Finished with 1st grade Vietnamese!

We finally finished the 1st grade Vietnamese curriculum. Between starting it late, and not doing much school while my mom was sick, it's been slow going. I also slowed it down because it seemed like dd was not really retaining it so much. I changed the pace from one lesson a day to one lesson taking about 3 days. The first day we would read the passage. The second and third days we would reread the passage and do the workbook. There was usually enough in the workbook to split up. She was able to read much more fluently after multiple exposures to the same passage. She is still very sloppy about looking at the diacritics, and I constantly have to remind her which one it is. I was thinking of starting the 2nd grade right away, but since we didn't do the read aloud book yet, I think we're going to work through that over the summer and start 2nd grade Vietnamese in the fall after a short break.

Too many Roos and a little chick!

We have 4 roosters. That's 4 too many, since we do live in town. They are beautiful birds, but way too noisy.

Here's my little chick doing her vietnamese workbook. The bottom third is handwriting practice.

Comparing Vietnamese curriculum - VN national books

I bought 1st grade Vietnamese language curriculum in two cities, Hanoi(North) and Saigon(South). There is supposed to be a standardized national curriculum where all students study the same things. But the books are different looking at first glance(plus I forgot I had purchased some in Hanoi) that I ended up with two sets of essentially the same material. BUT they have divergent approaches. Lessons do correspond; number 10 in one set teaches the same thing as number 10 in the other, but the Southern book is much more child friendly, with color pictures. There are no pictures in the Northern book. It really was an eye opener.

South - Part 1, Text book, Workbook and writing practice

South - Part 2

North - Text books for both parts, I would have bought matching workbooks if I had found them.

South -Lesson 28

North - Lesson 28 is on the left side, Lessons 29,30 on the right!

Back side of the South text and work books. 

This shows how cheap the books are, yet there are kids who don't go because they can't afford to buy books! 10,700d is about 50 cents for the Text, the work book is 4,000d and the writing book is 2,500d.I had thought to make copies and have her write on the copy, but the copies would have cost much more than the writing book did.

The backs also list the other available books. So for the Text books there are:
1) Vietnamese Language 1
2) Math 1
3) Nature & Society 1
4) Writing 1

Work books have:
1) Vietnamese Language 1
2) Math 1
3) Nature & Society 1
4) Morality 1
5) Drawing 1
6) Singing 1

Dictionaries - Not enough words!

I have had this particular dictionary for at least 15 years, and I have finally reached the conclusion that it's not very helpful. It's a Viet-English, English-Viet book, but I've found that having both directions in one book makes the set of words included rather limited. Also it's copyrighted in 1975, so I'm sure there are new terms that are missing. I bought a Viet-English only book from Vinabook.com, and it is supposed to have 175,000 word/phrases. In truth, the way Vietnamese is used a lot of concepts are actually expressed using 2 words, so the V-E/E-V dictionary has definitions for the individual words but not so many phrases. I had to start using the V-E book recently because there were words in our 1st grade Vietnamese curriculum that I could not find in the other dictionary. 1st grade words! Not in the dictionary! Now I know I need to get an updated English-Vietnamese dictionary too.

Bilingual, Bicultural, Dual Citizen?

I recently found out that Vietnam is offering Dual Citizenship to a certain set of people. I found out that I would qualify, but not my daughter. So I have been pondering the question. What would be the advantage of dual nationality? What are the disadvantages? Vietnam is still a communist country, so there are a lot of restrictions on its citizens which have been easing up. There's a lot of distrust about the motives of the government. I have until 2014 to decide, after which the program expires and you would have to apply as any other foreign citizen.

Vietnamese 1st grade curriculum

During this most recent trip to Vietnam, I bought more books. Some are the language curriculum books for 1st grade. I bought some in Hanoi, then bought some in Saigon.

This is 1st grade text book, part one. There is another set of books which look a lot like these, but with pinkish purple covers. The two sets cover one years worth of material. These are the ones from Saigon, they are much more child friendly with color pictures and lessons broken up into smaller segments.

This is the workbook. It has some matching exercises and some writing.

This is a writing practice book. It has practice pages that correspond with the lessons in the book.

This is a book of stories that goes with the 1st grade curriculum. I'm having some difficulty reading them, I think they're read alouds with some questions to be asked of the students.

Visiting Vietnam - round 2

I didn't plan on visiting Vietnam again so soon, but certain events came up and we are now going to Vietnam again.

Character practice

Your character is reflected in your characters. This is the translation of the back of the Vietnamese writing books my daughter has been practicing. If you look at the history of writing in Asia, character writing was very important and considered an art form. Our heritage writing is based on Chinese characters, and being able to write required discipline and diligent practice. Now the Vietnamese no longer use Chinese based characters, but romanized characters with some extra diacritics to mark the various tones.

