Earlier this summer, I found these amazing Montessori Chinese stroke order sandpaper cards 蒙特梭利砂纸, and they have been incredibly helpful for my daughter! The Montessori-inspired Chinese stroke order sandpaper cards are fun and effective for teaching stroke order. We have been using the Chinese sandpaper cards with this sensory writing tray.
Teaching my daughter Chinese stroke order
My daughter started to write English & Korean letters independently by age 3, but we have been taking it slow with Chinese. Like Chinese, the Korean Hangul alphabet should be written according to 笔画 (bǐhuà / stroke order). But Chinese characters are much more complicated; most characters have numerous strokes.
From a young age, my daughter was copying Chinese characters in her own way. Initially, writing was low priority, and I didn’t want to impose strict rules at such a young age in fear that it would dampen her interest.
However, good writing habits must be established so that characters are legible, efficient, balanced, and beautiful.
Now that my daughter is 4.5 years old, we started reinforcing stroke order for Korean writing and it has helped tremendously with Chinese writing.
Montessori Chinese Sandpaper Cards 蒙特梭利 汉字笔画砂纸板 comes well packaged in a sturdy box.
Lightweight Chinese flashcards
The 15cm x15cm square-shaped cards are lightweight, thick cardboard with smooth, rounded corners. I prefer this portable design over the traditional Montessori sandpaper cards which are heavy with sharp edges.
Sandpaper texture aids learning
The black characters are a rough texture, not quite as rough as traditional sandpaper cards. A texturized surface is intended to stimulate the senses and help children commit each stroke to memory.
In my humble opinion, they are adequately rough. However, I wonder if trained Montessori educators would disagree.
Colored dots encourage independence
Colored dots indicate where the stroke begins and the order in which to proceed. The first stroke is indicated by a red dot, followed by green, yellow, blue, and purple dots.
Although the dots may be distracting to someone who has never seen the character before, they are great for my daughter to practice stroke order independently!
These characters are the same for both simplified and traditional Chinese. The cards have no Hanyu Pinyin or English. I prefer no added text so that the cards are clean and relatively distraction-free.
However, I wish the Chinese stroke order sandpaper cards included….
More Chinese words – I would love to have a set Montessori sandpaper cards with a few hundred common Chinese words, as I think this would be more useful than the typical flashcard.
Normal Chinese characters with no dots – I think the dots would be distracting for a child who has never previously learned the Chinese character. It would be nice if a plain Chinese character was printed on the opposite side of the card for reference.
The included characters also seem a bit random. I’m not sure why 大 was included but not 小 which is only 3 strokes.
Pictures of the Chinese stroke order sandpaper cards 汉字笔画砂纸板
Eight basic Chinese strokes
十 (shí / ten), 人 (rén / person) = 2 strokes per character
Here is a video of the booklet that is included with the Montessori Chinese Sandpaper Cards 蒙特梭利 汉字笔画砂纸板.
Overall, I recommend these Montessori Chinese sandpaper cards 蒙特梭利汉字笔画砂纸板 for children who are starting learn how to write Chinese! 蒙特梭利汉字笔画砂纸板 is an effective, hands-on way to establish good Chinese writing foundation!
If you prefer to DIY your own tactile character cards, you could use glue or puffy paint to create a textured Chinese characters. Then you can draw or add mini dot stickers to indicate stroke order. I might do this after my daughter has mastered writing this set of 24 characters.
Do you have the Sun Ya Chinese stroke order cards?
If so, please share your experience! I’d love to know whether you found it to be helpful for your child and learn what other strategies you’ve used to teach Chinese stroke order!
Tips on teaching children Chinese
Please refer to these articles about how to teach Chinese characters:
As always, please leave a comment with any questions, and I’ll try my best to answer them! Or better yet, please join our Facebook group! Montessori-inspired Kids Learning Chinese and English is a community of parents worldwide who are excited to share bilingual book recommendations, Montessori tips, and learning materials!
Oh no, TaoBao – I’m going to have to figure out how to order from them since I don’t know how to read well. If only their site had an english converter! Thank you for posting this review, I wish the set came with more cards!
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Annie says
Oh no, TaoBao – I’m going to have to figure out how to order from them since I don’t know how to read well. If only their site had an english converter! Thank you for posting this review, I wish the set came with more cards!
Judy Marie says
你觉得我直接从网上买好还是叫我表妹在国内买好 然后再送来美国呢？ 网上的shipping会不会太贵？