Our teacher, Li Hong, is using flash cards appropriate for ages 3-6 to drill us in correct pronunciation for vowels and consonants. After three days, we still have some trouble with a couple of sounds, but we are getting better. We still struggle with “e”.

Pictured below is our teacher Yang Yu, she is teaching us how to read and write Chinese characters. We are focusing on the learning 50 common radicals used in 80 percent of most Chinese characters, which either help in pronunciation or in determining the meaning. She uses pictograms to describe the evolution of the character to present form and stories to describe its meaning. Today we read our first simple dialogue all in Chinese character. The last picture below are my scribblings in our notebooks.

My favorite story is the one depicting the characters for “I” and “you.” The character for “I” has two parts: hand + weapon. The character for “You” has three parts: people + roof (home) + small. The story goes like this: “I have a weapon in my hand, so you should be afraid and hide in your house.” It sure helps us remember how to write the characters.