I've learned that the main writing style taught in Vietnam is cursive, from the very beginning of school. Everyone I've seen has very nice handwriting, probably due to the constant and consistent practice. How well can you do something if you learn one style for a few years, then are taught another style for a few months, then practice neither consistently? So we spend a fair amount of time practicing handwriting in cursive. She already knows how to print, although I never specifically worked on that with her, she picked it up herself from books we had. The cursive style used in Vietnam is based on French writing, so I was able to find a very similar font to use for various materials.

One for tracing is Maternellecolor_creuse
Another for just text is Cursif. A lined version of it is also available.

Vietnamese Language Learning

I bought a set of kids learning books from a company in California, designed for younger english readers to learn Vietnamese. I really could not get into this series. The first book seems designed for the K grade, with a letter-sized book(all the rest in the series is a smaller format, basically half-legal sized) and practice with letter writing (in print) and coloring. I'm not sure how the books correspond to grades, but since my plan was to do cursive first, the whole print thing was a deal breaker.

Couldn't find book 1 while I was taking pictures!

Found this book on Amazon, formerly from the Sacramento Library. It's obviously a bilingual book, while the ones above are mainly in Vietnamese.

Vietnamese preschool curriculum

So while I was in vietnam I bought a bunch of books. These are the workbooks. They were all very cute, and very cheap, only about 6,000d (basically ~37 cents). I didn't really look that closely while I was in the bookstore, so it ended up that a lot are duplicate material. 

This is a series of books that have a story, pictures to color and letters to practice. The 3-4 year old books practice strokes, while the older ages 4-5 and 5-6 practice letters.

Inside Sample from 3-4 yo book

If you notice, the font used for the story is the same cursive that is taught for writing, so the kids are practicing reading cursive at the same time they learn to write.

3-4 Year Old books

4-5 year old books

5-6 year old books

These two are actually the same material, just presented by different publishers.

Inside of the two books from different publishers.

Visiting Family

Once Tet is started, people spend the first couple of days visiting family and friends. We took a bus to 

Rạch Giá, which was where my mom grew up. And went to visit several different spots where she grew up and people she knew. Here is the kitchen of a house of a neighbor.

These are the water storage jugs, covered to keep mosquitoes out!

 This is the family of one of moms cousins, and the sides of the house is tin. There's a hammock in the bedroom, it's actually a pretty small room.

We went to a temple where my moms grandparents are interred.

Moms Grandparents

In front of the main temple steps

Being tourists! Although the temple is doing well, there's a big addition being built.

She loves the mopeds!

 After the trip to the temple we went back to mom's cousins house for dinner. The concrete floor is a recent addition, it used to be a pond where they'd keep their own fish.

Charcoal braziers

No tables needed around here!

Dinner involved grilled seafood. We had bought some fresh shrimp and fish.

The old red roof part is a bit of moms old house. It's been taken over by newer buildings. I find it bizarre how people just add on there.

Tết is here!

Getting a drink

Stairs

 Today everything is closed and people spend the day at home or visiting family or close friends. So the traffic is much lighter than usual. These are pics of the house, the moped is an electric one I'm borrowing from my uncle. It's pretty fun.

This is the way to the place we're staying. I keep thinking alleyway, since it'd fit one car width, but since no one has cars, it's not a big deal. This really shows how light the traffic is, since normally you get at least several moped in a pic.

Tết  Foods : a pickle plate with dried shrimp, thousand year eggs, pickled shallots. Ban Bao, Thit Kho, rice and noodles.

Li xi: good luck money for the kids.

Altars everywhere

Bus Altar - I think the horses are to help keep the bus moving.

Vietnamese are mostly Buddhists, and some are Catholics, and I'm sure there are all sorts of minority religions too, but the one thing they all have in common is that they put up little altars. There's usually an image of whichever deity they're praying to, incense, and some flowers or fruit offerings.

My Aunt prepping for Tet. 

Multiple altars

Funky Amusement Parks

Suối Tiên is a cool, funky Vietnamese take on an amusement park. It's got a lot of historical inspirations, and is part amusement, part educational, part spiritual. There are sections based on cultural or historical stories, and some temples to various notables. And then there are ferris wheels, roller coasters and various other rides. There's even a water park. It definitely shows a different culture!

Main entrance

Tickets - about $1 for kids, $1.60 for adults.

It seems cheap, and it is, but the amusements are separately purchased, so if you just want to go to the temples and walk the gardens, that's fine. If you want to ride the rides you buy tickets for each one. And really, the rides cost something like 25-50c, so it was really very reasonable.

Temple to King Hung

So pensive..

Loving the ice cream there!

View outside

Awfully large crocodile

She loves carousels!

I guess these are elephant tusks, but not sure what they mean.

Food prices: about $1 or 75c

Another temple

Lovely lotus flower

Tiên Dong beach


This is actually a separate little section with its own entrance fee. My parents didn't feel the need to go in, so we were only in for about an hour.

Do you see the funky swimsuit she has on? It was a rental. Yes, they rent swimsuits there, just in case you hadn't planned ahead. I rented one too. And didn't think about sanitary conditions. Nope, wasn't going there. So it was an interesting thing.