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

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History and Geography

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!

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Bahay Kubo (Nipa Hut)

Bahay Kubo is square shaped house with no divisions, just a door and windows.  It is made up of local materials such as wood or bamboo or  nipa grass.  It is a Philippine icon and represents the Filipino culture.  Note that these houses are raised, for proper ventilation I guess since the flooring is made up of bamboo.  Another reason is to avoid the flood.

Yes I have seen Bahay Kubo and have friends and relatives who used to live on this type of house.  Until now, they still exist and I can’t wait to show them to Mavi.  He has always been fascinated with Bahay Kubo. Maybe he can’t imagine how people can live on just a square house. 

Thus, I decided to create a model using cardboard boxes from Book Depository. 

There are still people who lives in this stilt houses and I can’t wait to show it to Mavi when we visit the folks this year :)

I cut out the cardboard boxes into strips then stick them on a wooden BBQ skewers.

And here’s how the skeleton  looks like when all four sides are attached.

Adding the roof which is made up of cardstock and a wooden ladder here’s the end product.

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ASIA Unit Study 2014

It always excites my son to study Asia.  For some reason, he finds this continent so mysterious.  As I said before, maybe it’s because of the diversity in culture, people and lifestyle.  We came from the Philippines and in a short time we stayed in Singapore.  Mavi even attended a Chinese school and yes at 2 years old he can speak a few Chinese :D  So Mavi was exposed to the different culture and people but he was young then, so he couldn’t appreciate it yet.

Anyway, here are the materials/activities I prepared for Mavi for this year’s study.  This is just Asia in general, I have separate post for each study of the Asian regions.

MAP WORKS

A review of the Asia Map.  We are also doing a puzzle map similar to this activity. 

Presentation and work of the Asian Regions. Asia is divided into 6 regions, namely:  Southeast Asia, East Asia, South Asia, West Asia, Central Asia and North Asia (Russia).  Here we identified major countries of each regions and place the Asia Pin Flags to plot their location.  Mavi also worked on the 3-part card of the Asian regions.

 

HABITAT

Study of Animals of Asia and Habitats. 

Below is a worksheet for Mavi to work plotting the appropriate habitat.

ANIMALS OF ASIA

The study of habitat is side by side with our animal study.  We use the cards to look into the animals and sort them out whether they live in a rainforest, desert or grassland. 

In addition, we made animal skin prints similar to Africa Study.

           

 

Now this study won’t be complete without learning about the treasures of Asia.  We used the Natural Resources of the World cards for this.  In the set-up I placed papers and a pen to write/draw the end products of Asia’s resources.

 

ASIAN CUISINE

Now this is part of daily life as this what I always prepare at home (Asian Cuisine cards).  I just have to emphasize to Mavi from what country our meal of the day came from.

     

Coming up… Southeast Asia!

More activities from here:

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Religious Crafts and Activities for Kids

Sharing with you some religious crafts we did to go along with our study of Religions in Asia. 

Hinduism

Hindus offer garlands to God and to their guests as a sign of welcome.  Our garland was made of tissue paper and I used a thread to tie them up all together to form a garland.

 

Mavi decorated his hand.  This is a Hindu tradition wherein a Hindu bride would decorate its hand with a red dye called mehndi on her wedding day.

Christianity

One of the poignant moment in Christianity is the death of Jesus Christ.  So here, we made Mount Cavalry using paper plates and paint and added three crosses.  This is where Jesus died with two other outlaws.

  

Islam

We made prayer rug used by the Muslims when they worship Allah.  Instead of making a stunning and complicated design which Muslim craftspeople are known of, we just weaved our rug using cardstock.

              

Seen below, Mavi demonstrates how it is used.

Using Legos, we made a model of a Muslim mosque.  We used a styro paper cup and top it with a crescent symbol for the dome.  to signify an Islam mosque. Mavi loved this one the most!

 

Hope you enjoy this post.  More of our Asian Unit Study coming your way.  Till next time!

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