Foreign Country - India

A couple weeks ago we pulled out our map and I let A (He & N take turns) pick our next foreign country to learn about - INDIA! I was expecting this pick because India has been featured in the last couple books we have been listening to (A Little Princess & Jungle Books I & II).

I thought I would share some of what we have been doing and will be doing to learn more about India.

I start by looking at the country on our world map - there are always important places and cities to learn about listed on the country. We look these up at Wikipedia or in our book, Atlas of the World. Here is our list for India - its pretty short right now, but we will be adding to it as we learn more about India:

New Delhi - capital

Delhi

Bangalore

Calcutta
Himalayas

Western/Eastern Ghats
Great Indian Desert
Deccan Plateau
Ganges River

I make a notebook page with a world map, continent map, and country map on it. The kids color India on the world & continent maps. We use the country map to map out the cities & places as we learn about them.

Next stop, library website & home library - these can be fables or a book that features something special about the country, or non-fiction books or a cookbook. As we are reading I make note of vocabulary, animals, activities the characters do, etc. that we will discuss in more detail.

The Story of Little Babaji - pancakes with lots of ghi (butter), character names were changed from author's original names to more Indian names (Black Sambo to Little Babaji), Tigers in India

When Agnes Caws - ornithologist, Himalayas, Pink-headed duck (doesn't that duck just sound fascinating? I want to see one!)

Once a Mouse - hermit, peacocked, fable, Tigers in India

Sailing Home - cargo, China Sea, Indian Ocean

As I mentioned we have also been reading about India in The Jungle Books, and we also have a book of fables from Asia that had a story in it from India - "The Son of the Ogress."

I also make up a notebook page for the story books. The kids can write about the stories or draw a picture from each of the stories. Here is N's:

I also recently picked up a fabulous cookbook at Costco - Around the World in 450 Recipes. It has an entire section of recipes from India. I'll look through it and see which ones I might possibly convince my kids to taste, and which ones won't be too much of a challenge to make, and which ones I can find all the necessary ingredients for, and hopefully there will be 2 or 3 we can try. Also in our home library, we have Wee Sing Around the World CD & book. There are a couple songs from India, and it looks like we will even spend some time memorizing on of them.

Next stop, Netflix & home movie library -

India: Kingdom of the Tiger
Disney's Jungle Book
Chuck Jones Collection - includes Rikki Tikki Tavi, Mowgli's Brothers, & The White Seal and has some stories not by Rudyard Kipling (Cricket in Times Square)
Bride & Prejudice - Don't laugh!! We just happen to have this movie (obsessive Jane Austen fan that I am), and I plan on showing the kids some of the dancing scenes.
Two Brothers - I think this is actually about Tigers in China, but it is a favorite movie here and any talk about Tigers means we need to watch this movie again.

I wasn't planning on doing more movies, but I was a little disappointed with India: The Kingdom of the Tiger. It focused more on the conservation movement to protect the Tigers, which is informational and an excellent movement, but didn't really give the depth of information about Tigers that I was hoping for, and I'm not sure man-eating Tigers is the direction I wanted their Tiger-education to go in. So its back to Netflix to look around.

Now that we have our resources listed, we will spend some time each week discussing the important cities & places, adding them to our individual maps, as well as finding more stories about India and perhaps watching some more movies.

Foregin Country: China

I am behind on my posting!! but I am going to make an effort to catch up this week.

As part of our history, geography we spend time learning about foreign countries. This summer we have been learning about China. The kids have long been interested in China, starting when they were 2 and 3, and Kurt was traveling there frequently. I think Hong Kong was the first city they were able to point out on a map.

Here are some of the resources we used to learn about this GIANT country!

CHINA

Wild China - BBC documentary series with 6 one-hour long episodes. These were wonderful, very similar to Planet Earth in format. Austin and Nyah both enjoyed watching all of these.

Library Books:

Once Upon a Full Moon by Elizabeth Quan

China: the Culture by Bobbie Kalman

Welcome to China by Caryn Jenner

Chinese Children's Favorite Stories by Mingmei Yip

We're Riding on a Caravan: An Adventure on the Silk Road by Laurie Krebs

Cooking the Chinese Way by Ling Yu

(I lost the list of books we read, so these are the ones that I remember)

Activities:

Cooking!!! You can't study China and not try to cook chinese. We used the above cookbook to make dumplings using won ton wraps. They were . . . edible, but not great. I was thinking the dumplings would be more noodle-y, but the won ton wraps mostly just fell apart. We filled ours with chicken and a variety of veggies- carrots, peas, corn, green beans, etc. My kids also love to eat with chopsticks, which is torturous to watch because they get such a little amount of food with each bite (especially with rice), but they keep doing it. And after dinner they use their chopsticks for wands or swords or whatever.

We have used the Sunbird seasoning mixes for a long time, and (amazingly) everyone eats dinner when I make it, which make me wonder why I don't make it more often. Lately I haven't been able to find the Beef & Broccoli mix, which is my favorite, but the Stir Fry mix works with any kind of meat and veggie combination you want to use. I rarely make the Fried Rice because most of my kids don't like fried rice.

My kids have also long been fascinated with the Chinese Lunar Years and Chinese New Year. We did check out a couple library books about these subjects, but I don't remember their titles. We sort of celebrated the Chinese New Year in February by going out to eat, my post about it is here.

Here are our Chinese Lunar Years:

Austin - Year of the Snake

Nyah - Year of the Horse

Olivia - Year of the Dog

Jolie - Year of the Rat

Kurt - Year of the Snake

Kelsey - Year of the Monkey

A couple years ago when my dad was in Taiwan (I think?), he brough Austin, Nyah, and I little charms of our Chinese years. Austin and Nyah's are currently missing in action because they like to play with them (and then lose them until I find them and put them away again). But here's a picture of mine:

That is pretty much all we did for our China study. We all had a good time.