It is February and Little Artists participates in the next part of the Multicultural Blogging Carnival dedicated to Books and Words!

This Carnival is hosted by Cordelia of Multicultural Mama and In Culture Parent. Visit her blogs on the February 14th to see who else participated in this wonderful project!

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Being an expat has certain benefits. And no, it is not about being different and being treated better. It is more about when someone is leaving the city, they often give away books, clothes, household items which are great condition and are very useful. Most of our books for girls are given to us by our friends. As sad as we were to part ways with those who left, we were really delighted that they thought about us when giving away their books.

“English library” series by Higher Education Press came into our house from another Russian friend who left the city. There are few levels of bilingual books and they are aimed at the Chinese speakers who learn English. However, they are also great for those who already speak English. In our older daughter’s case, the first language is English. Then Russian, then Chinese (this is changing now as she is more exposed to Chinese than to Russian). She is just starting to read and she loves reading and to be read to in general. So the “English library” books are perfect for her  age group (4+ years old) as they contain simple sentences with sight words and it is easy to follow and seek out the familiar words.

The short stories are written by English speaking authors and they have nice, friendly illustrations. 

Each page contains an illustration and a text, with some of the new words translated into Chinese. At the end of some books there are activities which help review new words and our daughter enjoys doing them over and over again!

Reading is an important part of our children’s life. With the new age of technology it is sad to see many children growing without books in their hands. Even though I haven’t been reading much either (mainly because it is hard to get books around here), I still prefer a book any time in my hands! Here’s a post I contributed about encouraging reading over at B-Inspired Mama’s Blog.

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