stories. We will start with the modern translations, but I hope we will move on to reading them in the original.
史記 is foundational to an understanding of Chinese history. I hope to be able to read portions of 史記 with my student from 4th grade onwards to the end of high school. Ambleside Online schedules Plutarch readings as part of citizenship, and in our home we will be alternating Plutarch and 史記. For our first encounter we will attempt 刺客列傳 in the original classical Chinese. This covers the lives of five assassins, the first lives are very short. We will go as slowly as we need to, and read just a little bit every week.
Not all of 史記 is suitable for children, so please read selections for yourselves first to make informed choices. I have the complete collection in a single volume, but it does not have any notes or aids. The original is also available online in its entirety. Alternatively, one could purchase a modern Chinese translation, or Burton Watson’s excellently done English translation (available in three volumes: Qin, Han 1, and Han 2). If reading the original text, Youtube has many helpful videos that walk through specific portions at various levels of detail.
Grade 4
We will be using volumes 9, 10, and 11 of 寫給兒童的中國歷史 published by 小魯. I am not in love with the option, but it’s what we have available right now. We will also be reading a children’s biography of 岳飛.
For my younger children, grade 4 is when we will read 斑比 (Bambi, by Felix Salten). Since I have already read this with my oldest son, I will be reading him 強盜的女兒 (Ronia the Robber’s Daughter) by Astrid Lingren instead.
We also plan to read a children’s retelling of 七俠五義.
Ambleside Online schedules Fabre’s The Storybook of Science this year. We will be substituting with a Chinese translation (自然的故事, 法布尔 著, 游宏 译).
Grade 5
I have an anthology of Japanese haikus which have been translated into Chinese (芭蕉·蕪村·一茶：俳句三聖新譯300). We will be using it for poetry.
Grade 6
Ambleside Online assigns Story of the World volume 4 as part of their history selections for Year 6. I would love to get my hands on a Chinese copy (世界的故事 第四冊), but they appear to be out of print at the moment. I hope it gets re-publish soon.