We had a blast talking about the Emperors, the Great Wall, and reading some wonderful literature.
The Pet Dragon: A Story about Adventure and Chinese Characters by Chrisoph Niemann was by far the kid's favorite book! The basic story is about a girl with a pet dragon. Her father kicks the dragon out and she goes searching for him. The wonderful part about this story is that the illustrations are done around Chinese Characters (their written language). You begin to "see" the word in the character because of the illustrations. It is amazing how many you learn by reading this book.
And of course, tracing paper is a lovely bonus if you want to write pages and pages of Chinese Characters...
While "in China" we read about missionaries, Eric Lidell, Gladys Alyward, and Hudson Taylor. What amazing stories of courage and God's calling.
After three wonderful weeks of studying China at home, we got together with our friends for a day of fun celebrating the end of our study.
The kids each gave a short presentation on something they enjoyed learning about during our study. K (age 6) talked about the Chinese Characters she learned and some history of the written language. She is working on using notecards this year and still making some eye contact.
T (age 5) shared information on the Great Wall of China using a picture that she drew of the Wall. At her age, she and I come up with three questions for her to answer for the group. I sit in the audience and ask the questions and she gives the answers. It has proven to be a gentle and effective way to introduce the skill of presenting.
Arts and crafts time was a hit! The kids made dancing dragons and Chinese lanterns.
Then we moved on to playing with Tangrams, which were invented in China. The girls enjoyed these immensely!
Finally, it was snack time. And what better way to eat it than with chopsticks! (Thank goodness gummy bears are sticky anyway!)
At the end of our time together, the dancing dragons inspired a marching parade, which ended outdoors with all of the kids gathered together.
We had a great time studying this country, praying for the people and learning a little about the history.
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Other literature books we loved:
2 comments:
I'm jealous!! Wish I had a bunch of ladies to get together with and review and have fun when each country study was done!!!! How absolutely fun!
Jolanthe
We're going to be studying China this year, and I was wondering where you got directions for making the dancing dragons and lanterns. My son would love to do those! These are wonderful ideas, and I've put a few of those books on my Amazon wishlist now!
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