Wonderful Wednesday #6: Asia

Today we finished our trip around the world with a visit to Asia! We heard quite a few exciting stories about real people, places, animals and products in Asia. One of the favorite stories was about Mt. Everest (and another about the daring climbers who were about to reach the summit). We also talked about water travel in Vietnam, a Japanese garden, a boy eating with chopsticks and dancing to sitar music in India.

 We had Snappea crisps, mandarin oranges and seaweed snacks. Yum!

As one of our art projects today, the Primary children made a Korean Dragon Puppet. They heard the tale of how long ago the Koreans thought that the blue dragon would protect them from the east (which is why you could see blue dragons on the east side of over 7,000 temples in Korea!) and that the white tiger protected them from the west. We made our very own Dragons out of paper bags and blue paper. Did you know that the only difference between a Korean dragon and a Chinese dragon is their number of claws (Korean dragons have four claws and Chinese have five claws)?

The toddlers enjoyed painting paper lanterns.....

...and making fans with the ever popular 'dot-dot' markers. 

The final lanterns and fans

The primary children also made paper Uchiwa (paper fans) from Japan. Did you know that they are typically made of split bamboo and "washi" (a Japanese paper)?

And since today was rainy, the Primary children also made Thai owls. In Thailand, children love to fly kites and often have competitions where one kite knocks another to the ground. We made kites like the ones sold in markets in Thailand.

Before the rain started up again, we decided to head outside for some brief playtime in the garden. We didn't get to have water play today because it was so wet and muddy, but we did have fun.

It was a rainy day today but we made the best of it! Ms. Julie read several stories and we danced and sang to music.

Then we got to play some parachute games!

Everyone enjoyed cleaning off the tables for lunch and snack. After all the paint and markers we used it was very satisfying to scrub the table until it was spotless. 

The children are all blurry because they were scrubbing so fast!

The primary children also enjoyed some time playing with the parachute before heading home for the day.

A "wonderful" time was had by all! We hope to see you next summer!!

(Many of the art projects and stories this summer were borrowed from The Kid's Multicultural Book by Alexandra M. Terzian)