We did our China country study a few weeks ago. So this post? It’s long overdue. But better late than never. Right?

This was one of our favourite country studies to date. Chinese history and culture are fascinating. We used The Story About Ping as a springboard … and then we dove deep.

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Here’s a sampling of what we learned…

Bible

The Story About Ping perfectly illustrates the concept of obedience. Kids of Integrity has a great lesson on the topic of obedience. And I love that Focus on the Family makes these resources free. We also used the Family Times virtue pack on Obedience. (No link because, unfortunately, these are no longer sold as far as I can tell.)

Our favourite part of the unit study was spending some time praying for China. Operation World provides an awesome prayer guide. In fact, we ended up purchasing their book, Pray for the World, so that we could incorporate this into all of our country studies.

Geography/Social Studies

We coloured the flag of China looked for China on our map, in the atlas and on the globe.

We visited Toronto’s Chinatown. (You’ll definitely want to check out that post!)

We watched a video about cormorant fishing. We talked about different methods of catching fish.

History

We purchased a storybook about the Silk Road from one of our favourite local shops and talked about the history of the Silk Road. Then we talked about silk itself, using the story of its discovery from Mystery of History as a starting point for our discussion.

We learned about the Great Wall of China and why/how it was built. And then we built it out of blocks. 🙂

Language Arts

As mentioned, our “book of the week” was The Story About Ping by Marjorie Flack and Kurt Weise. This is a story about a little duck who lives on the Yangtze River in China.

(We also followed our regular handwriting and phonics curriculum.)

Math

This week, we just focused on our regular math work,

Science

A balloon-powered boat provided tons of fun. We pretended that the bathtub was the Yangtze River and sailed away.

Art/Drama

I ordered peacock dresses off of eBay., along with some bamboo umbrellas. The girls had tons of fun dressing up. Since it was Chinese New Year, we also decorated the house with paper lanterns from Michael’s.

Chinese Food

While in Chinatown, we visited a little bakery and snacked on delicious steamed buns. So yummy!

We’re really enjoying our geography units. Stay tuned for more posts as we travel the world from our living room. 🙂