Asia ~ India [2]

I chanced upon this book:  Krishna Steals the Butter and Other Stories.  The book retells stories based on Hindu faith, perfect for little kids learning all about Hindu deities and mythical creatures.  My son enjoyed the stories so much that we read it every night. 

I looked around the net for some coloring printables of Hindi deities but I only came up with Ganesha and Rama.

Furthermore, I browsed for some resources, I discovered this wonderful site titled INDO Kids.  It has links to Indian mythical stories, festivities and famous people.  It’s a perfect site for those who wants to learn about India and doesn’t have access to libraries.

Another thing that we did was watch an episode of a local show here (for kids) entitled Let’s Celebrate wherein it showcased the Diwali festival.  The story of Rama and Sita is shown on the video, it’s just a portion of the whole Diwali episode.

We also had fun watching and dancing with these little cuties as we learn how to dance.... in Bollywood style!

And that ends our journey of discovering India.  Oh we had so much fun learning!  You can read the first part of our Indian study here.

Stay tuned as we discover Singapore and Philippines!

 

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Asia ~ India

We had a wonderful time learning important facts about India. Here are some of the materials we used:

Currency (Rupee) which I Googled and printed out, stamps, Fact File similar to China, Indian flag which my son made, a map and a Taj Mahal figure.

 

Books are important learning materials as well and we’re lucky to have lots of great ones at our local library.

We looked for India in the map which I purchased from here.

The pictures that I printed out also helped a lot in understanding the lifestyle, culture and religion of India.  My son is amazed of the many things he has learned!  Like he can tell that Hinduism is for India and Buddhism is for China :)  Then he also wanted to try out eating on the floor, which most of the Indian people practices.  I couldn’t find a mehndi here so I skipped the part of applying artistic patterns on my hand.  We also tried eating “chapatis” (ready made) and dipped it to curry sauce (from my Chicken Curry).

    

We ended our first session by making an Indian flag using our colored papers. He basically did it all by himself :)

     

More of this soon!

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Asia ~ China [2]

Below are the activities we did in line with our China Unit Study (this is for Asia continent study).

CALLIGRAPHY

We tried numeric Chinese characters.  We practiced writing it using a pen... and later on tried using a black paint and a brush.  My son loved it!

 

He was dead serious with calligraphy, concentrating just to get it right.

 

 

CHINESE LANTERN

We made lanterns using colored papers and cardstock.  This activity, he did not much enjoy though.

 

I added some details on the lanterns by adding glitters.  Chinese lanterns are usually red because it’s the color of “luck” and “prosperity”.

 

When I tried placing the lanterns on our candles, it got his attention.  He loved how the lanterns produced shadowy effects.

 

CHINESE JUMP ROPE

Then of course, I just have to introduce the Chinese jump rope which I love to play as a child.  This game was very very popular during my growing up years.  And did my son like it? He love it to pieces!  He enjoyed linking the rubber bands together and much more when we started jumping over it! We’ve been playing with it for days now.  It would be best if we can play it outdoors.... maybe next year in summer time we’ll try it.

 

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Asia ~ China (PRINTABLE)

The highlight of this week’s “homeschool” is China.  As you’ve read previously, we’re doing Asia for continent study and the first Asian country we explored is China.  So I’ll be sharing with you the materials I prepared for this study and the activities we did:

BOOKS.  I borrowed these from the library.  I love both of these series (Culture in and Letters from Around the World).   They’re easy to read, and loaded with lots of pictures and information that a 4yr old boy can easily absorb.  My favorite series is the Letters from Around the World.  Here, we learned about the life of Yiyi in China by reading her letters.  She introduces her family, show us her way of life, talks about her school and the things she loves to do.

MAP AND FACT FILE.  This map was purchased from Montessori Print Shop.  I colored the countries in East Asia and highlighted China in red (the rest is gray).  This way he can easily spot China and familiarize its location on the map.

FLAG.  We discuss the Chinese flag flag first.  We talked about the representation of each stars in the flag and why is the Chinese flag color red. 

To know more about China, I printed out pictures from Google showing the culture, foods and the religion practices of Chinese people.  I also made the currency and stamps out of Google search.

 

Because I wanted to make some sort of like an album or a travel journal, I made captions for each pictures.   Here’s my file for the fact file seen on the map and the captions seen on these pictures.

 

Here’s a closer look.

We talked about the pictures after reading the captions then post it on a paper.  This is how it all looks like later.

We compiled it in a folder, using page protectors.  I put the currency and stamps in an envelope and put it as well in the album.

We had fun learning about all of these!  My son really really loves learning about the people of different countries... so amazing! 

More China-activities coming up...

 

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