Asia Unit

We spent this month learning about Asia.

Our focus for these continent units is not to be all encompassing, but to give Ender a little look at the people and animals that live in different places. We are not keeping to a specific schedule, but generally we read a little each day, Ender gives an informal narration and about once a week I write down his narration and he illustrates his work. We did use a few components from some lapbooks available on Homeschool Share, but we used them as crafts or notebook pages instead of creating an actual lapbook.

These books were selected for my Kindergartener, though this unit could be used with older or younger kids by adjusting the amount of written work. My 3-year-old tagged along during the reading and on a few coloring pages, but of course none of the written work. We did not use lapbook components that included an inappropriate amount of writing for my son's age unless we could adapt them in a way that he could write something shorter, but by including all of those components this could work for a student through 3rd or 4th grade.


Books:

A is for Asia
Animals Marco Polo Saw
Asia (Earth's Continents)
Count Your Way through KoreaTikki Tikki Tembo

Story of Little Babaji
The Firekeeper's Son
Beyond the Great Mountains: A Visual Poem about China
Round is a Mooncake

The following books are in Ender's book basket for the photos mostly. There are some amazing photos included and we've been able to talk about a lot of topics these books introduced without reading what is clearly meant for older students:


The Usborne Internet-linked introduction to Asia
7 Wonders of Ancient Asia

Other Resources:

The Story of Little Babaji activities and lapbook
Round is a Mooncake activities and lapbook


Activities:

 World Map Outline (we used the robinson projection with no labels for this project)
1. For the first activity we found Asia on the map. We previously learned the names and locations of the continents in our Continents and Ocean Mini-Unit, so this was pretty easy. Ender traced around Asia with a marker and we talked about how far away Asia is from our home.

2. For our second activity we found Asia on the map again and discussed the types of habitats that can be found there and Ender made a few guesses about what types of animals live in Asia based on the habitats. He knew for sure that asian elephants are found there, because elephants are his very favorite animal. I'm fairly confident that we've seen every video about elephants our library has as well as read every non-fiction book about them!

3. We used the A is for Asia book as a starting point for a few art projects that we'll be sharing soon. We are still finishing this unit out this week, but I'll be sure to share pictures when we are finished!


We also did a mini-study on Pandas since they are one of Ezra's favorite animals. Our book list included:

A Baby Panda is Born
Meet the Panda
Giant Pandas

We also used the Giant Panda Lapbook from Homeschool Share for some printables.



Other Continent Work:

Continents and Oceans

Australia