homeschool preschool - age 4 - around the world (part one)

We've had a busy week in general (so many Halloween festivities!) and a busy week in tot school, too. Our Around The World unit will probably be spread over three weeks just to cover all of the material without a rush. This past week, we wrapped up our first week and it was so much fun! To kick things off, Ethan and I began with a talk about where our family history began. Using our classroom map, I mapped Ethan's family history as well as those of some of his best friends. He enjoyed seeing the places on the map where he and his friends "came from."

From there, we began our activities. For this unit, I checked out a book from the library to correspond with each activity. This was a fun way to learn more about different countries and cultures before diving into an activity. We have a whole bunch more countries to learn about over the next two weeks, but to recap what we went over during our first week:

INDIA

The book we used was "The Road to Mumbai" by Ruth Jeyaveeran. For our activity, Ethan made some clay diyas and learned more about Diwali. While a traditional diya has a cotton wick, we improvised with some small candles from the dollar store. Ethan loved using the modeling clay to create the base for his diyas and then had a blast decorating them once they dried.

ITALY

The book we used was "Gabriella's Song" by Candace Fleming. For this activity, we learned all about Roman mosaics and Ethan created his own mosaic art using cut up squares made from paint swatches. He absolutely loved this activity!

A flower and a camel

RUSSIA

We read "Rechenka's Eggs" by Patricia Polacco. For our craft, we made eggs like Rechenka's using some wooden eggs I found at Michael's, paint and glitter -- lots of glitter!

VIETNAM

We read "Ten Mice for Tet" by Pegi Deitz Shea and learned all about Tet, the Vietnamese New Year. For our craft, we made our own Li Xi, or red envelopes embossed with gold. For this one, Ethan got to use gold embossing powder to create designs on red envelopes. He plans on handing them out to his friends to celebrate!

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