Asia Activities and Resources

Well, this has been the most relaxed continent study experience so far. You can definitely tell that I'm not paying as much attention to continent studies now that I am looking ahead and planning for elementary school in the fall. I would rather leave it here and save Europe for later on down the road (we are definitely nixing Australia and Antarctica for now). I'll tell you what, though-- the best thing ever was watching Oscar watch the Olympic happenings. I looked his little face and saw that he knows where Rio is, he recognizes the Brazilian flag, he got giddy when he saw the Christ the Redeemer statue, and he had a frame of reference for all the different countries that the athletes come from (well, the South American, African, and Asian ones, at least).  It is quite humbling to see how all my hard work, planning, and preparation has endowed him with a better understanding of the world! Seriously exciting stuff. Heck, even Allen ran up to a map the other day and wanted to show me where China was. So although we're breaking off the continent studies to get our footing with starting elementary work, it's not because the continent studies weren't valuable!


This unit was pretty light on the tray activities. Somewhere along the way this summer, my Oscar entered the second plane of development. He's more interested in dialogue and asking questions and creating his own works-getting more "brainy"- than in soaking in information through his senses. And it has always been a struggle getting Allen to sit down and do tray activities. So I didn't bother much with trays, and the ones I did put together weren't utilized much, anyways. What we did do was a lot more of watching YouTube videos and reading non-fiction. I'm not going to lie; this study was very heavy on Far Eastern countries because that was just where Oscar's interests led us. So we know all about the Great Wall of China, the Himalayas, and the Terracotta Warriors, but not too much about the Middle East or India.

Books

Tikki Tikki Tembo

One Grain of Rice

Umbrella

Ishi -- the kids loved this one!

Zen Shorts

The Origami Master

Movies

We didn't watch all of these; just my list of ideas.

My Neighbor Totoro

Ponyo

Mulan

Jungle Book

Aladdin

Kung Fu Panda (I was reading an article the other week, actually, about how KFP really nailed the details of the real location in China that this film is based on)



Activities

Salt Dough Map

I am fortunate to have access to a projector, so I printed out an outline of Asia on clear projector plastic and traced the enlarged projected image onto a large piece of cardboard. Paint the ocean (I totally spaced and covered poor Europe with ocean), and shape salt dough around the outline.

The Great Wall of China, Oscar's favorite part, and Mt. Everest, his second-favorite part

Trillium Montessori Asia A-Z Book

I stumbled on Trillium's continent study packs several months ago and finally took the plunge on her Asia A-Z pack. Definitely worth the money! I printed out the A-Z cards with definitions and stuck them in a photo book. I Mod Podged the cover with some Asian-motif fabric (unfortunately, I used too much Mod Podge, which resulted in ugly-looking streaks on the fabric!). We also did the Plants/Animals activity cards.

Origami

 Oscar really took a shine to origami. I think we did a new project every day for a couple weeks. A month later, he's still filling the house with his creations.The evening that we did our first real project, paper boats, Oscar was really excited to find The Origami Master, a storybook I had just happened to pick up from the library. There were instructions at the end for making an origami bird, and I told Oscar we could make it in the morning since it was late. Well, at the crack of dawn next morning, I was woken up by a little voice right at my bedside, whispering, "Mama, can we make the origami bird?" So cute.

A week or so later- I feel so clever for making this up- I decided to teach Oscar "clothes origami". Also known as folding laundry, haha. I KonMari our laundry, so we do have a particular way of folding that really is like origami. Anyways, Oscar took the bait like a champ and folded most of his drawer's contents. Hooray for practical life!

Eventually, my creator-of-worlds son got tired of following other people's instructions and started writing his own. They may or may not actually follow the laws of reality:

Desert Sensory Bin

Meet Abdul.

I made this little Bedouin guy for a desert sensory bin. Allen and I painted a box for a "tent" and I found a scrap of colorful fabric to use as a rug. We got to talk about the deserts and oases and the nomadic lifestyle.

Making Sushi

Such a fun project! We made kind of a mish-mash between a California and a Philadelphia roll because I was trying to buy the ingredients from memory and forgot a few things. Still tasted good! While grocery shopping, I was thinking, man, these ingredients are so cheap, how the heck is sushi so expensive! What a ripoff! But I found out soon enough that sushi involves a LOT of prep-work. Very labor-intensive meal. Still glad we did it, though!

Spice Grinding

Got a little experience with a mortar and pestle! The spices we did were fennel, coriander, and whole cloves. I stuck a label in for a little extra literacy element.

Wood Polishing

This is a little wooden frog instrument that my college roommate brought back for me from a trip to Thailand. I ordered a small container of non-toxic cutting board polish and paired it with a cleaning cloth!