This post was sponsored by Sagebooks. All opinions are mine and mine alone.
As I mentioned last time, this is my final post for Sagebooks after a year and half of a fantastic partnership. I am a lot sad that it’s ending, but all good things eventually come to an end. But never fear! There may be future things in the works. (And if there aren’t, I am speaking it into existence!)
Also, we finished the entire set last time, so what is left for us to do?
WHERE ARE WE?
We ended Summer Session Week 8 finished with Book 5.5 and I gloated and in general, took credit for things that I don’t deserve credit for. But who cares? We’re done!!
These last two weeks, I wanted to finish as much as we could of Treasure Box 5 as possible before we flew back to the US and got caught up in our regular lives again. It’s funny how I thought things would continue as before, but alas. It was not so.
DID WE DO IT?
Kinda? Okay, not really.
In the same way I was crowing over our success last time, I am going to mumble mumble our way through this update this time.
So, on with the mumbling.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Looks like when I’m done with something, I don’t have as much motivation to finish things that seem to be add-ons! Also, the final set of Treasure Boxes didn’t exist when I did them with Cookie Monster (9.5) and Gamera (7.5) so mentally, I was unprepared.
Plus, I always forget that there are so many more words in the Treasure Box books and by the time we hit Set 5, there are a LOT of words per page. So much so that Glow Worm (~6) rebelled at seeing all those words on each page. It was very intimidating for him and I think by this point in our trip, we were exhausted.
We did make it through at least three of the books though! So, I consider it a success.
WHAT ELSE?
Though I am finished with this Sagebooks series, we are not close to being done in our literacy journey for Glow Worm. (Sorry, kiddo!) First of all, we have to finish the remaining two Treasure Box books in Set 5, go through the five books in the Idioms set, the two books in the Antonyms set, and the Bunny Comics set. That’s a lot of books! (And also, may take until the end of the year.) However – it WILL be done.
After which, I have another set of readers that though I do not think are great for learning new characters, are good for practicing reading and relatively easy. We will be starting Glow Worm in zhuyin classes and switching to weekly Chinese tutoring sessions. I will have to remember how to slowly plow through beginning zhuyin picture books again and basically, build upon the muscles I have hopefully built while going through Sagebooks with Glow Worm this last year and a half.
Any last thoughts?
I went over the majority of the lessons I learned (or re-learned) this time around with Sagebooks in my article last week, but I can recap some of them here.
Overall, I have been so grateful for this opportunity with Sagebooks. I would have gone through the series anyways with Glow Worm because I owned it already and I was going to get my money’s worth! But this third time around, I really appreciated just how well-designed the series is. You can read my initial impressions when I first finished the sets in 2015.
I loved Sagebooks then, and I love them even more now.
It is my fervent wish that they create a series for words 501-1000! (And hire me to go through them!) I cannot think of a more systematic way to teach my children the 500 most commonly used Chinese characters in children’s books. The methodology, the thinking they put behind their products and supplementary materials, everything about their books makes me happy.
I look forward to going through Sagebooks one more time in a year or so with my last child. Not because I like work, but because I know that this time investment is worth it. Sagebooks was essential in building a good foundation for my children’s Chinese literacy and I will be forever grateful.
Thank you, dear readers, for sticking with me through this journey. I hope my rantings and elated posturing brought you amusement, commiseration, and a little more brightness in your life.
