China, Weeks 25 and 26

I have to say, I was glad to see our China travels come to a close. The subject matter itself was fine and had the potential to be really fun, but it was just a tough couple of weeks for us. I had more cake orders than normal, Annlee had her oral surgery, our science was just a hodge podge of various things, and it just seemed like I was in a funk the whole time. I told myself that we just had to get through it and then we could move on and it would be better. (We are now one week into our Japan studies and it's been TONS better! Everyone has recovered from their surgeries, bad attitudes, etc., lol)
So, China! We made Chinese paper lanterns and hung them in the dining room for decoration. Here is Annlee showing hers off the day after her surgery, bless her heart.



We had made stamps because China was where the printing press first originated. We used those stamps to decorate our lanterns.


We built our own version of the Great Wall of China. This was a lot of fun! The girls love any kind of craft and they were anticipating doing this one for days leading up to it! Of course, now that we've built it, I'm kinda wondering where to keep it...



We added to our languages of Asia worksheet. The girls love taking turns looking up the official country languages online.


We read The Story of Ping and did quite a few activities to go along with the book. I had found a site online with all this all prepared so I just had to print it off. They did graphing exercises, word searches, and this story sequencing activity.


I looked up online to find out how to write each of their names in Chinese and they copied them for their lapbooks.


We learned all about Chinese New Year thanks to a friend of ours who is a public school teacher and has been sharing her extra Scholastic booklets with us! This one fit in perfectly with our lessons! Thank you Renee!


We read a book about tangrams, a shape puzzle that originated in China. We made our own and they practiced making various animals as I read. Please excuse the dirty table in the picture with Maryella. That was from our salt experiments that I'll get to in a bit.



We studied how to eat with chopsticks and practiced picking up mini marshmallows. The girls thought this was awesome!


And naturally, practicing with chopsticks led up to our Chinese meal at home! This is the part I had been looking forward too! Mmm, Chinese food!


Everyone used chopsticks to the best of their abilities, lol!




Maryella requested mooncakes for dessert. She had learned about those from watching Kai-lan on tv. Jeff asked and they said that mooncakes are a fall treat, but they had other things that were very similar. Maryella was satisfied and LOVED them! Can you tell?


Here are our lapbooks we made for China. We just couldn't make everything fit the way we wanted to so that chopstick booklet is sort of hanging our in the middle. It works though.






I usually have them draw pictures of various facts we learn about the countries we study. I love seeing how these turn out! Here are Kaylin's to include in her lapbook.


As I said earlier, our science was sort of all over the place for these weeks. During the second week though, we began a 3 week study on oceans. Most of that will be a part of the next post from Japan, but we did do a few fun experiments with salt water during this week.
We saw how an egg will sink in tap water but floats after adding (A LOT) of salt.


We also started an experiment making salt crystals. We were able to watch the water evaporate over the course of a couple weeks and the salt left crystals on the string. Here are the first couple of days. It didn't take long to see some action!



You'll have to wait until the next post to see the final results! It was pretty cool!

St. Patrick's Day fell during this time, but it was on a Sunday. I hated to make them do any "real" work, so instead they did some color pages, word search, and crossword puzzles while they ate some gold (chocolate) coins and listened to me read the history of the day.


Maryella is still enjoying a variety of reading spots. Her pick for this week seemed to be spralled out across the dining room table. I am seriously willing to try almost anything to get her to enjoy reading. Ugh!


And one final, fun picture... Elianna having fun with our Math U See manipulatives one afternoon. Silly girl!

India, Weeks 24 & 25

We spent last week as our "Spring Cleaning Spring Break" in preparation for Elianna's 4th birthday party and lots of family coming down to visit for the special weekend.






But before that week of crazy cleaning, we spent 2 weeks in India enjoying the sights and tastes, learning about some of the history, facts, and famous people of the country. The girls enjoyed several crafts and fun projects during our studies. Here are the highlights of our "trip" in pictures...

In India, brothers make bracelets for their sisters to show that they will love and protect them. The girls each made a bracelet for one of their sisters. They were so sweet trying to pick out the perfect beads they thought their sister would like.


For the festival of Diwali, Indians make Rangoli. They use dyed rice powder to make these beautiful designs on their homes to welcome visitors. We used colored sand to make ours. What a fun project!




We tried out how it would be wear a sari. (I'm not sure the Indians would approve of our use of a Hannah Montana bed sheet, lol. But it worked for us)



We made bangle bracelets to represent all the jewelry Indian women wear. The girls decided that they would love to live in India and wear tons of jewelry all the time!


We made Indian "smoothies" one day from a recipe we found in a book about India. These are called Mango Lassi. The girls have begged for them so many times since then! Annlee is due for some oral surgery soon and has requested this drink for her breakfast the day after her surgery. It was pretty delicious!






We made trinket boxes out of clay. This was lots of fun for the girls! They LOVE crafty things so I try to do as many as possible. I was so pleased with how these turned out! They worked hard and were very proud!







Mmm... Indian food!


Here are our lapbooks. They turned out a little bigger than usual this time. We just had lots of information to include about India!












In science, we learned about volcanoes. The girls had a great time watching how mountains and volcanoes are formed through two fun experiments.
First, we cut a small hole in the bottom of an empty yogurt container and inserted a new tube of toothpaste in the hole. We filled it partially with dirt and then squeezed. They watched the toothpaste slowly push it's way up through the dirt in much the same way that hot lava pushes it's way up through the surface of the Earth. So simple, yet they loved it!



And of course, we couldn't talk about volcanoes without erupting one of our own!


We found a fun spelling website called Spelling City that the girls have been loving! I can type in their spelling words and they can play games with them and even take their test online! They think it's so cool to take their test on the computer! And the website is free - HUGE plus!


Maryella is still doing her regular All About Reading and Spelling programs. We've found a few tricks to help her "want" to do it a little more. It's certainly no fun when it's a fight to get her to read! One thing she enjoys is to read in a fun place. We've had days where we read on the front porch, in the other living room, and the latest is on my bed all snuggled up together. She also has figured out that she'd rather write on the white board than on paper for her spelling work. Fine by me! Anything that makes learning fun is SO worth it!


Another fun thing I'm doing with her... she gets to add a bead to her string everytime she finishes reading a book! Anything to encourage reading, right!? She's loving doing this and NEVER lets me forget to let her add that bead!


We also enjoyed celebrating President's Day a few weeks ago with this fun project. I love how they turned out! And obviously the girls had a good time!