Rowing The Story About Ping

I had a lot of reservations about beginning homeschooling. But I must say that Five In A Row has made it a sheer pleasure! ;)
We began our homeschooling adventure by reading The Story about Ping.
With Five In A Row, you take a story book, and take elements out of the story that are related to History, Geography , Math, Science, Art, Music, etc, and teach them to your child. Our first lesson was about Buoyancy, in which the girls gathered all sorts of items to see if they would float or sink. In The Story about Ping, there is a little boy that uses a barrel on his back to help him float in the water. I explained why he floated with the barrel, and based on that information, the girls had to guess which of these items would sink or float.
Sweetie was pretty close on most things, but there were a few things that stumped her! ;)

For Math, Ping has a very large family. I took our Math-U-See blocks, and we counted his mother, father, seven brothers, three sisters, so many aunts, so many uncles, and so many cousins. In all Ping had 68 relatives, including him. I then printed out 68 ducks and had the girls color them all. This was a bit tough on Sweetie, as she must learn about perseverance. Bean, had no problem with this at all. She could color for hours on end! :)
For Sweetie we ended up leaving some of the ducks white, as some of ping's grown up relatives were white. :)

We then cut out the ducks and pasted them on a folder to give the girls a visual of how many ducks there were in Ping's family.

The girls showing all of their hard work!

I read them a book about real ducks, and for a field trip, we visited a near by park that has a duck pond to feed them bread. The ducks were so hilarious! We were the only ones at the park that time. They were all laying down on the ground, just enjoying the day. As soon as I parked the car, all of them got up, and started towards us. Apparently they enjoy lots of company.

I gave Tiny Boy a bucket with the bread already torn up, but he ate it himself. :) Ping lives in China, so we learned a few things about China. I read a child's book about the country of China to them. One thing that was fascinating to them, was that Chinese people who live in the country do not have inside bathrooms. :)

Sweetie was pretty impressed that alot of Chinese business people ride bicycles to work instead of drive in cars.

For an added effect, I made a Chinese meal for them. Which was Rice A Roni fried rice ;), Chicken and broccoli sir fry, and frozen egg rolls.
I found cheater chop sticks at Target, which was great. The girls thought that this was the best part of the meal. Bean took forever to finish her supper; it was great fun watching them use the things.

I also set up the coffee table in Japanese style and we sat on pillows. The girls made Chinese lanterns and I put tea lights underneath them, to give it an added effect and set the mood.

We had lots of fun with this one. :)

Through the Five In A Row Website, I found a great resource for extra Five In A Row "stuff". The girls are coloring scenes from The Story about Ping, then they have to cut them out, and put them in order. After they did that, I stapled it into a little book, which went into their learning folders. I am going to make a post about that later on too. The resource is http://www.homeschoolshare.com/
Ping lives on a "Wise Eyed Boat, on the Yangtze River", and so we learned a little bit about boats and ships. I happened to have a kids video on ships that I had them watch.
I also checked a few books about ships out at the library. As a fun project, and to incorporate China into ships, we made Origami boats. The girls colored the paper, but mommy had to do the folding. I found instructions on how to do this on youtube. Here, you can watch how to make one yourself:




We then tested our Origami boats to see if they would float. They did! :)

Here are all three of them watching the boats in the bath tube. Tiny Boy was having a great time as you can see!

The girls also colored maps of China, and made a duckie craft. The Duckie craft involved them coloring different shapes, cutting them out and then pasting them onto another piece of paper. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of those. However, when I post about their lap books, I will show tons of pictures, and you will be able to see their duckie craft, and map of China. They also colored a Duck picture that is used as the cover of their lap book.

All in all The Story about Ping was sooo much fun! This week we are Rowing The Storm In the Night. Of course I will blog about that one too! :)