The first week of the curriculum is a basic introduction to geography and then you start with the continent of Asia. I posted already about our special guest from Japan but here are some fun photos and information from the rest of our Asia study.

For China we made Chinese fans. We eat a lot of Chinese food so we didn’t do anything special for food.

For South Korea we made Jeweled Crowns for our craft. And for dinner at the end of the unit we tried a Korean restaurant called Namoo. We immediately became hooked on the place and have been back for Gotcha Day’s and birthdays.

For India our craft was to make our version of “inlaid stone tile.”  One fun fact about India is that they invented chess.

For Israel our craft was to paint the “Dome of the Rock.”  One fun fact we learned is that Israel has more doctors per patient ration compared to the US.

For Thailand our craft was to make a Floating Thai boat. We took the girls to Sweet Basil for Thai food. The photo above is of Thai dumplings which were different than Chinese, but just as delicious! Fun fact was that Thai people eat 4 or 5 times a day and that chopsticks are not widely used like in other Asian countries.

Nadia’s Torii Gate was a craft for Japan along with lots of origami.

We had a wonderful time doing this study on the continent of Asia. There was a lot more than was photographed here and we learned all sorts of cool things about far off places. We watched quite a few videos on Youtube and checked out lots of books from the library. After finishing Asia we moved on to Europe.

We started this study and it just seemed to take us forever to get through it because we did all sorts of things in between. It was a really interesting study and I especially liked the part on eyes.

Smell experiments caused lots of screaming. HA!!

Touch experiments and fingerprinting. 

Sight

Taste

Cute photo of Dani looking at all the Senses books we got from the library. To buy the study from Amanda Bennett’s site, go here.

Next up on our unit study list was “Whale Tales” which we got from the Amanda Bennett site. This was a really interesting one and the first time that Dani wanted to be in the mix for everything. She spent a lot of time on my lap and never wanted to miss any of the videos. While Nadia was doing a lot of reading and writing she would go off and play with toys, but she always kept an eye on me to make sure she wasn’t missing anything. The cutest part was when she would mimic the whale sounds – I should have made a video of her because it was so cute.

The unit was broken down into five days.

Day 1: What is a Whale?

Day 2: Getting to know Whales.

Day 3: Where are Whales?

Day 4: The Science of Whales

Day 5: Cool things about Whales

Nadia declared the beluga whale her favorite and Amelie liked the blue whale the best. I agreed with Amelie because I think it’s amazing that the blue whale is the largest and loudest animal ever in the history of the world. We checked out a lot of really wonderful books from the library with great photos of whales in action.

*A catching up blog post*

As we were preparing to leave for our trip to China in February to meet Dani, I did a Chinese New Year unit with Amelie and a more in depth China Unit study with Nadia. I thought it would be fun to study because our house was filled with endless discussions about China already. We used one of the Amanda Bennett studies again because they are so convenient and easy to use.

On each of the 5 days of study we learned about a place in China, a Chinese animal, a Chinese invention and a missionary to China. It was very informative and we watched quite a few interesting and beautifully filmed videos.

As always Nadia loves putting together her lapbook at the end. It gives us a chance to review everything we have learned and talk about our favorite parts of the study.

Nadia and I did a Horse Unit study this month and it was very interesting and we learned lots of neat facts about horses. She liked the Arabians most followed by the Clydesdale’s (which we learned were from Scotland). This was the first unit study for Dani to be exposed to and she enjoyed watching the videos while sitting in her TARDIS spica chair. We laughed a lot when we were listening to recordings of horses and Dani tried to mimic the sounds.

Here is how the unit study was set up.

Day 1: What is a horse?

Day 2: Getting to know horses.

Day 3: Where are the horses?

Day 4: The Science of horses.

Day 5: Cool Things about horses.

We watched videos and read a book about the wild ponies of Assateague Island and it reminded me that we have a friend who lives on the neighboring island. She sent all 3 girls postcards from her daughter Emi and Nadia wanted hers on the cover of the lapbook. Amelie saw hers and said, “HEY! We saw these ponies on the computer!” We enjoyed this unit study as much as the others we have done from UnitStudy.com.

Nadia was really excited when I told her this unit study on the brain had come out and she asked me to buy it right away. It took us a while to get around to it because we were working on other stuff, but it was a great one! We learned all about the three main parts of the brain with lots of interesting videos and informational websites. Additionally there was a “Brainiac of the Day” which featured people like Dr. Ben Carson and Thomas Edison.

Jedi’s need to learn about the brain to use the force

Nadia made a neuron out of playdough.

Working on one of the parts of her lapbook. The favorite memories she picked out were very sweet and the pictures she drew are super cute! Nadia found so many things about this unit study amazing and was so happy to finally complete it.

As our regular readers know we love Unit Studies around here. After the Tiger unit Nadia wanted to Dolphins and I was excited about that. She has often heard me tell the story of when my friend Jessica and I swam with dolphins in Cancun, Mexico. This study came from Amanda Bennett’s site.

Nadia did more of the reading and writing on this study than the past since her skills are getting stronger each day. She had a lot of fun matching up the definitions to the words and to make it harder there were way more words to choose from than we used.

It would be an understatement to say the girls LOVED all the Dolphin videos we watched during this unit. Nadia declared the dolphin stampede her favorite.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEXwlilZqnM

We learned so many cool things about dolphins in this unit. One of the suggested books was a real life story of a man who saved a baby dolphin who had a hook stuck in it. While he was under water with the baby, the mother and father dolphin fought off a shark to protect the man and baby. Once I started reading Nadia begged me to finish the entire book in one night. She said, “It doesn’t matter how late I am up, I NEED to know how it ends.”

Once again this was a great unit with a lot of learning and fun. Next up we are planning on studying the Brain. When Nadia heard that a new unit was available she said, “Please buy it mom! I want to find out if there is water on my brain.”

Once we finished reading the book we got the movie from Netflix. While Nadia and Amelie laughed out loud at the slapstick humor, Nadia immediately pointed out that it wasn’t like the book. At the end we talked about it and she said the book was better than the movie. That’s my girl!

A cute tiger craft.

We started this unit study ages ago and finally finished this week. The main thing the girls would say about this unit was that they LOVED the videos of the tigers, especially the baby tigers and swimming tigers.

Here are the girls watching some of the tiger videos.

As with the other Amanda Bennett Unit Studies, it was broken up into 5 days.

What is a Tiger?

Getting to know Tigers.

Where are the Tigers?

The Science of Tigers.

Cool Things about Tigers.

“Spider Bat” completed this part of the Tiger Unit. Ha ha!

Even though this unit took us much longer than usual, we did have a great time. Amelie thought that tigers with webbed toes for swimming were the best. Nadia thought the Siberian Tigers who lived in the cold were the coolest.

The basic layout of this unit is to do a beginning worksheet where the child answers questions and then start reading the book. After each chapter we went to see what the activity was for the lapbook.

Nadia showing Amelie her completed lapbook.

Nadia really enjoyed this and by the end I knew that she was going to remember this book for a long time. Stopping after each chapter to complete the lapbook activity really reinforced the story for her. It also opened up some good discussions about how wild and sometimes confusing this book can be.

I am looking forward to the next classic book unit study on our list!