We just finished a unit on ancient China. In addition to the online lessons from our K12 curriculum, we checked out a ton (ok, maybe only 10-12) of books on China from the library.
We learned about how silk was discovered and made:
We learned about how rice is planted and harvested:
We put some water in the bathtub and pretended we were rice farmers. We even constructed a water wheel like the ones the Chinese people would use to irrigate water from the river. We used cups, lincoln logs, string, tape, and rubber bands. We got really, really wet!
We learned about the Chinese zodiac. Check out these fun pages: http://www.apples4theteacher.com/holidays/chinese-new-year/chinese-zodiac.html
We learned about the Great wall, the mysterious forbidden city and some of the major emperors of China's vast and fascinating history.
Here the boys are practicing some Chinese calligraphy characters with watercolors.
And for our grand finale we spent an afternoon at some beautiful Chinese gardens. We stopped to have some tea, juice, and cookies at the Chinese tea house.
The Free One is drinking Mango juice from this cool cup they brought it in.
Tea is much better when shared with friends. My good friend from college joined us with her little baby. See the man in the background? He was playing the most beautiful, peaceful music on this Chinese instrument. Does anyone know what that is called?
The teapots and cups were so pretty!
The Free One pouring himself a cup of tea.
One of the beautiful bridges we got to walk over.
The boys are peeking over a garden wall in front of some wooden calligraphy panels.
The Anchor standing in front of a waterfall. This was the only picture I could get of him smiling.
Posing in front of a pagoda, on a zig zag bridge. The Anchor could not keep his tongue in his mouth.
There's the tongue again. And the tea house in the background.
The Free One is trying to push his brother's tongue back in so we can get a normal picture.
It's pretty much a lost cause.
Obviously, we had a super, fantastic field trip to the Chinese Gardens. Every bit of it was wonderful except for a few minutes with a very grumpy rude volunteer worker. But we didn't let that get us down for long (click HERE to read all about it)
We had a great time studying China. Next stop in History: Rome!
No comments:
Post a Comment
You're next...