Keeping It Simple

Count Your Way Through India by Jim Haskins I love counting books! This one offers a nice way to introduce India in just a few minutes. It includes some geography of India, culture, spices, animals and more. We're from India by Victoria Parker See India through the eyes of three children. Their families, their food, and their traditions (and more) are all introduced in this short book. Included are lots of great photographs . Welcome From India by David Cumming Find out about work, play, home, and school in India from Harjindar, who is ten years old. Lots of photographs in this one too. There is also a nice "India Fact File" at the end of this book. Gandhi by Demi This book, and others by Demi, is one of the reasons that I love picture books! I get to introduce my boys to this inspirational man who did so much for his beloved country through the pictures and story of this brief yet memorable account of his life. Beautiful. Mother Teresa by Demi One of t...

I have mentioned  many of these already over the last few weeks. We did enjoy all of these books- the Samurai list and the Allen Say books were the ones we enjoyed the most!  My personal favorite was Kamishibai Man. I had not read it before and thought it was very moving.  About Japan:  The Colors of Japan by Holly Little field Look What Came from Japan by Miles Harvey Exploring Countries: Japan by Colleen Sexton Rookie Read-About Geography Japan by David E Marx Japan ABCs by Sara Heiman Welcome to Japan by Meredith Costain Shipwrecked! The true adventures of a Japanese boy  by Rhoda Blumberg About Samurai:  Real Samurai by Stephen Turnbull You Wouldn't Want to Be a Samurai! by Flona Macdonald Samurai Warlords of Japan by Arlan Dean Allen Say Books:  Grandfather's Journey Tea with Milk  The Boy in the Garden Erika-San Kamishibai Man

Here are just a few resources that we have used while learning about Japan. There is more to tell- I was not actually prepared to write a post, but I miss participating in Phyllis' history and geography meme at All Things Beautiful ! I need to get back in the habit. So this is what I have for now. :) We have added a few picture books to our reading list: By Allen Say:  Grandfather's Journey Tea with Milk Kamishibai Man   A Boy in the Garden     Erika-San (mentioned before) I love all of Allen Say's books. The pictures, the story... they are just wonderful books. You learn about Mr. Say, his family, and his love for Japan through reading his stories. From "Grandfather's Journey" One of our favorite resources for globe galloping is " Children Just Like Me " by DK books. And I found this awesome page  to go with this book for the boys to add to their notebooks. The boys fill in information about each child we read about. They don...

If you are teaching all boys (no offense to girls out there) and you are going to learn a little about Japan, you might want to begin with... You can find all of the seriously gruesome details in this book! Want a handy hint?- "To display your brilliance on the battlefield, bring home some heads of slaughtered enemies!" I say "ick!"- my boys seemed to love it. This book is a more serious introduction to this period in Japan's history, but equally as interesting. I like that this book follows the Samurai history by timeline. There are also fact pages that give information about weapons, armor, Japanese castles, and the samurai code of conduct. The boys liked it because they like true stories and there are 20 true stories of these "knights of old Japan" ! :) Lest my boys have a slightly skewed vision of Japan with Samurai warriors running all around, I thought this modern day story would provide some balance. The reader follows Eri...

I won't be posting much this week for our Korea study (we are pretty much done), but I thought I'd share these links that we found useful in our study- A great post from Boston Mamas on Korean Culture for Kids Which led to this Traditional Korean Sam Taeguk fan craft   at 4 Crazy Kings blog + more Korean crafts and games  And this awesome coloring page of traditional clothes  Crayola has country  flag coloring pages  Also from Crayola this craft of the South Gate of Seoul And another fan craft from Crayola too! Some pictures and information from one of our favorite resources, National Geographic Kids We also used YouTube. I mentioned in another post  that we used the picture book K is for Korea for a jumping off point to search some fun videos.

I am going to have to stop saying that we are " Galloping the Globe " and maybe say that we are "Sauntering the Globe"! While it may be slow going, we are having fun and getting to have some fun experiences along the way.  Thank you, Patty, for posting the recipe for Maple Syrup  Korean Teriyaki Chicken! It was a hit!  James was our marinade maker. He measured, poured, and then... ...minced the ginger root. The chicken was placed in the marinade for 2 hours.  Mark manned the barbecue. Patty's picture (check link at the top) of this meal is much prettier.  Still, it was delicious! I mean really, really! We also read a little about Korean culture involving food with Eat Your Way Around the World - garlic is a mainstay of Korean foods, and spoons are used (as opposed to chopsticks) to eat rice. Linking to: 

Some of my favorite field trips are really just family outings exploring our community. Visiting a local Korean food market seemed like the perfect fit for a cold, drizzly day when dad is home. Fortunately, where we live there are several choices- after checking the ratings on Yelp, I chose this one. First of all, this is an impressive market. In the end, we decided that it put our little Safeway grocery store to shame! We began in the produce aisle where many things looked familiar, but many there were also lots of items that we had not seen or heard of. After spending some time admiring this section we chose a Korean pear and some ginger root to bring home. On to the bakery- again, some things looked familiar, but we chose items that were had not tried before to purchase. Pastries with red bean paste and banana shaped bread were our picks. We explored the prepared food aisle- little squid anyone? Very impressive and pretty!  The seafood department was ...

                                     More Korea- picture book style .  We used  K is for Korea as a jumping off point to "see" more of the country. Using the alphabet listings, we searched You Tube  and watched videos to bring to life some of things we read about.  Viewing and listening to videos of Arirang (Korean folk songs), the spectacular fan dance called Buchaechum , the ringing of the Emille Bell , Taekwondo (the national martial art), and Samulnori (percussion music) definitely brought my boys' interest in our Korea study up a notch!      We also played a variation of Yunnori  (listed under "Y" in the book, of course), a favorite family game in Korea. Our version, from Peggy Kaye's Math Games book, differs in some ways, but I thought it was a nice connection anyway.  I found  this video  that...

Notebooking is not new to us. I love my son's  history notebook  from years ago. More recently, we have been creating lapbooks or a combination of lapbooking and notebooking that might be called a lapjournal. I did this post a while ago that explains some of the methods we use. I also have a page below my blog header with examples of some of our lapbooks and notebooks. Notebooking is different than lapbooking not just in presentation, but in that it tends to a long term project. Once we made the commitment to documenting our Galloping the Globe studies using the notebook pages, I wanted to get things organized so that we (I should say "I") would follow through. Binders labeled and ready to go: A section labeled for general geography and one section  for each continent-  These sample pages are a mix from our China and Korea studies (I don't want to confuse anyone!) and some are not complete.  I tried to include so...