Learning About East Asia

If you’ve been following my blog, we started our Asia Unit last month and so far we successfully completed our Southeast Asia Study.  In this post, I present to you materials and activities we worked last week for East Asia. 

Maps and Flags

As you all by now, we ALWAYS start our continent/country study with maps and flags.  This will familiarize the child of the subject’s location and each of the country’s national symbol.  For the East Asia, we identified three major countries: China, Japan and South Korea

Materials:

• Asia in a Nutshell
• Asian Flags Nomenclature Cards Pack

Again, we used Lego to recreate flags.  This activity is similar to our Southeast Asia flag activity.

Famous Landmarks

We have painting/crafts activity and Lego play.  Our tablet is very useful for this activity.  We used it to view pictures (for clear view) and watch videos related to our study. 

Materials

• Asian Landmarks Cards for other activities (3-part cards, fact cards).
• Lego
• Paints
• Pink Tissue Paper

Famous landmark for Japan is Mount Fuji

             

 

We chose Great Walls of China as our subject here.  Here we use our fact cards, which Mavi reads while we view the bigger picture in our tablet.

Calligraphy

We are using the Japanese numbers in this activity.  I painted the characters on papers and cut them for presentation.  Now Mavi has to make the characters as well.

After the activity, Mavi was like “Mom it is so difficult!”. 

 

Animals

We’ve studied Asian Animals previously, so in this activity we’re doing a Panda puzzle.  I printed this from DLTK Kids, and Mavi has to color and form the Panda according to the cheat card.

 

Arts and Crafts

We made oriental fans and learned how to make origami items.  For the oriental fans, we used paper plates, used watercolor for the background and black tempera paint for the details.  Our origami papers are homemade because the real ones are so expensive in this side of the world.  They’re colored crafts paper and I cut them to a size of 6 x 6 inches.

Books

We used lots of books, but here are my son’s favourites [aff.links]:

• Letters Around the World:  China --->> OUR FAVOURITE SERIES!
• Discover Countries:  Japan

For more Asia Unit please check my Pinterst Board Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Continent Study: Asia on Pinterest.

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History and Geography

The Making of Bahay Kubo

Here’s my attempt of presenting how we made our Bahay Kubo (Nipa Hut) project which was part of our Southeast Asia Study.

It’s pretty simple actually. What you will be needing are the following:

• strips of cardboard paper
• bamboo skewers
• double sided tape
• green cardstock (roof)

Procedure

1.  Cover the upper portion of the sticks with the double sided tape.

2.  To make a wall, stick the strips of cardboard on the two bamboo skewers. See the picture below (make two of this).  Leave a square shape in the middle for the window.

3.  To make the square house, connect the two walls using the cardboard strips again.  It should automatically stick on the bamboo skewer because of the double sided tape.  But you can add more tape if needed.  Leave a rectangle opening on the other wall for the door.

4.  For the roof, I use a cardstock, folded it and cut some strips on its end.  To make it sturdy, I glued the middle part in a cardboard paper.

            

5. To attach the roof on the house, I tape (double sided) another strip of cardboard in the middle of the roof so I can place it on top of the house using the side walls. 

           

6.  For the stairs, again it’s pretty simple. I use the double sided tape to attach all the elements in the stairs.

And that’s how we were able to come up with a Nipa Hut model.  Hope this post will give you an idea how to make your own version as well. Happy weekend!

Next Level: Patterning

Did you know that the ability to recognize pattern is one of the most important intelligence skill ? Aside from mathematics, it can also be found in behaviour, routines and in nature.

Speaking of routines, we came across this activity in our workbook of pattern relating to a series of movements of a certain object. Take for example this link cubes in a grid.  Here Mavi has to guess my next move using the patterns of how I remove the cubes from the grid. 

Amazing isn’t it? We are so used of learning patterns of numbers, colors and shapes and patterns of movements, behaviours and such didn’t even crossed my mind!

And you know what I’m thinking as well?  We can also do dancing patterns!

Now, I just wanted to share this too. As part of learning patterns, Mavi developed a “stairs”

 

Then he realised that all number combinations are number bonds or parts of number 10!

