We studied China and Japan this past week (well, it ended up being two weeks after a stomach bug and a trip to KS for a funeral.)
I have to say that this was a fun topic with a lot of hands-on fun.
Here are some of the books we used:
We ate some Chinese food (take-out, because I’m not much of a cook!). They had to eat only with chopsticks, which was quite messy!
The kids painted Chinese characters on red construction paper. Can I suggest that you don’t use oil paint? My oldest daughter set it up for them and about 10 minutes into it I realized what a mess was being made. There was black paint everywhere. On arms, doors, in hair. Yikes! We ended up switching to watercolor paints instead – a much better idea!!
Lexie was even writing messages to me in Chinese throughout the week, like it was a secret code.
The Chinese Zodiac.
They also did some origami (which Ellie is quite good at), but I didn’t take any pictures.
Here are some videos I had the kids watch for their studies:
Chinese Dragon Dance:
Chinese Lion Dance:
Chinese Dance:
Japanese Tea Ceremony:
Sumo Wrestling:
Oh, thanks! We are in the midst of doing Japan right now (China is next). We’ve been watching a documentary about samurai but I am going to come back and watch the bottom two snips you have here, as well.
BTW–do you have some kind of “restricted” setting on your page? I was trying to pin the videos to Pinterest and it wouldn’t let me.
I think that right clicks were disabled. You should be able to do it now though!