Ni Hao! We had so much fun with our Geography Curriculum last week learning about China!
Here are some of the fun activities we did for the week:
We started off filling in our passport and putting on our flag sticker for China:
We learned:
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Where China is on the world map & located Beijing, Huang He River and the Yangtze River
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A song in Mandarin
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How to say “Hello” in Mandarin
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How to pray for the Chinese people
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About children in China
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Chinese Numbers
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Studied the Great Wall of China
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Completed a china lapbook activity
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Completed and classified animals of China
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Read The Story of Ping by Marjorie Flack
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Learned new Geography terms
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Played Chinese Checkers
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Learned major landmarks and other fun facts about China
And here are what I managed to take pictures of ;o)
Last week we learned all of the continents and oceans. We review those each day and added in the location of China is this week as well. The Indian Ocean is my preschooler’s favorite one, so she always points to that one first.
We practiced writing the symbol for hello: 你好 (pronounced nǐ hǎo)
We worked on our China Lapbook component:
We made handmade paper, then wrote the Mandarin Numbers on it:
We made fun paper lanterns:
We learned about the Chinese Flag and labeled our mapping worksheet for our countries binder:
We learned about some fun animals found in China, here they are holding up their waterfall books with their favorite animal. And this week we were able to visit a zoo that had an Asian Exhibit which included all of our animals but the pandas! That was too cool! I’ll post pictures shortly as that deserves a post all of it’s own.
After learning about our animals, we learned all of the animal classes and classified each of them on our animal wall. (And yes, I do realize I have a TON of mammals in our units so I’m sure I’ll have to re-organize the wall a bit as we go.)
We made these super cute Chinese paper fans:
We learned fun facts about the Great Wall of China then made our own miniature model of it, I’ll post more on this later, but here it is in progress.
And for family fun night, we ended our week with a field trip to one of our favorite Chinese restaurants complete with lessons on how to hold chopsticks. Oh, and of course we said “Ni Hao” to our waitress!
I’ll post the instructions to the individual crafts later on so you can have your own fun learning about China!
Click here to learn more about the Expedition Earth Geography curriculum!
Erica, girl, where do you find the time, the organization, the umpf (for lack of a better word) to do these awesome projects?!!!!!! I'm sitting here drooling at the screen! I wanna do this stuff, but there doesn't seem to ever be enough time! ( tell me….between me and you….do you have a maid?) heee heeee All jokes aside, I get sooo much from your blog and look forward to reading it everyday! Thanks for the ideas! This one will go in our continent boxes!MAtalyn
Matalyn: NO I don't have a maid, but I would love one LOL! Especially after all the crafts we have planned for this year ;o) Anyway, I just plan, then took my craft shopping list (in the EE Curriculum) and went to the store. That way when it says "do this craft" I know I already bought the stuff, so we might as well use it! Otherwise I'll get lazy and skip it!
great post!you have been featured on the Montessori Goldminehttp://themontessorigoldmine.blogspot.com/2010/09/monday-round-up_26.html
Looks fantastic! Your Great Wall is amazing. Your character for hello is actually "wei." That's how we answer the phone, or call out to someone we can't see (say you go into a store and the boss is in the back). But we don't greet someone with wei. That would be ni hao — 你好. You got the pinyin (romanization) correct! I say we like I'm Chinese. I'm not. But I live in China. 🙂 Off to find details on the Great Wall project.
Jimmie, thanks for the comment, I love your blog! I did fix the Mandarin to reflect Ni Hao ahwile back, thanks!
I just found an awesome list of picture books about China on Amazon.com and wanted to share the link:http://www.amazon.com/Excellent-Childrens-Picture-Books-About/lm/R2GGNR1DSXPP6PI am reserving several of them online to pick up at my local library. Easy peasy!
That’s amazing. I can’t believe how many activities you did in a week.
Thank you so much for you kindness in sharing your talents. It is so inspiring to see and know that curriculum doesn’t have to be expensive. May God continue to bless your ministry in sharing to those who want to homeschool their children but cannot afford to. You make it possible. Thanks a million.
the character you learned to write is “wei”, which is how people answer the phone, not how you spell ‘ni hao’. ni hao is 你好
Hi Rebekah,
Thanks it’s actually been updated in the curriculum, I just haven’t updated the post! Guess I should :o)
My husband and I live in China. We are teachers here. I have enjoyed seeing some of your ideas on this site. Thanks so much for sharing!