1 and 9 (violet)

2 and 8 (blue)

3 and 7 (light green)

4 and 6 (brown)

5 and 5 (black)

6 and 4 (white)

7 and 3 (red)

8 and 2 (orange)

9 and 1 (green)

He’s like “they go together!”.  I love it when he discovers and learn things on his own. Amazing!

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The Beginnings

Hi everyone! As promised, I am sharing with you the early childhood activities I gave to Mavi when he was about 1+yrs old.  We started at 14 months and I was just giving him random activities I know of. It was then around 16 or 18 months that I learned about the importance of fine motor skills which they will eventually need in their preschool years and beyond.  So I made some research and started our journey in “home” schooling.

Reading Books

Now this is what we do since he was months old.  At first, we started with books for babies… simple stories, books with large pictures to capture his attention. 

Pre-writing Skills

Very basic activity but very important.  This will introduce them to writing, papers and pens.  I bought Crayolo jumbo for him for this.  Because I started Mavi early on writing, I never had problems with him when it comes to proper holding of a pencil/pen.

    

Transferring/Sorting

Just an introductory to sorting and colors and at the same time a practice grasping.  We are using an ice tray and M&M’s blue and yellow chocolate :)

   

Puzzles

Who doesn’t like puzzles? Don’t expect your child will immediately figure out this one or fell in love with it.  Mavi doesn’t know how to do with it at first.  He just loves to hold the puzzle pieces and admiring the pictures. 

Hand and Eye Coordination

This is a simple activity of dropping the M&M’s on a hole (we’re using a milk container).  I love watching him concentrate!

 

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Integrating Workbooks and Hands-On Materials

With math, I use workbooks and Math Montessori Album which I purchased from KHT Montessori. In this post, I will show you how we integrate workbooks and Montessori Math.

So we start with     a workbook. As you can see we are currently reviewing the place value. Using the book, we discuss this a little bit, then close the book and prepare our Montessori materials for a hands-on activity.

In Montessori, there are a number of ways on how to present place value. I have talked about this before using the Golden Beads. This time, we used the Stamp Game tiles.  Here's my presentation of hundreds, tens and ones. Each digit can range from 0 to 9.

Then I set up an activity for Mavi to see if he was able to grasp the concept.  I don't want to overwhelm him so we only worked up to tens. The number tiles you see here is from our Hundred Boards.

After the hands-on activities and when he's ready we work on the workbooks. Adding hands-on activities to textbooks/workbooks/activity sheets makes the learning less tedious and more exciting for little fellows. So either way, workbooks or hands-on activities you'll be fine.

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Home + School = Afterschool!

Learning About Southeast Asia

Here’s a summary of activities for learning Southeast Asia.

Map and Flags 

Familiarization of the Southeast Asia Map and identification of the countries.

Materials: 

• Asia in a Nutshell
• Flags of Asia Pack (Nomenclature and Pin Flags)

Lego Play

Son is obsessed with Lego, so I just have to use to my advantage heehee.  Here we are making flags of some countries in Southeast Asia.  Typically we paint or draw them, but they’re even more beautiful when you make them with Legos!

Ah and my favourite of all :)

It’s always a struggle to get things done when you Vito around LOL

People, Culture, Lifestyle

We used my homemade materials for this and some books that we owned to explore facts on Southeast Asia.

Materials:

• Asia in a Nutshell
• Major Rivers Around the World

Here we read a book about the great rivers in Asia.

  

Very helpful fact cards.  Mavi learned a lot from this one, especially about the tsunamis in Indonesia, rice paddies and fruits unique to Southeast Asia.

                 

Philippine flag, a model of Philippine jeepney, a model of bangka (fishing boat in the Philippines) and Philippine Peso play money.  These were sent to us by my sister-in-law. And the books which I purchased from the Philippines a long long time ago. 

                

Crafts and other Materials

We made a model of Bahay Kubo!  Read about it here. Surprisingly, I’ve been receiving request as well to post the details of how we made it.  I’ll try my best to post it as soon as possible.  

  

My sister in law gave us a wonderful collection of Philippine-related materials!

            

Thank you so much for taking time to view this post. Our next stop is East Asia!

More Asia Unit here: Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Continent Study: Asia on Pinterest.

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!