We do love our Chinese New Year celebrations. All thanks to some of the family we chose… specifically the den Otters! So even here in Minnesota we do our best to hold onto the new traditions we added to our family while in Alberta. One of these is to spend a month on China, Chinese New Year and Chinese characters. This year we chose to do another poster… and of course with that comes a boatload of resources!

Books!

• Celebrating Chinese New Year by Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith
• Chinese New Year by Alice K. Flanagan
• Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations Chinese New Year by Ann Heinrichs
• Sam and the Lucky Money by Karen Chinn
• Children Just Like Me Celebrations by Anabel Kindersley
• I Wonder Why Countries Fly Flags by Philip Steele
• Kai-Lan’s Great Trip to China by Mickie Matheis
• Pandas by Donna K. Grosvenor
• Chinese New Year by Lola M. Schaefer
• Max Celebrates Chinese New Year by Adria F. Klein
• A Gift by Yong Chen
• The Runaway Wok by Ying Chen Compestine
• Chinese New Year by Fay Robinson
• Asian Holidays by Faith Winchester
• National Geographic Kids March 2014 issue (special focus on twin baby pandas)
• Celebrate Chinese New Year by Carolyn Otto
• Happy Chinese New Year, Kai-Lan! by Lauryn Silverhardt

Videos!

• Celebrate With Kai-Lan! HERE
• Ching’s Chinese New Year HERE

Our general helpful links!

• Activity Village is the place to go for printables! First Chinese New Year itself list HERE.
• The Horse of the Zodiac specifically HERE.
• China specific HERE.
• And of course the horse as an animal HERE.

Chinese Flag!

• Gotta cover the flag right? You can find out printable HERE thanks to Rainbowkids.com.
• If you want to find out some history on the flag check out this link HERE thanks to the site A China Family Adventure.

Dragon Dance!

• GMA News Online’s image for 2014 HERE. What a gorgeous looking dragon!
• And then there was the video we watched. I do so love watching the dances. This one was done in Hong Kong in 2013. The dancers are AMAZING and well worth a watch. Thanks to HongKongMap on youTube.

Chinese Music/Instruments! We did not cover a ton on the music. More of a surprise addition when I came across a neat picture of what is commonly called a guitar. So I grabbed a couple website, some music and an image to colour.

• The YueQin on Confucius Institute Online HERE
• Top 10 Chinese Instruments on China Whisper HERE. This girl was amazing. Thanks to NoodlesFaced on youTube. This is XiaoMu Ming.

• Our second video was of some traditional Chinese music entitled Shepherdess’ Song. Thanks to MadePossible on youTube. 

• Our original printable that started this train of interest is found on Rainbowkids.com HERE. They have a great list of resources on their site HERE. It is an adoption site with some great printables for kids. 

The horse itself!

• Animal Facts HERE thanks to Science Kids.
• More facts and breed information on Ducksters HERE.
• A great video of wild horses thanks to National Geographic.

• Zander wanted to know all about the world’s tallest horse so I had to help him out and check into that fact. HERE Guinness World Records site.
• A great list of horse related crafts thanks to Activity Village HERE.

Check out some Zodiac predictions for 2014 HERE. (Huffpost Living Canada)

Links for the three places of interest covered by Ken and the kids:

• Terracotta army thanks to Ducksters HERE
• Great Wall of China thanks to Science Kids HERE
• Shanghai Tower thanks to Wiki HERE
• 

We have enrolled Emanuel in the Little Passports series and one of our monthly mailings was EGYPT. We couldn’t just look at what came in the mail so it morphed into time to make a poster about this rather intriguing country! I hope our resources and findings are helpful!

BOOKS:

• Ten Little Mummies by Philip Yates HERE
• Skippyjon Jones in Mummy Trouble by Judy Schachner HERE
• A Look at Egypt by Helen Frost HERE
• How the Sphinx Got to the Museum by Jessie Hartland HERE
• Egypt ABCs by Sarah Heiman HERE
• You Wouldn’t Want to be Tutankhamen! by David Stewart HERE
• Ancient Egypt by Cynthia Klingel and Robert B. Noyed HERE
• Eyewitness Pyramid by James Putnam HERE
• Everything Ancient Egypt by Crispin Boyer HERE
• Eyewitness Ancient Egypt by George Hart HERE
• Ancient Egypt Beyond the Pyramids by Kathleen W. Deady HERE
• Egypt in Pictures by Jeffrey Zuehlke HERE
• Miriam and Her Brother Moses by Jean Marzollo HERE
• Ms. Frizzle’s Adventures Ancient Egypt by Joanna Cole HERE
• Who Built the Pyramid? by Meredith Hooper HERE
• Mummies in the Morning – a Magic TreeHouse mystery by Mary Pope Osborne HERE

