Expedition Earth-India

We traveled to India in our Expedition Earth unit!

Here are the activities we did in India:

*India map
*Flag of India
*Learned our names and some words in Hindi
*Learned about several festivals
* Made stone inlay boxes
*Read several stories from India
*Made a lotus flower
*Tried Bollywood dancing
*Listened to Bollywood music
*Learned about the significance of the peacock in Indian Art
*Made a peacock souvenir pin

 Peacock Souvenir Pin with lots of sparkle like the Bollywood outfits!

Matthew's box

Faith's box

Lotus Flower card

Updates tonight!

I have gotten very busy and have not updated in over a month!  I will be updating with several posts tonight!  So hang tight, readers!

Playing Catch-Up

It seems we have gotten extremely busy!  This week and last we have been trying to catch up with everything.  I wonder if we're not doing enough each day or have too much scheduled.  When I did my lesson planning, I planned for the entire school year, but I didn't leave room for things to come up- Field trips/ classes/ fun activities/ etc.  I'm thinking I may need to replan my year with built in catch up days.  I will be posting a few Expedition Earth posts as well as some others in the next couple days. 

Expedition Earth- Japan

We finished Japan last week.  I'm a bit behind in posting but will get caught up soon!


This is what we did for Japan:

*Located Japan on the map and found the capital city
*Mapping worksheet
*Flag worksheet
*Learned about Zen gardens and created our own tabletop Zen garden
*Learned about the Children's Festival (boy's festival) and The Doll's festival (girl's festival)
* Made a Samurai Warrior doll and a Japanese Lady doll
*Watched Discovering Asia- Japan DVD
*Learned some origami
*Had Yakitori and Japanese sponge cake for dinner
*Read several stories about Japan and read Flat Stanley's World Adventures- The Ninja Surprise.

Our Zen garden.  I purchased everything at the Dollar Tree for a total of $3.  We made a little rake out of cardboard but it didn't work too well.  When we were at the dollar store again today we found a Zen garden kit complete with rake for only $1! 

Samurai Warrior doll for The Children's festival.

Our Origami duck.  Construction paper isn't the best paper to use for origami!!

This is what the origami ducks were supposed to be like.  Ours were close :)

Yakitori- Skewered grilled chicken with a sweet sauce and green onions.  This isn't my picture.  I forgot to take a picture of ours and we ate it before I realized I was supposed to take a picture!

Japanese sponge cake made with eggs, sugar, honey and flour.  Very simple and yummy!

Japanese Sake (rice wine as it is sometimes referred to in the states).  It tasted like a cross between wine and vodka.  It was used in the sauce of the yakitori.

Finally we made a Kimono pin for our souvenir suitcase!

National Novel Writing Month- The young writers program

Just found out about this great site!  November is National Novel Writing Month and this site http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/ teaches kids (and adults!) how to write a novel in 30 days.  They will even publish your book for free!   The lesson plans look pretty good.  I just skimmed a few, but I think I will be adding these to our curriculum.

This info is from freelyeducate.com :

For Young Writers: Free Workbooks, Free Snail Mail Goodies, and Free Publishing of Your Novel!

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) has a Young Writers Program for students 17 years old and younger.  Even better, they have a lot of great freebies (virtual and physical ones) to give away to all of us.

What is NaNoWriMo?

"It is a fun, seat-of-your-pants novel writing event where the challenge is to write an entire novel in just 30 days. That means participants begin writing November 1 and must finish by midnight, November 30. The word-count goal for our adult program is 50,000 words, but our Young Writers Program allows participants who are 17 years old and younger to set reasonable, yet challenging, word-count goals."

Ready for the challenge?  Start with these freebies:
Free Workbooks (digital download):
Before NaNoWriMo, if you would like to teach your students what a novel is all about and how to write one, download one of the three "non-lame" workbooks .  (I downloaded all three books: elementary, middle school and high school safely)
Free Classroom Noveling Kit (in your snail mail!)

On the Educators' Page you'll find free lesson plans and other resources, but be sure to notice the free classroom noveling kit for classes of ten or more students.  The classroom noveling kit contains buttons, stickers, and a progress report.  It will be shipped to your mailing address.
Free Publishing
On this page, you'll see a couple of offers of "free publishing" to children with completed manuscripts.
How to Get this Freebie:  Visit the NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program site to learn more.
Limited Time Offer:  Remember, NaNoWriMo begins November 1st!

Expedition Earth- South Korea

Annyeong!  (hello!)  This week we traveled to Korea!  Here is what we did this week!



