This post was sponsored by Sagebooks. All opinions are mine and mine alone. 

I left the last update sort of freaking out about the impending Taiwan Trip and these two weeks was more of me cramming last minute. I wanted to make a big push these last three weeks before we left so that I would only have to bring Set 5 and Treasure Box 5 to Taiwan. I also told myself that I would force as much Sagebooks down Glow Worm’s (~6) gullet the first two weeks so my husband could take home some of the books and home to make room for the inevitable amounts of useless crap we’ll have collected.

Oh, you’re not here to read about my Sagebooks and book hoarding strategies? YOU HAVE NO VISION.

Sigh. Very well.

WHERE ARE WE?

We ended Spring Session Week 12 halfway through the last book in Set 4. My hope was to finish Book 4.5 and most of Treasure Box 4s by the end of Week 2 so that we would be on track to only pack Set 5 and Treasure Box 5 to Taiwan.

It’s nice to have goals, right?

DID WE DO IT?

YESSSS!

HA! I bet you thought we didn’t because of the way I set up that last section. I have to keep you on your toes. A year and a half of Sagebooks updates and you might be getting bored of me. (HOW DARE YOU?)

But yes! We even overachieved!

WHAT HAPPENED?

Honestly, the Taiwan Trip lit a fire under my ass and I got into high gear. I either forced my older two kids to read with Glow Worm or *gasp* – I READ WITH MY CHILD. ON PURPOSE.

I also expected each Treasure Box book to take at least two days because Glow Worm gets too intimidated by the length of the books. Each book is about 32 pages so we read 16 pages on one day and finish it off the next.

However, we lucked out because several of the Treasure Box books in Set 4 were easy and had fewer lines per page so we actually finished two books in half the time that I had allotted. As a result, we squeezed in an extra Treasure Box book!

Yes, I would like to take all undue credit. I know it’s luck and I don’t care.

WHAT ELSE?

I was amused at how Glow Worm is still having trouble pronouncing some words. He tends to have a hard time with distinguishing second and third tones and for the Thumbelina story so he couldn’t pronounce 拇指/mu3 zhi3/thumb/ correctly and it drove me mildly crazy. However, I know that it’s almost impossible to fix because he can’t hear himself. For some reason, he didn’t remember that’s what a thumb was in Chinese, and because of that, he couldn’t properly pronounce it.

A lot of the problem I know is that I don’t provide him as much Chinese exposure as I did for the older two. The older two benefited from being my first experiments and as millions of Chinese families have experienced, the older the child, the better their Chinese. Mostly because when the younger kids come around, the older kids are now used to speaking English.

However, I am hopeful because Glow Worm is the only child who is willing to speak Chinese to me when I ask. Gamera (7.5) gets mad because she claims that I know English so why should she speak Chinese when I can understand English perfectly fine? It upsets me because Gamera’s Chinese is easily the best amongst the children. She has no accent and she has a high level of comprehension and vocabulary. Cookie Monster (9.5) isn’t against speaking Chinese so much as he forgets completely to do so.

Anyhow, I know that if I want his accent to change, it’s just a matter of time and patience. The words he read incorrectly a few months ago have resolved themselves and if I leave this alone, he will also resolve it. Right now, it’s because he’s “reading” the characters versus “knowing/anticipating” the words so he mispronounces the words. When he’s just speaking, he says the 拇指 just fine. However, in order for him to better anticipate context, his comprehension and Chinese exposure also needs to increase.

I know that it won’t happen at home without major effort from me – so I’m hoping for a reset this summer in Taiwan. Wish me all the luck!