Today was our last day of studying The Story About Ping.  We've enjoyed it so much, I'll be sad to set it aside and move on!  I wonder if all the books will be this way?

We did a lot of fun things today: crafts, made a great dinner, played a board game, etc.  I thought it would be a good way to end the unit, and DS had a blast!

We started the day as usual with our Bible study, lesson 5 in Leading Little Ones To God.  It was called God Talks To Us and it answered a lot of his questions from yesterday.  The lesson taught us that God talks to us a lot through the reading of His Word, the Bible.  He also talks to us sometimes through His Spirit whispering in our hearts, telling us what is right and wrong and revealing His will for us.

After our Bible study, we sat down with our books that we found at the library and learned a whole lot about China.  We found pictures of houses, traditional clothing, a family eating dinner, a farm with ducks, fishing boats, Chinese lanterns, calligraphy and other things related to our study.  We learned how to say "Wo jiao ____" which means "My name is ____" and "Ni hao" which means "How are you?" and we decided that we wanted to learn how to write our names in Chinese, so we got online to find a Chinese language website.  We discovered that the Chinese do not use "letters" like we do in our alphabet, but instead they use "characters" that stand for a whole word.

Did you know that an adult in China needs to know at least 3,000 characters in order to read a newspaper?  Makes our 26 letters and accompanying sounds seem like a cinch!

We found a name generator where you can plug in the approximate sounds of the syllables in your name to get a Chinese name, complete with corresponding Chinese characters.  Here's what we came up with:

DS:  Bei Bao nuo

DD:  Bi Ai de

DH:  Bai Ren yi

Me:  Bei Bao ren

We found another map of China and located the Yangtze River for review.  It was easier to see how long the river is in this map and DS said "You mean the river goes this far!?  Wow!" and then he took it upon himself to find every other river in China and compare them to the Yangtze!

After we did this, we decided it was probably a good time to start setting up for our dinner.  We hung the lanterns that we made all over the ceiling, put a blanket down on the floor, and put a tray in the middle, and some pillows on either side.  We set out a plate, bowl and chopsticks for each of us.

When it was time to make our Chinese dinner, we put on our aprons and started our prep work.  In China, they use a concept called mise en place, which means "everything in its place".  So we did the same!  We prepped everything and had it in bowls ready to put into our recipes when the time came.  We boiled the chicken and diced it up, chopped carrots, water chestnuts, and garlic, and set out our bean sprouts, peas, salt, sugar, soy sauce, oil, cooking spray and cornstarch.  We pre-made white rice, beat eggs, and laid out our egg roll wrappers with a moist paper towel on top to keep them from drying out.  Here is DS chopping carrots:

Then, we got to work putting it all together.  We made egg rolls, egg drop soup, and fried rice.  We served it with green tea, Chinese coconut cookies, and fortune cookies:

Everything was delicious!

We discussed Chinese table manners and traditions and learned how to use chopsticks.  DS tried everything, but I don't think he liked much of anything except the cookies!  I was so proud of him for trying!

After dinner, we read Ping one last time so DH could hear it and played a board game that we made.  I found the game here if you would like to print it out and make it for your own study.  You have to answer questions about the book to move forward, so it was wonderful review!  DH joined us for this and it ended up being a wonderful family evening!

Our 5th day bled into a 6th as we finished up some things that we didn't get to do during the week.  DS got up and watched Disney's Mulan so he could see more about the culture in China.  This is one of his favorites and he's seen it a million times, but he saw it through new eyes and picked up a lot that he hasn't in the past.

Then, we made ducks out of paper plates. 

I wanted to make sure we studied buoyancy for this unit since the little boat boy had a barrel on his back.  I explained to DS that this kept him floating, kind of like the water wings he uses when we go to the pool.  We decided to play around with this concept a bit, so we got out a bowl and filled it with waters and put different objects in it to see if they would float.

(picture to come)

Well, that concludes our study of The Story About Ping by Marjorie Flack and Kurt Wiese. 

Next week:  Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans

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