HELPFUL WEBSITES:

• Virtual Reality 3D Tomb Tours HERE though we could not get it to run on our laptop. If someone could figure it out I would love a head up on how they did it!!!
• A series of the Eye of Ra images. I needed them for my part on one of mini books HERE thanks to Waktattoos.com
• Ducksters’ Egypt Map HERE, Odyssey’s map HERE

PRINTABLES

• A mini book with the current Egyptian flag from Activity Village HERE.
• Ancient Egypt wordsearch HERE (Activity Village)
• Ancient Egypt map colouring page HERE (Activity Village)
• Current flag colouring page HERE (Activity Village)
• Sphinx colouring page HERE (Activity Village)
• Pyramids colouring page HERE (Activity Village)
• Ancient Egyptian children colouring page HERE (Activity Village)
• Egypt colouring page on Education.com HERE
• List of Ancient Egypt worksheets on Education.com HERE

CRAFTS

• Egyptian Pyramid model papercraft with Education.com HERE
• Make a Mummy papercraft HERE (Education.com)

ANSWERING QUESTIONS

• Ancient Egyptian beards… why? With Musiem HERE
• All about Egyptian gold… Live Science’s article on clues to the origins of it HERE. A comparison between Egyptian and Roman gold HERE. The Gold of the Pharaohs by Softpedia HERE.
• All about the Sphinx… why is it a half person half lion? Mentormob’s article HERE.
• Toothbrushing in Ancient Egypt! Including the use of cosmetics on The Alchemy Web Site HERE. Wiki Answers’ take HERE.
• What do Egyptians do for fun? Ask.com’s answer HERE. ThinkQuest’s answer HERE

VIDEOS
First off, CrashCourse’s Ancient Egypt: Crash Course World History #4

The History of Ancient Egypt in 2 Minutes! Vsion 1.0 by Scott Powell, the History Guy

Ancient Egypt – The Mystery of the Sphinx by Plancheman100

Mystery of the Sphinx (this is part 1 you can find the rest by the same poster) by Pharaoh3000

  SUGGESTED CRAFTS (we didn’t make it to doing these as light caught up with us)

• Salt Dough Plaque (Activity Village) HERE
• Pharaoh’s Headdress (Activity Village) HERE
• Flail Craft (Activity Village) HERE
• Ankh Fuse Bead design (Activity Village) HERE

Zander’s animal choice was LIONS! So of course we had to find all that we could about where they live, what they do and how they survive. I hope these are helpful!

BOOKS:

• Magic Tree House #11: Lions at Lunchtime HERE
• Lions by Tammy Gagne HERE
• I am a Lion by Karen Durrie. This AV2 book has a website you can visit for supplementary activities and some print outs. HERE
• Mouse & Lion by Rand Burkert and Nancy Ekholm Burket HERE
• Welcome to Kenya by Patrick Ryan HERE
• Tanzania by Patricia J. Murphy HERE
• (We also made use of various magazines… National Geographic, National Geographic Kids, Ranger Rick… all thanks to Nana and Gammie!)

TV:

• National Geographic’s Big Cat Odyssey
• Wild Kratts Bad Hair Day (Season 2)
• Lion King

WORKSHEETS:

• Daniel in the Lion’s Den with Bible Story Printables HERE and game HERE
• DLTK’s lion printables including a story HERE
• Colouring page with PreschoolMom.com HERE
• Letter L printable with Activity Village HERE
• Grassland Food Web printable (no activity) with Exploring Nature Educational Resource HERE
• EnchantedLearning printable HERE
• First Palette animal printables HERE
• Lion King official printables HERE with Family Go
• Africa Resources with Homeschool Creations HERE
• Africa Theme unit with edhelper.com HERE

LAPBOOKS:

• HS Highlights Lions lapbook for purchase HERE

CRAFTS:

• We watched the Lion King in the end and of course had to do some of the official crafty stuff found HERE on DisneyFamily.com

KENYA:

• We had a series of maps we looked at to answer some questions: Ducksters (HERE), The Forestry Department for a mountain location (HERE), BBC for the equator line (HERE)
• Kids 4 Kenya HERE
• Activity Village section HERE
• National Geographic Kids with printable HERE

Tanzania

• National Geographic Kids with printable HERE
• A map with Ducksters HERE
• Activity Village section HERE

VIDEOS:

Esther found this one for us on the Lions and the Masai…

And I came across this lovely ones of Kenyan children dancing.

We had two more from Esther that she deemed interesting… the kids agreed! First, A Lion Pride – Introducing Daddy to the Cubs by BBC Wildlife

And the other… Lion Pride in Kenya, Africa by Brian’s Art for Animals.