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I love the freedom we have when we homeschool. We do so much hands on learning and just kind of roll with it when something gets them interested for a long time. One day I discovered I had Prime Video on my Amazon account. How did I not know this already? I’m a sucker for a few reality shows and love watching Survivor. I pulled up Survivor: China and started watching. Maggie started watching, sometimes the other kids would watch a little. They loved learning about the culture and the environment there. It kind of brought to life things we had already read about. It was a great reason to dive into some hands on fun about China.
Awhile back I received a set of homeschool books to review. The Culture Bundle includes three books; Geography Through Art, Eat Your Way Around the World, and Eat Your Way Through the USA. These were perfect additions to our journey to China. Maggie tolerates cooking, but my boys love to help in the kitchen. I love using these books to really help bring whatever place we are learning about to life.
Eat Your Way Around the World is so much fun. Be sure to read the beginning for some extra fun ideas to make this meal as authentic as possible. With ideas like setting the table and the music to go along with whatever country you are going to be eating, your family will have so much fun. We love to learn a little about different languages as we go. We are lucky enough to have some coins or bills from other countries as well. The back of the book has a food journal you can copy and use and a passport with stamps for each of the countries you can visit.
It’s interesting to me to learn more about the cultures around meal times in the different countries. Reading through that at the beginning of that country introduces a lot of ideas. If your kids are anything like mine, they love trying out these customs. Now, like any Chinese meal, we HAVE to use chopsticks. The kids each have their own set of chopsticks that my sister sent us when she was in Japan.
Can we get to the important part here? Tasting the food. I’m not going to lie to you, I’m pretty picky, but I try not to be because I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. My kids are all hit or miss. The boys usually eat anything. Maggie, not so much. But since I instituted the, “I don’t care what you eat” rule, it’s been better. I serve them the meal. They choose what they eat. I don’t coax or bargain with them. There’s no meal time battle and she is trying so many more foods without complaining first. It’s amazing! That’s what I love most about eating our way around the world – so many new food experiences and we can make notes on things we loved, things we would leave out next time or maybe finding more foods from that area if we loved them all. Having a few different meals to make for each country gives us a real dining experience {and allows us choices in case we don’t like something}. Each meal is rated in forks to let you know the difficulty of preparing it.
We follow up everything with some books on China – we love to read so this is the easy part.
Geography Through Art introduces so many different types of cultural art to your family. We had a blast making Chinese Scrolls. Maggie really loved the variety of different drawings and I had a lot of fun doing the activities with them {and I am NO artist}.
Legos has become the kids’ very favorite thing to do when we are home. I like to try to find a building challenge anytime we study a landmark from a certain place. We all worked together to build the Great Wall of China. Don’t just see Quicksketch and look at the picture. Be sure to read through it for some learning challenges. This quicksketch introduces them to the concept of depth in a picture. Draw yourself in the front, draw yourself in the background. Are they different? It also includes an explanation on why the two should look different. Before each section in the book you can also find facts on each continent.
If you are a homeschool family or just want to bring more culture into your home, you will love the culture bundle. What state or country will you learn about next? What is your favorite thing about China?
