Products

Magic Box Level 1 - 8

(Each level includes 15 stories + 1 VCD + 1 CD + flash cards)

The Magic Box supports parents as first teachers as they reach out for ways to help their children at home.

The Magic Box provides a series of experiences for children, which will help them learn reading and writing English in an enjoyable way.

Some viewing guidelines for parent and child to make the most out of viewing The Magic Box:

Values. Enjoyable and supportive, help children learn to read by themselves and provide success for all.

Familiar situations. The 120 stories range over many universal themes of interest to children – such as family, animals, food, weather, space, clothes, toys, and are written in language that children expect to hear in their everyday world.

Real stories. These are real stories with a beginning and an end, rather than a series of unrelated captions.

Structure. The 120 repetitive stories totalling 7,492 words are graded in difficulty from one-word caption in the first episode to three or four lines of text per page in later episodes. The 721 carefully selected vocabularies are introduced progressively and reintroduced in later episodes. Also, there’s a gradual increase in sentence length and complexity of sentence structure.

Illustrations. Each page of text is accompanied by vivid illustrations, which provide clues to read the words.

The Magic Box makes good use of the advantages of captioned VCD, CD and various devices, which help successful learning. For example:

Reading aloud. Each story is introduced before being read at least twice in a ‘shared reading’ format, with ample opportunity for interaction by the children.

Interaction. This is promoted by pausing and asking children to predict what the next word (or words) will be using devices such as highlighting of letters and words, linking sounds, words and pictures; asking what will happen in a story or on the next page; and involving children in a question-and-answer conversation on the first reading of a story (each story has two readings).

Remembered message. Reading the ‘first-read’ of the story as a straight read and then using this knowledge – the remembered message – to predict what the text on each page will be.

Predictable patterns. The structures of the stories are repetitive and predictable. For example, a one-line sentence pattern may be repeated throughout a story with only one word changing. Once children understand how the structure works, they can use patterns, along with the illustrations and alphabet clues, to read the stories successfully.

Activity books. The 120 meaningful and interesting patterned stories are divided into eight levels. Each level has one activity book. In the activities, children reinforce their understanding of the words using picture clues, and then they will write the words. Later, with the help of their own drawing and the repetitive simple sentence structure, children can start model writing at an early age.

Research done in New Zealand and New York showed that the children learning with The Magic Box made definite gains both in sight words and on the running records.

Level 3's Stories:

1.  The Space Monster
2. The Train
3. The Spaceship
4. Who Ate the Bananas
5. Help Me!
6. Cleaning the Car
7. Where Is My Dad?
8. Mum's Hat
9. Dad's Present
10. Elephant Walk
11. Cactus Town
12. The Diver
13. My Bike Can Fly
14. The Rescue Helicopter
15. Under the Sea