Mulan’s schoolwork

When I bought workbooks for Miya, I also got some more for Mulan.

For the last few months, Mulan has mostly been doing maths workbooks (and before that, it was science).  So it was time to get back to doing a bit more reading comprehension.  This is what I got:

Previous reading comprehension workbooks we’d done had suggested that Mulan was at, or just slightly ahead of, her age in English.  (This makes sense because she is simultaneously learning Chinese.)  Five months ago, she finally finished the Grade 1 advanced learner book that we had started almost two years ago.

So my guestimate in the bookshop was that the book on the left, which is for seven to eight year olds, would be a little easy but mostly about right.  I guessed the Grade 3 book on the right may be a little too challenging right now, but I expected it would be about right in a month or two, after finishing the first book.

It turns out I was wrong.

When I got home, I showed all the new books to a delighted Mulan and Miya.  They both immediately excitedly said that they wanted to do a page or two of each book every day.  They didn’t want to put any away for later.

I replied to Mulan that I had expected her to complete the easier book first and the other after.  But she wouldn’t hear of that.  So I said okay she is welcome to try the Grade 3 book, and see what she thinks.

It turns out that the Grade 3 book is more Mulan’s level.  For the past week, she has used the first book as an easy warm-up (doing it all completely independently and correctly herself), before turning to the second book for her real lesson.

Each day, with the second book I start Mulan off by getting her to read aloud the study words of the day (she can read them all herself with no trouble).  I then check she understands the tasks (she always does).  She then silently completes the exercises while I help Miya with her work.  At the end of each page, I check Mulan’s work (mostly all right, with a few minor corrections).

When Mulan has done two pages of each of these two books, she then continues with the maths book we bought last month.  She does a page or two of this, which I check at the end.  Our big thing at the moment in this book is getting familiar with times tables.  It is a good challenge for her to calculate them in her head, though after several of them her brain gets tired.

Finally, if she still has enough brain energy, she has a look at the activity pad:

We haven’t done much yet with the multiplication flash cards, except to suggest that Mulan could play some games with them when her friend Yiran comes to our place every day after school for babysitting/play/homework.  Mulan thought that would be a fun idea.

Oh, and at the beginning of each school lesson I read aloud to the girls a page from this How Come? science book, which was a present for Mulan last Christmas: