Bao & Bun's Bilingual Journey

I previously shared my son’s reading journey. About a year ago, he didn’t recognize many characters yet, and his Zhuyin (phonetic) skills—blending sounds—were still quite choppy. With the help of an online teacher, we started having him read independently, beginning with baby board books. Later, he also joined the Mandarin Mommy & Me class focused on reading Bomu and Kailuo using Zhuyin. After some extra practice, his reading really started to flow more smoothly.

By the end of last year, he had started reading simple early chapter books. In the first half of this year, he finished the Lobel bridge books. Then he became fascinated with little monster stories and read all five that we had at home. I ended up buying even more of those books because he liked them so much.

It might seem like he’s already a confident reader—but compared to his sister, my son actually skipped the “picture book stage.” After my daughter finished reading the 500 most common Chinese characters, she spent about 8 to 9 months reading picture books before transitioning into chapter books. Looking back, I now feel that picture book phase was actually very valuable. Picture books are more relaxed and fun, with large, engaging illustrations, which makes the reading process much more enjoyable—especially for kids growing up outside of Chinese-speaking environments.

Lately, I’ve been encouraging both kids to reach their goal of reading 100 books this semester. To make it more manageable, I told them they could choose something lighter and easy to finish in one sitting (since chapter books usually take a few days). My son happily picked up a picture book called I’m Really Worried and read it straight through. It reminded me that sometimes we need to let kids just enjoy the process of learning Chinese.