My mum is ethnically Chinese, so another link to this part of the world as we continue our tour. My husband and I are also both (retired now after becoming parents it seems 😂) martial artists, so I wanted to use this opportunity to focus more on the idea and see if they were interested in learning too.
Maps, atlases, we discussed which countries we would focus on (China, Japan, South Korea)... Discussions on food (they had a go using chopsticks!), climate, clothing and beliefs... Lots of YouTube videos and library books...
I was pleased to find a book in the library on the origins of the Chinese Zodiac, beautifully illustrated in a calligraphic style with Chinese writing on some pages, so we talked a little about astrology with the reminder of what we believe in and why we don't follow star signs etc.
Another book featured a character based on origami, so we watched a couple of How To videos - but they weren't that interested so we missed the opportunity to try our own. 😁
As mentioned above, we looked at different martial arts styles from the different East Asian countries - namely karate (Japan), taekwondo (South Korea) and kung-fu (China) - talking about the differences in movement, which one was their favourite, and trying out a few techniques. F liked taekwondo because she liked the flips and M liked kung-fu because she liked it! 😂
Finally, we ordered dinner from a Chinese takeaway, including fortune cookies for the experience and also to talk some more about astrology and beliefs which are different to ours: you can respect a different opinion by being polite and friendly with the people who believe it and still believe something else.
With all the above this was quite a busy week in terms of activities so I chose not to do any formal writing with them. In the build up to Ramadaan and giving myself to prepare, I'm going to focus on word level and sentence level Literacy skills for the next few weeks inshaAllah - so just tidying up their basic grammar for a while rather than another big topic like this.
Showing posts with label other cultures. Show all posts
Showing posts with label other cultures. Show all posts
Wednesday, 27 March 2019
Saturday, 23 March 2019
Stories from other cultures - 3 - South Asia
This week, we looked at South Asia - concentrating on India, with some mention of Pakistan and Bangladesh. My husband's family originates from India and my dad was born in Bangladesh, so the girls have some links with these countries, too. But since the theme of this topic is other cultures, I wanted to focus more on the non-Islamic regions of India so as to broaden their knowledge a bit more.
As usual, we looked at our maps and atlases and read a load of traditional stories from the library. We talked about climate, clothes and food (with actual examples!), as well as a little about Hinduism (one of the books we took out, as an example of an Indian traditional tale, was the story of Ram & Sita and why people celebrate Diwali).
For our formal Literacy task this week, I had them write a description of a meal with traditional Indian food. We eat lots of this kind of cuisine anyway so I just encouraged lots of talk at mealtimes about the food, describing it using the five senses and what they liked about it. We also watched a few videos from this YouTube channel, which follow someone from Canada trying out different street foods from around the world. I was surprised how much the girls enjoyed watching them! F especially, I think she has her father's travel bug from the way her eyes lit up at the thought of travelling to different countries, mashaAllah. 😃✨
You can download our writing prompt here.
As usual, we looked at our maps and atlases and read a load of traditional stories from the library. We talked about climate, clothes and food (with actual examples!), as well as a little about Hinduism (one of the books we took out, as an example of an Indian traditional tale, was the story of Ram & Sita and why people celebrate Diwali).
For our formal Literacy task this week, I had them write a description of a meal with traditional Indian food. We eat lots of this kind of cuisine anyway so I just encouraged lots of talk at mealtimes about the food, describing it using the five senses and what they liked about it. We also watched a few videos from this YouTube channel, which follow someone from Canada trying out different street foods from around the world. I was surprised how much the girls enjoyed watching them! F especially, I think she has her father's travel bug from the way her eyes lit up at the thought of travelling to different countries, mashaAllah. 😃✨
You can download our writing prompt here.
Friday, 8 March 2019
Stories from other cultures - 1 - Africa
This term for Literacy, we're doing a whistle-stop tour of the (non-Western) world to tick off the suggested NC target of stories from other cultures. Each week, we'll go to the library (and I'll check online) for books and stories for that part of the world and then do a few activities to help them learn about and appreciate that culture a little more.
...I have to keep reminding myself the twins are still only 5! So a very basic overview is enough at this point - there'll be plenty of time in the future, inshaAllah, to do each country more justice! I feel like I definitely have to mention that at this point as this week was just spent looking at Africa as a whole, when obviously it's a whole continent, but concentrating more on central and southern Africa. 🙈
I chose to start with Africa as there's an abundance of children's books either set in the savannah or using safari animals (e.g. The Ugly Five), so it kind of feels familiar to them. Also, their paternal grandparents were born in Mozambique and Uganda, so they have some connection to the continent too.
We started off by finding Africa on their world map and globe, and also looking up individual countries (ones they knew and ones which came up in the library books) in their children's atlas. We talked about how Africa is a continent with lots of different countries inside it. We talked about the kind of climate it has and which kinds of animals are found in the wild there.
Three of the library books which really stood out as perfect teaching material were: Mama Panya's Pancakes, Baby Goes to Market and Grace & Family, set in a traditional Kenyan village, a west African marketplace and a Gambian compound respectively. They opened up lots of discussions on village life, different foods and also different families.
In order to paint a fair picture, I thought it was important to point out to them that Africa is a vast continent and it isn't all villages! So we looked at some pictures online of big cities, such as Nairobi, so they could see the similarities between there and a city here such as London.
After all our reading and discussions, two things in particular stood out as being different from here: the clothes people in the books wore and some of the foods they ate. So I planned two related activities based on this. 👌
1) The girls designed their own African inspired prints, based on the illustrations in the books. We looked at a couple of the books again, flicking through the pages to talk just about the pictures and what people were wearing: we used lots of good vocabulary to do with pattern, shape and colour. The conclusion the twins came to was that they wore bright colours with big designs on them, both the men and the women! And they listed out the kinds of common patterns too, such as animal print, stripes, spirals and flowers.
I then printed out a simple template with three outlines of a dress on it (short sleeved like all the dresses in the books!) and one square blank for them to draw their own clothing of choice.
You can download the template here.
MashaAllah, Z is getting a lot better at pen/brush control and is enjoying copying her sisters! I was really pleased with her efforts and desire to join in. 💕
So they used wax crayons first to draw their designs, then watercolours over the top to colour the dresses in - continuing the watercolours theme lol. I did one alongside them as an example, and because it looked fun and I wanted to. 😂
We then watched a couple of episodes of Tingatinga (in Arabic! for listening practise 😀) and talked about the designs of the animals - they weren't coloured realistically, but the patterns were traditionally African. This also doubled up as another example of stories from the African culture.
2) We had a go at making some of the foods in the books, namely the pancakes from Mama Panya's Pancakes (recipe in the back of the book!) and some chin chin biscuits from Baby Goes to Market. The pancakes didn't turn out so great (the batter is using water and I had trouble frying them 🙈) but the chin chin biscuits were a hit. 👍
I followed the recipe from this website but substituted vanilla essence for nutmeg and baked for around 20min at fan 180. The quantities made 45 biscuits, so I sprinkled granulated sugar on 15, demerara sugar on 15 and left 15 plain before baking.
They taste a bit like scones, but crunchy - and after looking up a scone recipe I found they're very similar! - and are usually fried rather than baked, which I can imagine would taste less dry... But I didn't have enough oil and wasn't keen on frying them to begin with anyway. 😀
Next week, we're going to look at northern Africa and the middle East, inshaAllah. 🌍
...I have to keep reminding myself the twins are still only 5! So a very basic overview is enough at this point - there'll be plenty of time in the future, inshaAllah, to do each country more justice! I feel like I definitely have to mention that at this point as this week was just spent looking at Africa as a whole, when obviously it's a whole continent, but concentrating more on central and southern Africa. 🙈
I chose to start with Africa as there's an abundance of children's books either set in the savannah or using safari animals (e.g. The Ugly Five), so it kind of feels familiar to them. Also, their paternal grandparents were born in Mozambique and Uganda, so they have some connection to the continent too.
We started off by finding Africa on their world map and globe, and also looking up individual countries (ones they knew and ones which came up in the library books) in their children's atlas. We talked about how Africa is a continent with lots of different countries inside it. We talked about the kind of climate it has and which kinds of animals are found in the wild there.
Three of the library books which really stood out as perfect teaching material were: Mama Panya's Pancakes, Baby Goes to Market and Grace & Family, set in a traditional Kenyan village, a west African marketplace and a Gambian compound respectively. They opened up lots of discussions on village life, different foods and also different families.
In order to paint a fair picture, I thought it was important to point out to them that Africa is a vast continent and it isn't all villages! So we looked at some pictures online of big cities, such as Nairobi, so they could see the similarities between there and a city here such as London.
After all our reading and discussions, two things in particular stood out as being different from here: the clothes people in the books wore and some of the foods they ate. So I planned two related activities based on this. 👌
1) The girls designed their own African inspired prints, based on the illustrations in the books. We looked at a couple of the books again, flicking through the pages to talk just about the pictures and what people were wearing: we used lots of good vocabulary to do with pattern, shape and colour. The conclusion the twins came to was that they wore bright colours with big designs on them, both the men and the women! And they listed out the kinds of common patterns too, such as animal print, stripes, spirals and flowers.
I then printed out a simple template with three outlines of a dress on it (short sleeved like all the dresses in the books!) and one square blank for them to draw their own clothing of choice.
You can download the template here.
MashaAllah, Z is getting a lot better at pen/brush control and is enjoying copying her sisters! I was really pleased with her efforts and desire to join in. 💕
So they used wax crayons first to draw their designs, then watercolours over the top to colour the dresses in - continuing the watercolours theme lol. I did one alongside them as an example, and because it looked fun and I wanted to. 😂
We then watched a couple of episodes of Tingatinga (in Arabic! for listening practise 😀) and talked about the designs of the animals - they weren't coloured realistically, but the patterns were traditionally African. This also doubled up as another example of stories from the African culture.
2) We had a go at making some of the foods in the books, namely the pancakes from Mama Panya's Pancakes (recipe in the back of the book!) and some chin chin biscuits from Baby Goes to Market. The pancakes didn't turn out so great (the batter is using water and I had trouble frying them 🙈) but the chin chin biscuits were a hit. 👍
I followed the recipe from this website but substituted vanilla essence for nutmeg and baked for around 20min at fan 180. The quantities made 45 biscuits, so I sprinkled granulated sugar on 15, demerara sugar on 15 and left 15 plain before baking.
They taste a bit like scones, but crunchy - and after looking up a scone recipe I found they're very similar! - and are usually fried rather than baked, which I can imagine would taste less dry... But I didn't have enough oil and wasn't keen on frying them to begin with anyway. 😀
Next week, we're going to look at northern Africa and the middle East, inshaAllah. 🌍
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)