TREASURE

BOX

SCIENCE

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TREASURE IN THE BOX

To be able to recognise words is merely the first step to reading. There is much more to discovering the world of literacy.

In order to truly read, the child must:

Children develop all these abilities at the same time as their cognitive and other developments. It is important to recognise the various yet distinct stages of their developments, and to provide the appropriate material for them to read. Treasure Box has been created to serve this purpose.

What is Treasure Box?

Treasure Box is a collection of story books, five in each level, to accompany the Basic Chinese 500 course. Treasure Box provides a wide selection of genres for your child. These include poetry and rhymes, Chinese classic stories, fairy tales, fables, humour, riddles, adventures and more. Compared to Basic Chinese 500, the stories in Treasure Box are longer and the plots are more complex. This provides a good opportunity for your child to learn more ways to use the vocabulary and to form sentences. Your child will also learn new vocabulary: while each level of Treasure Box uses all 100 characters that are taught in the same level of Basic Chinese 500, it also includes about a further 10% new characters. This makes reading refreshing and, of course, a little more challenging. However, rest assured that it is well within the threshold of what your child can handle. These extra characters prepare your child for the next level of learning.

The advantages of the Treasure Box

To build your child’s focus and attention span: Treasure Box adapts to your child’s cognitive development and reading abilities. The content and length of each level has been carefully designed and structured. They serve to attract your child’s attention, guide your child to focus and gradually increase the time of such focus. They challenge your child’s stamina without leaving them exhausted and defeated.
Your child acquires new knowledge: Treasure Box explores family relationships, emotions, science, maths, history and more. It helps your child to understand how reading is an essential tool in learning.
It prepares your child for the next level of learning: before your child progresses to the next level of Basic Chinese 500, reading Treasure Box is an opportunity to review all of the characters they have learnt in that level. It helps them to learn some new uses and definitions of the same characters. These set a solid foundation for your child to start the next level.
Multiple genres and variety in reading: there are 5 books in each level of Treasure Box. There are poetry, rhymes, Chinese classics as well as world renowned stories. Your child come into contact with many different styles of literature from a young age.
Linguistic and rhetorical skills: On top of the various genres, Treasure Box stories are written in different styles. Together, they allow your child to pick up linguistic and rhetorical skills in a progressive and systematic way through reading.
Even pre-school children can read classics: we truly believe that children are entitled to read good quality literature and to learn from our ancestors’ wisdom. We have therefore handpicked stories from our popular historical classics and adapted them to suit your child’s reading ability. Even the beginning reader can find something to appreciate.
It’s a yardstick of how well your child has been learning: When you use Treasure Box as reading-aloud practice after your child has completed a level, you will have a better understanding of how well your child has learnt and retained the characters. This allows you to provide timely assistance if needed.

Treasure Box promotes language development

Being able to recognize characters is only a part of the child’s linguistic abilities. There are other important aspects in the child’s language development. Your child needs to understand a passage or a speech when they read or listen. They need to be able to construct accurate and logical sentences when they write or speak, and the ability to do so with a bit of flare would earn them even more persuasive power. Furthermore, your child should use reading as a tool to gain new knowledge, to think and to ask questions. If we can train the child’s brain to focus and to retain better memory during their period of language development, it would indeed lay down a fertile soil for your child’s lifelong learning.

Treasure Box can provide critical support to your child’s linguistic development.

Each level of Treasure Box uses all 100 characters that are taught in the same level of Basic Chinese 500.
Higher levels of Treasure Box also use characters taught in previous levels.
Based on the above, each level introduces a further 10% of new characters.

Each level of Treasure Box provides ample examples of how the characters can be formed into words, phrases and sentences.
The child grows a larger depository of vocabulary from the characters they have already learnt.
Selected stories focus on specific types of words – verbs, adjectives, interjections, rhyming words, and more.
The child learns cheng-yu (Chinese idioms).

Different kinds of writing techniques: simile, personification, parallelism, rhetorical questions, …
Rhyming words and homophonics
Punctuation
Various writing styles: recount, deduction, poetry, question and answer, irony, …

Your child learns history and gets inspired by stories of historical prodigies.
Your child learns literature through reading classics from around the world.

Adapting to your child’s cognitive development, each level of Treasure Box prompts them to pay attention to their world, including time, space, personal relationships, physical phenomena, and more.
Guides your child to analyse and categorise what they have observed.
Invites your child to further investigate and ponder upon more thought-provoking philosophical and ethical topics such as causes, consequences, events, right or wrong, etc.

The word count and length of the stories in each level increase progressively to gradually strengthen your child’s focus and stamina.
The plots of the stories become more sophisticated with each level. This trains the child’s memory to hold certain ideas and information in their head and to retrieve them later when needed.
The composition of the illustrations becomes more complex with each level.
The colours of the illustrations become more mature.
The reading time of a story lengthens with each level, developing your child’s habit and interest in reading with intent.

It is important to recognise that one set of Treasure Box is far from being enough to build your child’s linguistic abilities. However, Treasure Box can serve as a blueprint for parents when building your child’s library.

Parents are encouraged to use the content, length, genres and styles of Treasure Box as a reference when searching for other reading materials for children. This will ensure your child a rich collection of high-quality books, composed of a wide range of topics, diverse genres and varying styles, all suited to your child’s current literacy level, interests and mental abilities.

The 5 levels in the series (matching Basic Chinese 500)

Beginning Reader 啟蒙級

Budding Reader 萌芽級

Building Reader 躍進級

Confident Reader 信心級

Fluent Reader 實力級

All available in Tradition Chinese and Simplified Chinese versions. English translation and Putonghua pinyin throughout.

全課程備有繁體版及簡體版，均為中英對照，全課文內容均註有標準普通話拼音。

豐富的配套語文活動 / 遊戲 / 練習... Collections of language activites

集中學習寶貝盒教授的額外140個漢字，加上每級不同的智力和記憶遊戲，配套的雙面卡牌是孩子的學習良伴。

The set of double sided Game Cards features the 140 extra characters taught in Treasure Box. Each level of the Game Cards also include games to develop memory, pattern recognition, reading and more.

學以致用，才能真正發揮語文學習的作用。我們備有一連串豐富的語文遊戲。

Please take advantage of a series of language activities, all inline with the Basic Chinese 500 curriculum.

寶貝盒 CD 示範 Treasure Box CD Demo

寶貝盒 CD 示範
Treasure Box CD Demo

A demonstration of the read-along recording of all 25 books in Treasure Box in Putonghua. Great care has been taken in the production of these recordings. We have carefully decided on the use of male or female voice for each story to reflect the contents, and made sure there is a balanced number in each voice to ensure a balanced gender perception. Background music was also chosen to best represent the mood of each story. On top of the turn-page signals, each book also ends with a reading of all NEW individual words which are not taught in the related Reader level.

The 5 CDs are part of the free bonus pack accompanying the Treasure Box Set of 25 books.

Sagebooks Hongkong promotes independent reading and life-long learning by nurturing the child’s confidence, autonomy and self-teaching abilities. Since 2006. Find out more About Us.

TREASURE

BOX

SCIENCE

b a s e d

TREASURE IN THE BOX