*Located Korea on the map and the capital
*Completed a mapping activity and flag worksheet
*Listened to Korean Folk music
*Read about a day in the life of an average Korean kid
*Lapbook activities
*Talked about some animals in Korea
*Read about the Finless porpoise and watched videos on them
*Played Kawi Pawi Po (Scissors, rock, paper)
*Celebrated Korean Lunar New Year- Sul, did the traditional bows and received Bokjumoni (gift purse with money and sweets).
*Learned names and words in Korean
*Learned about the women divers of Jeju island.
*Made our souvenir pins
*Ended with a traditional Korean dinner

Playing Kawi Pawi Po (Scissors, rock, Paper)  Korean children use this game when walking home from school.  The loser has to carry everyone's books and backpacks!

We learned our names in Korean as well as some other words- hello, goodbye, please and thank you.

These are the traditional bows done by children to their elders during Sul, The Korean Lunar New Year.  The children honor their elders with a bow then are given Bokjumoni (gift purse) filled with money and candy.

This is our Bokjumoni.  Each bag had $1 and mini marshmallows in it.  I forgot to buy candy and this is what we had in the pantry! :)


To end our journey to Korea, we ate Bulgogi- Korean BBQ beef.  We also had some Korean cookies and dessert.

The green cup on the left is filled with chocolate filled squares, the little mushrooms are cookies with a chocolate top, on the right are sweetened puffed rice rolls, on top left is drinkable yogurt and Aloe Vera juice.  It sounds weird but was actually really good!  It was just Aloe vera juice, aloe vera pulp and sugar.  It tasted very fruity!

This is the drinkable yogurt.  These are used mostly as a dessert.  They are only about  3 inches tall.  Very yummy!

 Our souvenir pins for our suitcases are clay vases with bamboo.

Next stop on our global journey is Japan!

Expedition Earth- China

This year we're using the Expedition Earth curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler.  This is actually our 2nd week.  The first week was just an intro to geography- learning the continents and oceans.  This week the real journey began!

*we stamped our passports with a China flag
*learned basic China facts- religions, currency, population, etc
*Read about an average Chinese kid- food they eat, clothes they wear, school
*China map worksheet
*Flag of China worksheet
*Watched videos about Chinese Acrobats


We made our own China paper dolls.

We studied Pandas and made panda masks.  We also watched the IMAX movie China- The Panda Adventure.  Good movie!

We learned about the ancient Chinese puzzle Tangrams and made a swan.

For each country we will make a pin to represent that country.  I made a "suitcase" to place all of our pins on.  The suitcase is just a piece of felt with a cloth handle that we hung up on the wall.  China's pin is a mini version of the Tangram swan we made.

We learned how to say and write our names and numbers 1-10 in Chinese.  We learned Hello, goodbye, please and thank you as well.

To end our trip to China we went out to eat at a China buffet!  It was delicious!  Although they didn't have Chinese music playing, just some good ol' American rock and roll!  Oh well the food was really good! :)

This week we travel to South Korea!

Thank you Picasso!

I can see the writing on the walls!  And the desk..... and the door... and the table....

For some reason Matthew, who is 6, still draws all over everything. Isn't this something that supposed to happen during the terrible 2s?   Every week or so I find a new scribble or drawing pop up.  Today, him and I spent an hour scrubbing the walls in his room.  But I may have a solution thanks to Picasso!
While we were studying about Picasso, we read a book about Picasso as a kid.  Apparently, he was a pretty naughty kid- always drawing on everything, painting on his sister, and carving pictures in the living room walls.  His dad was a painter and thought that little Pablo just needed a creative outlet.  So his dad handed over all of his paints, brushes, paper, canvases, everything he had to create art with.  Picasso began painting and painting and stopped driving his mother crazy!  
This week (after the walls are scrubbed)  I'm going to cover Matthew's bedroom walls in paper and velcro crayons to the paper.  Now he'll be able to draw all he wants and not get into trouble!  I'm also going to paint his school desk white and let him have at it!  When the desk gets too full I can paint it again. It worked for Picasso's parents, hopefully it will work for us too!  And maybe, we'll have a famous artist someday.  Who knows?

Frank Sinatra says it best!

This goes with my previous post! Thanks Frankie! :)

NO! No way, No thanks, Not now, NO NO NO!

Nope, I'm not yelling at my kids!  If you're an overcommiter, people pleaser like me, these are the hardest phrases to say!  I discovered recently (after agreeing to do something I didn't want to do) that I can't say no.  Since I say yes all the time (or some form of yes- sure, I suppose, I guess, no problem)  I get asked to do things all the time.  Along the way of pleasing others, I found that I don't do things for me.  If you aren't taking time to do the things you enjoy, you will get burned out and become miserable.  I found a great book called How To Say No Without Feeling Guilty by Patti Breitman and Connie Hatch.  It's ok to say no sometimes!  It's ok to not want to do something!  If you're too busy, life will pass you by and by the time you notice, it will be too late.  Stop to smell the roses or if you don't want to say, "No, thanks!"