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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Continent: Asia (PRINTABLES)

We recently travelled to our home country in Asia.  The plane was showing us our path, as we move from one country to another due to stopover.  I am amazed as to how my son was eagerly watching the animated plane moving on the map.  He keeps asking our current location, and where is it on the map, how far we’ve travelled and how much farther our home country is.

While everything is still fresh, I just have to pull-out an Asia unit for our continent study.  And coming from this continent, I am overwhelmed of all the things I need to teach my son.  It is just a BIG scope.   There’s just so much to teach, information overload that is for me!  I don’t know where to start either.  But of course, I cannot not do it all at once, anyway we can always revisit this subject anytime.  So I decided to focus on major countries that my son is now familiar with. 

Here’s the order of my attack on the continent of Asia.

1. Well do China first.  No brainer here, it’s the 2nd biggest country in the world, powerful and influential.
2. India comes next.  I am so enchanted with this country!  And he has a friend from his class who’s from India.
3. Singapore,Japan,Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.  I won’t dwell much on these countries but we’ll look into each countries through the books I acquired from the library.  We lived in Singapore for a while so I just have to insert it. And of course, these books are in preparation for our study of No.4.
   
4. Philippines.  Save the best for last!  A detailed study of our home country :)

As an introduction, we first examine the map of Asia and read books.

My son’s first impression was, “Mom China is so big!.”  He compares it to the Philippines where it’s too small and has many lost of lands.  By the way he’s now getting used of the concept of country and continent.  Not that he truly understands it yet, but he’s getting there.

Then we identified the flags of the countries of Asia. He enjoys pinning very much.  This time he volunteers to read the name of the countries written at the back of the flags.  I needed to share these flags with you... so here it is for you to use but it’s not complete though.

We also talked about the famous landmarks that can be seen in Asia.  This part of our study he keeps on saying “I want to go there!”.  If you want to have a copy of these cards, download it from here.

 

For the animals, we will be using Montessori Print Shop’s Animals of the Continent. 

There you go... our introductory part of our Asian study.  Stay tuned for our China unit this week :)

 

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Artist Study ~ Leonardo da Vinci [2] (PRINTABLE)

We’re done learning about the life and works of da Vinci, it’s time to have our own version of his works.

Starting with Mona Lisa.  We talked about the colors used of da Vinci and of what it is to paint a portrait.For his own rendition, he picked colors green (for the trees on the background), orange (background), purple for the color of the dress and black.  He draw the face first as a guide then applied paints.

And of course, not forgetting the famous smile :)

And here’s my son’s Mona Lisa

And my son didn’t stop there, he wanted to paint The Last Supper as well.  As I mentioned previously, this is his favorite painting of da Vinci.

 

 

And here’s what it looks like after he added paints :)

In line with our study I created art cards of da Vinci’s works that we used as 3 part cards.  You can download get it here.  I advice you should read the first part of this post to learn how to use the cards.

Happy Sunday!

 

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Artist Study ~ Leonardo da Vinci [1] (PRINTABLES)

For the past week, we’ve been looking at the works of Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo is a painter, inventor, scientist, sculptor... and just about anything!  He writes from right to left because he is left handed.  And his notes are written in mostly mirror-image for secrecy of his works.

To supplement our study, I made art cards.  Through Google Image, I selected famous da Vinci’s artworks/writings and put them in cards.  We discussed each work, what he likes and doesn’t like about it, talk about his observations and by end of it he selected his favorite:  The Last Supper. 

While we do this, there were a few things that my son needed me to discuss like because he keeps on asking why (like, why is it called The Last Supper).

If you’re interested with the cards, you can download it here. You can print it twice to use as 3-part cards (Montessori approach).

I also talked about the museums that houses some of da Vinci’s works.  And he was surprise that we’ve been those museums and has in fact come face to face with Mona Lisa.

Here’s a picture taken at the Louvre, we went here when Mavi was 2 years old.  Mona Lisa was impressive, small and so dark.  I really wonder what’s the hype.  Since it’s barricaded it’s impossible to see the magic of da Vinci’s hand by just looking from afar :(

We also went to Vatican Museum when Mavi turned 1.  They house some of da Vinci’s works too.

And here’s Florence, Italy... the birthplace of da Vinci! This is the exterior of Uffizi Gallery, they have a room dedicated to da Vinci’s works. A

 

And there goes the first part of our study.  Next post would be my son’s paintings of his favorite da Vinci works :)

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