Friday, December 3, 2010

Kon ni chi wa

Well we finished our study in Japan for the week.  We had a lot of fun learning about this small and exciting country.  Some things we learned:

The carp is a symbol of strength.  Carp kites are flown on the houses where boys live on Children's Day.  We made carp necklaces.







We also practiced the art of Origami.  We made mini carp kites.




 We resorted to glue dots because we were having trouble getting the paper folded tight enough.  And then we decided to make our carp a little colorful.  Brayden though decided to stray from the directions (shocker!!) and his carp kite turned into a squid.  We got this activity from Activity Village.


On Thursday we decided to make the Moribana Flower Scenery project from the Global Art book.


We used aluminum foil to create "ponds" in our little garden.





Then we watched Big Bird goes to Japan and saw some good shots of various scenery in Japan.

Joey enjoys Legos, and someone shared links with me for the Family Fun Lego building projects.  Step by step directions are provided on how to create a small project.  Since our wooden dragon puzzles did not turn out well, we thought we would try the Dragon.



We finally worked on it together and got him finished.

To finish off the week, we enjoyed a Japanese meal.  With the boys very unique eating issues I work very hard to find food that they will possibly attempt to eat.  So for this meal we enjoyed:

Tori no kara-age--Deep Fried Chicken Nuggets...served these with a sauce made with aminos (gluten free soy sauce), red pepper flakes, and brown sugar.  It was sweet and spicy....very good!!!


Daigaku Imo - Japanese Sweet Potatoes--These got a little burnt (got a little distracted) and I did not have any sesame seeds, but they still turned out yummy.  These are covered in a sauce similar to what I made for a dipping sauce for the nuggets, but did not have red pepper flakes in it.  They were crunchy and sweet...also very tasty.

 
The kids did like the food.  Caty loved it and so did Lydia.  Joey and Brayden both ate chicken, but no sweet potato.  I expected that.  For Brayden to eat chicken breast was a huge deal...he doesn't eat fresh chicken breast, only processed stuff.  Joe said the only thing wrong with dinner that night was there was not enough!!:)

We finished off the week by reading about a Kite Adventure with Goofy and Mickey.  I found this set of books at a yard sale and have all the countries.  They are fun to read and provide some wonderful fun facts about the country they are written about.   I plan on pulling them out whenever I can. 


Next week is the monthly meeting for our Homeschool group's geography club called World Travelers.  Each kid prepares a small project about a country and makes a presentation to the group.  So we will be straying from Asia to learn about Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe in Africa.   Then we will return back to Asia the following week to learn about India!  I can't wait to cook that meal.  We love Indian food!

Sayonara!!

3 comments:

  1. AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME!!!! What a fun week they look so very happy and great projects I may have to steal some of your ideas!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love your Japan ideas, and will surely incorporate some of these in our study of Japan in a few weeks! Thanks so much for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Help yourselves to the ideas. It was fun. I used the "A Trip Around the World" from Carson-Dellosa for the Carp necklace. We did laminate them to make sure they could wear them throughout the week. And they did!

    ReplyDelete