Tag Archive | The Runaway Wok

China… a Family Study

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
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This entry was posted on 19/03/2014, in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

Chinese New Year Resources

So I figured I would make a companion post of links and such for our poster and its contents. I mainly took from Activity Village and Education.com. These are amazing sources that I would recommend every time.

General information about China

Zodiac

Year of the Snake

Books:

I got our Happy Chinese New Year Characters from THIS site. I got it verified by Xinny so I was sure it was the correct ones. For all ideas crafty check Activity Village HERE. For our fortune cookie recipe go to the Food Network. The collection I have for Chinese New Year on Education.com is HERE, I will review all the resources and leave comments on some. I plan to every year add to these collections so I will try and link them.

This entry was posted on 16/02/2013, in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

Happy Birthday Darcy!

January 26-28

How to end a week of saying good bye and getting used to a new normal? Well by celebrating Darcy’s birthday with homemade cupcakes and mint icing over at their house. Sadly, big Andy was not there but we made up for it with lots of fun, some good pizza and amazing friends.

Anthony with his Canadian flag. Thank you so much for mailing one down Sharon!

Skylanders in a new location

We were there from noon well on into the evening. The kids had a blast and we 3 adults got to visit and relax.

Sleepy Echo with Andrew… new hair cut and all. Poor thing, he scared her earlier in the day by accident!

There was a new dog to play with (Darcy is looking after her grandmother’s chihuahua for a while) which had Echo in absolute joy. A dog HER size! She was nearly fearless by the end of the night, playing with BOTH dogs and visiting with Snoopy the cat.

Snoopy

The wee dog

I am hopeful that now that Ken’s great job hunt is at an end I can focus on visiting more with the Novaks.

Anthony and Trinity

Supper together

Ken helped Andrew and Anthony out with setting up a new Minecraft account. I think that if Anthony does not get his own before his birthday that will be our gift to him.

The guru and his disciples

I wish I had a better picture of the birthday girl, but we had such a great time relaxing just like this all afternoon!

Darcy and the lap dog

This is definitely a bonus to being close… time with our god-son!

Anthony

Sunday was an at home day, the cousins were still here until the middle of the day and really we were not motivated to run any errands. So lots of fun kid time and yours truly snuck in a nap!

Relaxing tv time

Monday was back to work and life. But first – 5 kids in the great white outdoors. Ken took a bit of time off his lunch break and took Echo out to join in on the fun. I just love any opportunity to put that teddy bear hat on her. I got the pattern from CrochetSpot of course. Right HERE.

With Daddy

So much gorgeous snow

We started our Chinese New Year Library book marathon with Monday… We read the book together, talk about it and write down some key points and then make a little mini card style thing. Title, picture and of course the points. This is going to be one interesting poster. Our first book – The Runaway Wok. Also one that we read LAST year back in Canada. Something that the kids remembered right off and thought was TERRIFIC that they had this book in BOTH countries. What a memory they have!

Looking through the pictures a second time

Our booklet for our poster

Book #2… Bringing in the New Year. Beautiful illustrations, informative and fun. We really enjoyed this one!

We are alternating illustrators… so here is Gavin

Book #3… yup we were one a roll… Max Celebrates Chinese New Year. This one the BOYS read to us! They did a great job, each reading half of it.

And together with the leveled reader

Of course we had our kiddo tv to watch… I love how much they take away from these Junior shows.

Yo-ho-ho

We are working our way through the many worksheets and colouring pages on Activity Village and Education.com (both links to the main sites are on the right). I am hoping that we can continue our basic stuff – math, reading, etc etc as I feel like we are progressing nicely. And now that Ken is working again we can work towards some more pricey learning options in the next year! Whheeeee!

I just LOVE this hat!