Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year, as we call it in the west, is a 15 day celebration called Spring Festival. It starts on the first new moon of the lunar year and ends on the first full moon. At the end of the 15 days there is a lantern festival. For these 15 days we will be studying Chinese New Year, China, customs, traditions, geography and will make a few things too. We have accomplished days 1 and 2 of our "unit".

Read of the history of Chinese New Year with these sites:

Some traditions we practiced:

The Chinese use the Lunar Calendar for determining when holidays will be. We learned about the lunar cycle with these websites:

  1. Phases of the Moon
  2. A Closer Look at the Moon
  3. The Moon (Bill Nye)

Numbers:

Maths:

Video:

  • Time Warp Trio Wushu Were Here from United Streaming
  • Journals Through History ancient China from United Streaming
  • Time Warp Trio: Sam Samari from United Streaming
  • Time Warp Trio: (can't remember the name) from United Streaming
  • Buster's Lucky Year from United Streaming

Arts:

  • Made Chinese Zodiac books (idea from this site)
  • Chip made a Chinese Zodiac chart
  • Looked at some Chinese art. Talked about symmetry. Printed out some pictures, folded them in half and drew the missing half.
  • viewed different forms of Chinese calligraphy as an art
  • This is sort of a math poject too-made geometrical dragon using construction paper (Dill)
  • Viewed pictures of traditional paper cutting (using google images). Made own paper cutting project. (Chip made his own pattern. Dill and Sweet took patterns off google images)

Computer and Research Skills:

  • Ancient China webquest. Not all the links work but research is good for the soul. Made a power point presentation. (Chip and Dill) I do not worry about the grade levels for these webquests. I truly believe that the child will absorb the information at their own level. (made powerpoint)
  • Komodo Dragon webquest. Not all links worked but did research. (Dill) (made powerpoint)
  • Kite research. Made powerpoint. (Sweet)

Language Arts

Geography

  • Read the information at this site aloud. Looked at the maps and discussed them.
  • Drew personal, color coded maps of China

Books Read--I had a hard time finding books to read that showed life in China as our library was flooded last year. I didn't want boring stuff so I picked three books that looked fun for the picklets to read to themselves. I have one read aloud included also.

  • Zen and the Art of Faking It by Jordan Sonnenblick (Chip and Dill)
  • Happy New Year, Julie by Megan McDonald (Chip and Dill)
  • Homesick by Jean Fritz (Sweet)
  • Grandfather Tang's Story by Ann Tompert (read aloud)

Interesting websites I found but did not utilize:

© 2009 Wicked Pickles-Homefront Lines