Chinese Lanterns

Today we started our first day using Math In Focus for James. It went well....I'm really hoping that it wil be the answer to our math issues. :o) The program works with manipulatives and lots of pictorials, before   leading into the abstract. I'm really praying that it is a good fit for James. I'll keep you posted. :o)

By The Way, the kit comes with way more than what is pictured,  we pulled everything out and started working on it before I had the chance to take a picture so this is what I had available to take a picture of!

I was poking around our neighborhood dollar store last friday and I found this great little kit. There was only one like it in the store....which is too bad, and it wasn't a dollar it was more like $10.00! But oh well. Anyways, the kit is called World Explorer and it is for grade three...perfect! The kit explores 10 different countries (well-USA and Canada are put together! ): USA/Canada, Mexico, Chile, Japan, China, Kenya, Morocco, Italy, France, & Australia.  There is a small text booklet that has a one page write up, per country, for all ten countries, and then a small work booklet that has five questions per country to answer, all the answers can be found in the text booklet. PLUS, there is a craft to complete per country, with all the supplies needed to complete each craft included!

I let the kids decide which country to start with....they chose China.
So we read the information on China, and then located China on our map, and on the globe-James knew that China was next to India; and Rachel raved that she knew where India was on the globe. (because we had studied India in December). We worked on answering the questions, and then the kids made these cute lanterns. We even learned that there ARE floating lanterns that people from China use during the Lantern Festival, just like the ones from the movie Tangled, that we saw a couple weeks ago!

Sorry about my picture being out of focus...I just bought a new DSLR, and have not learned how to use it yet!

 Anyways, that was our learning day today, the kids are now outside playing in the snow, and I am getting ready to clean up from lunch and get the house cleaned up before Emily gets home from school.

Have a great day!
Nicole