Wow, I cannot believe we’ve finished another unit already! The past two weeks, we have learned all about Chinese culture and ducks. The Five in a Row book we’ve been reading is The Story about Ping.
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| Watching “Big Bird in China” on the laptop |
These were the books we read:
I’m really enjoying spreading out each book for two weeks. My “formal” lesson plans are brief (only lasting us maybe 45 minutes), but we usually always engage in some sort of impromptu art or math lesson afterwards. I think that is what I love most about homeschooling – we have the freedom to further explore anything we want. We aren’t bound by standards and lists!
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| Acting out the poem, “5 Little Ducks” |
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| Tangrams…this was a big hit! |
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| Inspired by another blog, I made a “Search and Find” using Scrabble letters and beans. M dug around and found the letters that matched the words on his sheet. |
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| Science experiment to see how ducks use oil to stay waterproof |
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| We learned a little about the Chinese New Year and made dragons |
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| A peek into our lapbook |
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| Our “Art Gallery” all decked out with crafts! |
I separated our learning into a little Chinese culture and a little discovery into the world of ducks. For China, we made flags, wrote our names in Chinese characters, learned all about the Great Wall of China, and even tried out a few phrases in Chinese!
We incorporated a lot of science into our mini duck unit and I even learned a thing or two! Did you know that ducks take oil from a gland and spread it all over their feathers, so when they dive in the water, they are waterproof? I must have missed that in elementary school!
Tonight we are headed to a Chinese buffet and if the weather’s nice, we may hit the walking trail to see if we can find any ducks at the pond.
Next up on our trip around the world: Italy!