Vamos a China (Let's go to China)

For about six months now we have been doing our homeschooling activities based around a theme. For me this works the best for many reasons.

First, I have to find and gather resources and materials. We are very lucky to have a library system with lots of books in Spanish. I have to plan ahead and reserve them, however, because they are spread out among several libraries and would be impossible to find on my own. I also have to look for videos, printables, and websites in Spanish. They are out there, but again, not always easy to find.

Second, I think that the thematic approach allows us to get more indepth with a topic. The boys hear the same new words while we read, play games, color pictures, sing songs, and watch videos.

This past week we did a mix of Valentines activities and China. I had planned to start a new topic today but Diego is still interested in China so we will keep learning more. Isn't that the beauty of homeschool?

Here is a list of activities that we have done or are in the process of doing for our study of China.

Found China on the globe.

Set up chairs and pretended to fly to China.

Learned to write numbers 1-10 in Chinese (picture below)

Coloring pages (Great Wall, Dragons, etc.)

Color-by-numbers dragon (picture below)

Made Chinese Dragon out of toliet paper rolls (picture coming soon)

Made a Panda puppet

Played dominos (idea from Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns)

Made a Great Wall of China out of Legos (also from Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns)

Visited this website many times to learn about Chinese Dragons, Pandas, and Chinese New Year (This is an awesome website IN SPANISH for all of my bilingual buddies who are studying China.)

Diego's numbers are obviously on the right. He wanted to do this over and over again.

This was our first color-by-numbers page. He understood the concept but wanted me to do half of it with him.

Here are our topics since the beginning of the year. I do not allot of specific amount of time to each one. We just learn until we are ready to move on the next topic.

Winter

Penguins/Antartica

Valentines

China

Space (next)

Check out more Geography inspired activities at Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn.