Plans: Cycle 1 - Week 9

Ancient China - Part 2!

History

It's been hard to find good books about Confucius that don't try to indoctrinate my kids. Thankfully, I bought the entire series of ValueTales at a library used book sale last summer for a whopping $2, and this book was in it. Woot! All of these stories are amazing, and I recently saw a newer version of them available on Amazon, sans the cheesy 1970's felt-tip marker illustrations (which I have really grown to love, cheese and all).

* Listen to SOTW1: Ch. 33 (Confucius) 

Geography

* Work in our Map Friends Review Book (still the best thing since glitter glue, in Mary's opinion).

* Listen to SOTW2: Ch. 9 (Eastern Asia).

* Maybe read the girls some information from Mr. Donn's awesome site, or this site with TONS of resources. Here is another treasure trove of information and ideas for Ancient China. 

* Do some crafts:

Chinese Peasant Hat

Panda Craft

(Here is a link to animals of China. I'll read the panda section before we do the craft.)

* Do some Ancient China coloring pages.

* Listen to this (no, seriously, go listen to this right now! It's that cool!) FREE mp3 of Ancient China's history with the dynasties!

* Since we're not going to study that much about the false religions, we're going to focus instead on the missionaries God sent to those areas in our memory work. We'll learn about Hudson Taylor and Lottie Moon this week. Here are a few of the books we may read:

(We won't read every book listed here about Hudson Taylor, but I listed them to show you the different options out there for younger ones.)

The Heroes for Young Readers books also have Activity Guides with craft ideas, etc, available on Amazon. Check here, here, and here.

Here is a GREAT (and FREE) resource to introduce younger ones to Lottie Moon. We'll definitely be using this. And here is a biography of Lottie Moon and other free resources from imb.org that we'll use, too.

There are a few free resources available for studying Hudson Taylor, too, but I could only find a couple that we'll probably use. Here is a biography for kids, although it's rather long, so it'll probably have to be shortened for littles ('littles' being preschoolers in my book).

Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF) has a great evangelistic and discipleship site for children, Wonderzone, that features several missionary stories, including Hudson Taylor's. This is such a great resource! My mom is a Trail Guide for this site, and it truly is life-changing. Although the site is set-up for kids who can read and complete the questions on their own after the stories, I plan to go through the 'Adventures' together with Mary. This would be a great quiet-time computer activity for elementary students (my mom says it's geared towards 3rd-4th graders, in her opinion). There are other missionary adventures on the site, too, so we'll definitely be coming back here.

And here is a great compilation of Christian missionary resources for kids. Awesome link!

After learning about these missionaries, we'll color and discuss this page.

Math

* Keep singing and pointing with our Math Review Book.

Science

* Watch The Magic School Bus Gets Planted video:

* Read some books about plants:

These are my plans for Week 9! I'll keep updating my plans as I nail things down, but I wanted to go ahead and get this posted in case other mamas are looking for Week 9 ideas. Speaking of sharing, keep checking out the CC Cycle 1 Weekly Link-Up over at Brandy's Half-a-Hundred Acre Wood. Thanks to all of you who participate in this Link-Up and let us peek into your lives. I'm always inspired after reading all the other plans! Do you have some good ideas for this week? If so, link-up and join the conversation, friend!