Alana now knows about 40 Chinese characters. I hand-picked them for her, choosing mostly simple but common characters. Here she is, showing off (you might have to be logged into Flickr to watch the video): Conventional wisdom says that it’s too early to “push kids to memorize characters.” We’re not really pushing, though; she really loves learning these characters and being quizzed on them! So as long as he’s driven by her own curiosity, no harm in an early start…

One of the cool side effects of having learned the characters I chose for her is that she can now read the Chinese names of most of the planets in our solar system, which she already knows (in English and Chinese). So she’s kind of shocked that the characters she knows enable her to “read” the Chinese names of the planets. (She still does’t totally get the whole “reading” thing, although she is fascinated by books, even when there are no pictures.)