The Story About Ping

we have had such a nice time with Ping! by my records, this is the third time going through this book with the Five in a Row lessons. the first time, B was only 2 and was probably napping while C and S were busy with school. :o) even though we have added some more advanced curriculum to the planner this year, i am so thankful that B suggested that we stick with Five in a Row another year.

didn't B do a nice job on this drawing? the lesson on drawing water with ripples and reflections is very good. B was so pleased and surprised by the finished product!

this is an experiment to see how ducks oil their feathers to keep themselves dry.

see how the water beads on this chicken feather when we put oil on it?

here B is counting out the members of ping's family and comparing it to her own.

(on a side note, it made me so sad to consider that the "one child policy" of modern day china has effectively wiped out all of these aspects to the family: no more "two sisters and three brothers, and eleven aunts and seven uncles and forty-two cousins" )

we played with this chinese abacus, but i must confess, we didn't exactly figure it out, even with the booklet: the fundamental operations in bead arithmetic. none the less, we had fun clacking the beads back and forth. :o)

B had fun eating rice for lunch with chop sticks!

we read this book: Li Lun, Lad of Courage by carolyn treffinger as a "go along" book to Ping. this book was the newbery award runner up in 1948. it was a wonderful story about a chinese boy who is sent to grow rice on top of a mountain (a nearly impossible task) because his father is ashamed of his fear to go out on the fishing boats. he overcomes many hardships and proves to his father and to the whole village that he is not a coward after all. we learned a lot about how rice grows and about facing fears.