Celebrate Asia

I love that our Asia continent theme coincides with the upcoming Chinese New Year.  In addition my oldest daughter will be 15 on January 22nd, and Grace will be 7 on January 28th.  We have decided to give their combined family party a Year Of The Dragon theme.  Party favors will be the lucky red envelopes each with two dollars inside.  We will make one great big dragon out of cupcakes, play pin the tail on the dragon, eat moon cakes and extra long noodles (long noodle = long life).  Decorations will be red and gold accented with fresh flowers and fruit-tangerines, with leaves intact, and persimmons.  The girls have been at work making dragon cut outs for invitations.

For our family it is difficult to keep all Asian countries represented as we study Asia.  Last week we focused heavily on Japan.  We naturally lean towards Chinese themes.  My husband has a background of experience in Chinese arts and language.  It is a country he and I have travelled to and plan to take the girls.  I am trying though!  This week we added yoga cards to our Asia shelves as a little shout out to India and tonight we are cooking Thai food for dinner.

As for today, I decided to capitalize on the girls wanting to play store, and set up shop for school today.  We found items from around the house and priced them using Chinese numbers.  To make it simple we started with 1, 2, and 3.  Later we added 8 and 10.  Using play money (U.S.) I gave the girls a certain amount and they had to spend it all.  Lots of math was happening!  Grace is beginning to understand and count money, but needs practice skip counting so I kept all her work in increments of 10 or 2.  What I am sure they enjoyed the most was Mama playing store with them, providing just the enthusiasm we needed.

You can look forward to a post on our origami work and our new Montessori Asia map.   Next up I want to introduce haiku and Pearl will begin Rosetta Stone Chinese.  I'll keep you posted!

 Here are three of my favorite picture books from our continent shelves:

Ruby's Wish

How My Parents Learned To Eat

The Girl Who Wore Too Much