China and Mongolia Week

This week in our  Around the World Homeschool journey we traveled to China and Mongolia

Books:

Of course, we still read our spines, but there were also so many good picture books this week! 

Amy Wu and the Ribbon Dance 

Amy Wu and the Warm Welcome

Amy Wu and the Perfect Bao (Archer loves all of these and wants to read the 4th)

Zen Shorts

The Magic Tapestry

Chinese Kite Festival

Goldy Luck and the Three Pandas

The Great Wall Through Time

Living in China

Gobi: A Little Dog with a Big Heart

Alone Like Me

The Year of the Dog

Angel in Beijing

D is for Dancing Dragon

The Nian Monster

Take Me to Laolao

Ra Pu Zel and the Stinky Tofu

Shanghai page from See Inside Great Cities

Ok, so I wanted to include this book, Chinese Menu: The History, Myths, and Legends Behind Your Favorite Foods, even though Archer didn't read it. It is a super interesting book that tells the story of various Chinese dishes (not recipes). I think if we had longer than a week or if Archer were a little older than 5, it would have been a perfect addition! We might yet come back to it if we study ancient Asian cultures in the future.

Reading from Celebrations Around the World

Activities:

Beijing page from Seek and Find Around the World

Flag from Little Passports

Mazes from Around the World Mazes

Recipe:

We tend to eat a lot of Asian food so have Bao, Hong Kong Noodles, Beef and Broccoli and Beef Pan Fried Noodles on a semi-regular basis, so I wanted to try something new and different. We ended up trying Cantonese Ground Beef Rice and Eggs. Everyone in the family liked it, but we do have a pretty similar Thai recipe that we like just a little bit better, so it probably won't make regular rotation.

Read Aloud:

This week I read The Year of the Dog out loud. We thought it was cute. Archer liked that it was low stress. Last year we read Greetings from Somewhere the Mystery of the Forbidden City together. This week he read it himself.

Art:

We made some paper lanterns from (Babble Dabble Do). He enjoyed using washi tape to decorate it.

Videos:

See other Asia posts here:

Valentine's Day Theme Tot School

 These are our Valentine's Day Tot School activities. Juniper was 19 months at the time.

We did lots of light table play. I cut hearts out of these colored filter sheets. I also cut some hearts and circles out of black construction paper and laminated them.

We got out this adorable book, My Heart is Like a Zoo, for inspiration. All the animals in the book are made from different sized hearts.

Then I added a bunch of gems and valentine's scatter.

Valentine's play dough kit. I used paper straws, heart boxes, cookie cutters, a heart stamp, acrylic flowers and chocolate, mini fake roses and some valentine's scatter. Both younger kids used it several times.

Big brother's creation.

She played with these little felt envelopes I made for Xander when he was a baby.

I got out this flower puzzle, but it was way too advanced for her. She enjoyed taking all the pieces out and talking about the flowers, though.

Flower matching cards and flower toob. She could read most of the words, but had some trouble matching. To be fair, a lot of flowers look alike. She liked adding in the toys, though.

Flower and heart paper punches. She LOVED the idea of this activity, but definitely needed some help. She wanted to just put the whole punch onto the paper.

Heart sticks and a shaker fine motor activity (both from Dollar Tree). She had fun both putting them in and taking them out.

Valentine's Day sensory bin. I had pink rice and pearl barley with purple shaped pasta. Somehow the bin always ends up dumped, thank goodness for our messy mat.

Heart pattern matching

Playing with her building flowers

Do a Dot Markers on a heart.

And of course, no theme would be complete without books!

Llama Llama Loves his Mama

My Heart is Like a Zoo

A Pizza My Heart

Where is Baby's Valentine's

Love from the Crayons

Love from Bluey

Happy Love Day Daniel Tiger

Where is Love Biscuit? (not my fav, but she loves it)

I Love You Like No Otter

Tot School Winter Theme

 We took a short break from our color themes to do some winter related activities for Tot School this week. Juniper is still pretty young, so we kept it pretty simple.

Indoor snowballs with her little shovel. I put these in my kids' stockings years ago and they still get SO much use, year round.

Snowflake stickers

Cotton ball snowman transfer. She tried hard to use the little tweezers, but ended up just using her fingers. This is one she did multiple times throughout the week.

Simple sensory bin of Epsom salt, colorful gems, acrylic snowflakes and some glass gems.

Instant Snow and a penguin toob made for some messy cold day fun. A little bit goes a long way!

I got out our snowman playdough set. Both younger kids (and my husband) had fun with it. Juniper just elected to make purple snowmen.

Winter dot magnet activity. This was the first time she's really done a dot magnet page and she seemed to like it. It's a nice vertical fine motor activity.

I put a bunch of clear, blue and purple manipulatives in a container and printed some snowflake outlines onto transparency paper. Both kids had a great time playing with them on the light table.

Mitten pattern matching. This was her first time matching patterns and she did great! Definitely something we will have to do again with other themes.

Winter word vocabulary matching cards. This was the first time I gave Juniper more than 6 words at a time and she did pretty well. She probably got about 2/3s of them. The only problem was she wanted every card to be the "snow globe" and would say it first, even when she knew what the word really said!

Some of the winter books we read. These are the more interactive ones I included in a blog post.

These were the winter related early readers I had out. Apparently, the was the week for early readers because we had to read them a LOT! (Sets include Nonfiction Sight Word Readers Parent Pack Level B and Level D, Meet the Sight Words Level 3, First Little Readers Level D, and Animal Antics Readers.

Finally, another winter book that got read many many times this week was Daniel Tiger's Snowflake Day!