Age: 3+ with parent, 5+ independent
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You can purchase this at Books.com.tw:
小小兵有絕招 -Little Solders’ Smart Tricks
This is a really neat set of books. There are 12 books and 2 CDs. The CDs follow the book verbatim! Yay! Each book is roughly 1000 characters and is an amazing practice for reading Chinese. Stories are meant for smaller kids because the topics are much relevant for kids under six years of age. Anything older may find it repetitious of what other adults are trying to teach them. Topics range from eating slow, check the sandbox before sitting in there, be careful of strangers, etc. Each story either has a safety lesson or some moral lesson. They are healthy stories with a little quirky twist in each. Sometime animals may need some stitching sometimes they need a shot and the CDs are animated beautifully to express emotions and other sound effects.
The one I read on the video is about a piggy who eats too fast. He always stuffs the entire portion in his mouth without testing out the food. Once he had diarrhea and the doctor warned that you should always eat slower in case you swallow a bone or worse, rotten food or even a bug! Even though the little piggy was grossed out by the bug idea, he didn’t think twice about drinking a boiling ladle of hot corn soup. This is the part where they’re reminded that kiddos don’t remember anything we teach them right? Either way, he gets hurt and burns himself. There was a wolf outside who even said he smelled something like a cooked pig’s mouth. This is the quirky part. Moral of the story is that the little piggy never ate fast again.
The great part of the series is that there are questions in the back that asks you about summaries, test you on idioms, teach you new phrases, and has little activities for kids to draw and write about what they write and feel about the story.
I think this is a great teaching set and I highly recommend it. Words are few and big and just right for a five minute read with mommy or less than 10 minute read independently if they know zhuyin.
Here is a CD sample:
