Wrapping It Up::China

I did not intend for us to spend 4 weeks on China- it just has happened that we have been a bit short on time, so we are squeezing things in where we can. 

We finally got to make Egg Drop Soup!  This was a super simple recipe, but all the boys wanted 
in on it, so they each got a job (or two). 

They... 

chopped... 

 measured... 

 poured... 

 and stirred the ingredients. 

And, finally, served the soup! 

Sadly, I did not take a picture of the final presentation.

The fun part was including Grandma in our festivities. I wish I had taken a picture of that too! The boys were so excited to get Grandma and walk her over to dinner (Grandma is our neighbor). Using the information from our cookbook, Grandma was treated as the "most respected" (eldest) person at the table. Grandma was the first one served and no one took a bite of their food until Grandma took a bite of hers. (meal serving etiquette and recipe from Eat Your Way Around the World)

In the meantime, we learned a little about some animals that are found in China. Each of the boys chose one to research and make a notebook page for. James chose the Sun Bear (below), Paul the Red Panda, and Mark decided was determined to have the Chinese Pug as his animal (not what I had in mind, but it is suppose to have originated in China ;)).

James' page 

My biggest encouragement  notebooking comes from seeing other less than perfect efforts (real work done by real kids!), so here it is.  While we have always made notebooks and lapbooks, these notebooks are the boys' (as in all their own work- researched and created on their own as much as possible). For 8yo James, this was about max out. However, he really did enjoy learning about his animal!

We also watched this documentary on the Great Wall of China. None of my boys is going to tell you that is was their favorite movie ever, but they did learn a lot by watching it, and they would rather watch a movie (any movie!) than do lots of other things.




I did mention this already, but we really enjoyed this book:
You Wouldn't Want to Work on the Great Wall of China!: Defenses You'd Rather Not Build

To finish up after all the books we read and the movie we watched, the boys each made a simple notebook page for the Great Wall as well.


That was a lot to dump all in one post, but I think this should be our last one on China... On to Korea!

Linking to:

All Things Beautiful- a great place to visit!!

And, for the first time: 



Chestnut Grove Academy

This looks like an ongoing link-up. 

Comments

  1. Chestnut Grove AcademySeptember 30, 2011 at 12:11 AM

    Thanks for linking up! :D What a great unit, I will be checking back here for sure when we get to China :D

    ReplyDelete
  2. RikSeptember 30, 2011 at 8:43 AM

    Great post! I think I'll be buying that Eat Your Way Around the World book, it looks like it has great info. We had been planning to integrate food and geography this year.

    ReplyDelete
  3. PattySeptember 30, 2011 at 3:10 PM

    Great study on China!!! I absolutely love the Grandma guest section. What a great idea for the children to pick up on. What about shoes? In Korea, they take their shoes off at the front door as a sign of respect for the owner. Maybe you could make that a new rule in your house and see how long the floors stay clean ! :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownSeptember 30, 2011 at 3:15 PM

    The soup looks awesome and I love seeing your boys in the kitchen. How sweet that they walked over to get Grandma, I'm sure it made her day! Right there with you on the notebook pages. Can't wait to see what you do for Korea ;)

    ReplyDelete

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