Another week planning to be busy with the kids finding out about a whole new culture. As we discovered last week there was an influx of chinese immigrants during the gold rush on the west coast. The kids asked lots of questions and we learned how this influenced food in the region and how the population grew in regions and began forming chinatowns. There is a lot of history the kids are curious about so this week we are continuing to look into the immigration of the Chinese during and after the gold rush era, and we are going to look at modern day China. Our art project this week will center around learning chinese symbols.
like this for instance (i think) it says learn chinese - taken from this site which gives you an alphabetic listing of common symbols. chineseculture symbols. Here are some of the books I found to help teach the kids about china, and the chinese language and culture.
This also means we will be eating chinese this week, hosting a chinese new years celebration.
Making a dragon, kitesand lanterns.
We will make fortune cookies 
chinese dumplings, egg rolls, etc.
Found this blog, Rasa Malaysia Asian food index and incredible food photography. We will be making several things on this list the next few days. And it just so happens that our local Museum is having a display throughout the summer on China's First Emperor, Qin Shi Huang. So a perfect ending to our week will be a field trip to see this. I will post progress as I can, its rather hard to keep pace with our busy summer and snag time to come update. But I am sure we will have lots of photo ops with the kids projects, and a lot to share about what we learn. One thing I am learning is how important it is to be in-tune to what the kids want - it is their summer, and last week we were all set to work on a project and then I saw their interest wean some, so I asked if there was something they would rather do, and we ended up in the sprinklers for a few hours - and they were being so silly and really enjoying themselves. We have lots of times like that where we are just enjoying the summer. Finding balance to provide them a rich learning experience but not taking away from their sense of enjoyment is key. So far, they are very responsive to all the ideas, and I can tell their favorite activities have been our various art/craft projects and all our nature walks. We are specifically taking a nature day once a week, and weather permitting we are outside enjoying our world every single day. Have a great week.
Love your imagination and the things you are doing with your children over the summer. What great educational experiences.
Posted by: Cia Dreves | June 24, 2009 at 11:37 PM