Pinyin is done

The first four lessons of the 3rd grade book are about teaching pinyin skills. We went through them quite quickly since my daughter had learned pinyin a couple of years ago. Today, we started with the fifth lesson, a "normal" one after all the pinyin was taken care of.

It's quite curious that the lessons in this first book of the 3rd grade book seems to be easier than those in the 2nd grade book. For this lesson, we have a nice story of a General's son figuring out how to weigh an elephant (曹冲称象), a famous historical tale which is more likely a legend than a factual. The story is pretty much the entire lesson. We don't have any grammar or other language teaching.

During the teaching of the 2nd grade book, we had settled into a routine in which I would have her read after me the text a couple of times before her reading on her own. She had complained it as tedious and boring. Today I tried something slightly different. I had her trying to read the text all by herself without teaching her first. She did pretty well for the most part, aided by the pinyin I had put on the new characters. After that, we went through the new characters and explained the meaning of the text.

The lesson was done in less than an hour, which made my daughter pretty happy.