Baby's First Chinese Book?

[PerpetualChange]

I saw a Chinese friend recently, and was blown away when he showed me his 2 year old daughter reading English - a good 3 years before I even knew the alphabet!

I thought, that's great, I wonder if there are equivalent sources for those who would like to teach their toddlers some Chinese. 

 

Nothing too serious - I just thought it would be a fun activity for me and my little one. 

[Demonic_Duck]

Without a huge time investment, reading Chinese (characters) is probably going to be a stretch. Though you could certainly teach a few of the type you might typically find in Chineasy - mainly concrete nouns consisting of a single semantic component or simple combinations thereof.

 

Otherwise, you're looking at pinyin-only or audio materials. How about 小猪佩奇 (Chinese dub of Peppa Pig)?

[Shelley]

Yes but how well did she do reading Chinese characters? It's all relative.

And at what level was she reading? Something like Harry Potter and I would be well impressed, Peppa Pig? more like ok that's what I expect.

I was reading and writing at the age of 3, but nothing more than my 3 year old vocabulary would allow.

[Dlezcano]

I have been teaching my daughter Chinese characters since she could speak, her age is now almost 7 and she is able to write and recognize 350 characters.

At the beginning I just used some books you typically find in China with pictures and characters (no need for pinyin), before she was 3 I started using 生字卡, and now we read some books for children like 揭秘海洋. I also use to write some texts about daily matters we do in our family.

 

[imron]

https://www.lelechinese.com/

 

and

 

https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/56638-sage-formula-basic-chinese-readers/

[PerpetualChange]

14 hours ago, Demonic_Duck said:

Without a huge time investment, reading Chinese (characters) is probably going to be a stretch. Though you could certainly teach a few of the type you might typically find in Chineasy - mainly concrete nouns consisting of a single semantic component or simple combinations thereof.

I thought learning to recognize some characters would be at least a "fun" start. 

[Demonic_Duck]

4 hours ago, PerpetualChange said:

I thought learning to recognize some characters would be at least a "fun" start. 

Yeah for sure, I'd imagine learning to recognize a few characters (马、兔、狗、鸡 etc.) would be within the reach of even very young children and could make for a great joint activity. But even with a ton of practice, you'd expect a lower relative level of proficiency than your friend's kid reading English, due to the massive differences in the regularity of mapping from sounds to words. Bear in mind that beginner materials in English can take advantage of phonics and restricted writing ("the cat sat on the mat" and so on) to lessen the learning curve, gradually adding in "sight words" one at a time. Beyond pinyin, there isn't really any equivalent to this in Chinese.