China and Japan Studies

I posted already about our food journeys through East Asia, but I thought I would do a quick highlight of some of the other things we did to study Japan and China.

There is no way we could study Japan without some good study of ninjas!

We read Magic Treehouse #5:  Night of the Ninjas.  We had read it before, but now, she has a Fact Tracker to go along with it, which was super exciting!  There are also lesson plans to go along with the book at the Magic Treehouse site.  Of course, we had to do a little ninja training camp!

We made some origami turtles, which Isaiah decided needed some masks and weapons to be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I found a link from an art teacher talking about the art of making fake food, which is called gyodan and is a true art form!  We did a bit of research and watched a video from youtube and then had some playdough time to make some fake food.

Shrimp and noodles

Shrimp, noodles and sauce, sushi, and the boys were determined all the containers needed to be included for "sauces"

We watched a video about the Japanese tea ceremony, and I had a tray for Zeke to do some scooping with marbles and his plastic playdough tea set.

Much of our time studying China centered around Chinese New Year, about which I already posted, but I didn't include a couple photos of the Singaporean CNY tradition that we got to participate in, which is called Lo Hei.  It was a very cool time of mixing this elaborate salad together, each part symbolizing something.

Isaiah has also really enjoyed making some lapbooks, and he put a lot of work into this one that we made about China.  

Most of the pieces were from Homeschool Share, but I did also include the Chinese Animals portion from Homeschool Helper Online because I know how much Isaiah loves animals.