Big Chinese Workbook for Little Hands (Kindergarten Level, Ages 5+)

I find this book to be one of the best tools I have found to get my kids interested in learning Chinese characters and then actually learn them. I can confirm that this yellow Kindergarten book and the green Pre-K book are right at grade level. I don't think it is necessarily something you could just plop down in front of a Kindergartener with a box of crayons and expect them to pick it up and learn on their own. But with a little adult supervision, the Kindergarten book could be handled by a 5 or 6 year old, and the Pre-K by a 3 or 4 year old. They would be an excellent place to start for any child who still enjoys coloring. I have actually learned quite a bit from it too while working on them with my little ones.

Some reviewers have mentioned that they think it may be too advanced for non-native speakers. I do not agree. The book names the types of strokes in the characters with their established Chinese names. It actually presents this in a more accessible way than I have seen in other text books. If an adult supervising a child with this book learns the names of these strokes while working with the child, they would be able to explain in English what kind of stroke the kid needed to write in a certain spot here or there. It is very useful to pick up the reading and meaning, yet it will not be necessary at this stage to learn to write these characters. So the book doesn't waste any precious space making kids exercises devoted to writing the names of these strokes.

I expect that after finishing the workbook, that my kid will be able to write about 70 characters and maybe be familiar enough to read about 300.

Overall, I am very satisfied with this book, and I highly recommend it to someone with children they would like to learn Chinese characters.

I am in my late 20s and just starting to learn Chinese. So far, I have gotten through about 20 pages in the workbook. This book does a good job of helping you associate the characters with the objects, symbols, or abstracts that they represent (like 鸭 being a duck). The practice sections for trying the strokes is helpful, but I have found that I need to take out a separate sheet of paper and write them down many more times to get the hang of it. Though that could just be me learning so late in life.

I have two minor complaints.
The first is that the QR codes won't play on my phone (one of the newest) unless I download the MP4 from the linked code. I wish it would just play from the link provided because it feels like I need to download all of the MP4 files and organize them myself.
The second is that, without the MP4 files or being able to sound out the characters, I constantly turn the pages back to the beginning to find the pinyin for them. They only provide the pinyin the first time the character is introduced, so if you forget how to pronounce it, you have to dig through all of the previous pages to find the one where it was first shown.

All in all, the book has been fun to work with and it was worth the purchase.

This is a great book for Learning Chinese. I think the material is great for kindergartener (age appropriate activities), but it is only with adult guidance.

The reason why you need adult guidance is because most kindergartener can’t read English words well yet so they can’t read the translation and also they do not know pin yin (chinese phonic system). This is for a more traditional teaching method if you follow chinese curriculum where pin yin is introduced in preschool, but immersion and Chinese schools in US do not introduce pin yin until second to third grade.

Therefore I would use this book for chinese students in kindergarten, but those that are learning a second language at school in second to third grade.

This is one of my favorite Chinese books. It's great for those whom have a basic understanding of Hanzi (the characters). It is not advised for completely newbies because there is no English translation for most characters. It's to pratice the first 100 characters or so you've learned.

I've been trying to teach my 6 year old write Chinese characters all summer long, she learn about 20 characters the most, such painful learning experience for both me and her. Then I found this book on Amazon,it was super easy to understand and follow, she fell in love writing Chinese characters! It's amazing! Highly recommend!

It's a great workbook if your student/kid is familiar with Chinese. Not recommended for kids from non-Chinese speaking family, as the content is still a bit advanced even the activity fits pre-K to K age student.

We've been mainly focusing on listening/speaking and reading part, but later found out that just teaching our kids to "read" Chinese characters doesn't give him a good foundation and he would often quickly forget what he has already learned... We didn't know how to start with "writing" part until we found this book. It is a great starting point and we like the "lesson" level design which gives kids good amount of exercise without overloading them too much every day.

My son entered a Chinese immersion program this year. He had spent 2 years (2-4) in China at a Chinese preschool, so this was a perfect primer a few weeks before entering the program. I see they are already learning the first two strokes taught in the book, so seems the perfect supplement with room to practice strokes and a great introduction to basic Chinese characters.

My son 5 yrs old loves this book. He started writing and tracing the first day that we had this book. He can finish 3-4 pages each practice. We used it as a supplementary practice book to other chinese books. Great book for 5 or 6 yrs old who just begin learning chinese.

This book fails to include pinyin and English throughout most of the book. It assumes the parent knows what they are, which I do for most, but many parents will not be able to help their kids learn anything unless they spend a lot of time looking all of the characters up. If it included the pin yin and English it would be a great book. Such a shame to put all that effort into making the book and slack off on that.