VandissaB. is reader-supported. When you buy through the links on this blog, we may earn an affiliate commission, at no cost to you. thank you for your support!

As of this post, Bug is 5 years old. Chunk, her little brother, will be 3 in just a couple weeks. They are technically in Kindergarten and TK.

where in the world: china

It all started with our Friday Movie nights. Most weeks I just pick a movie because nobody usually shares their opinion but me, but once in a while, I am out of ideas as well. As we sat as a family scrolling through all of our streaming options we ran across Kung Fu Panda 4 and Bug insisted that we watch it that night. None of us had seen the first three movies and it just so happened I was trying to decide between a handful of countries to start off our geography lessons. We chatted about the options a bit and decided together that our very first geography unit should be on China.

Because this was our first time focusing in on just one location, I had a flurry of ideas bubbling. We’ve done some “surface level” lessons around where we live (Hawaii), where dad is from (since he’s originally from Jamaica), where each of us was born, that sort of thing. A general focus on just China seemed so daunting but it also gave me lots of room to work.

I decided to keep the lessons as simple as I possibly could, since my little girl is in Kindergarten, but also truly informative. Here’s what we ended up with in the end as far as objectives for this unit:

Geography: Where is it in relation to us? General facts about the country of China as well as the continent of Asia.
Inhabitants: Who lives there? Learn about the people and how the live. What sort of animals are exclusively found there?
History: What contributions (big and small) has China made to the rest of the world?
Arts & Culture: What is it about China’s culture that stands out? How do they share stories? What is different about their culture from ours here?

I find that when I form our objectives as questions I am better able to create a sort of checklist of topics to discuss and delve into. This helps me make the plans but also hone in on what resources I might need.

Want to see how I planned this lesson in Notion? CLICK HERE to duplicate your own FREE lesson plan and see how I keep everything organized.

Where in the World is China?

This was a very general introduction to China. We covered basic geography, fun facts, statistics, climate, etc. Our first step is always to break out our trusty globe and find the location in relation to where we are now. My kids can feel the grooves of the mountain ranges and valleys so this is when we go over basics of terrain and weather patterns as well.

Big books that were useful for mapping out where China is:

I had created several coloring pages when we first started homeschooling, just out of my own excitement. One of the bundles I made was of a handful of countries I wanted to make sure we learned about early on. Each country coloring page was very simple. It consisted of a space to color the country’s flag, trace the name of the country, and the child to write their name. Since China’s colors are so rich I opted to use watercolor paints instead and the result was a beautiful, rainy-hour activity.

Life in China

Once we had the basics down we talked about the Chinese flag and painted our own versions. I printed up a quick template of the flag and we used watercolor paints. I grabbed as many picture books as I could about children in China and how they might live there. These were definitely a favorite so I am glad I didn’t just stick with reference types of books.

We read about how some children in China live and read lots about the food (specifically rice and wheat). We try to have a monthly lunch outing with dad and so we visited a local favorite Chinese restaurant this time— which was a lot of fun. People always get a kick out of how accessorized my daughter’s outfits are and how serious my son comes off at the table, so we chatted with pretty much everybody working that shift. We got lots of insight on foods to try and they made sure we tasted signature dishes the right way. They had fresh fortune cookies which were bigger than usual so that was a nice treat, too.

Life in China books:

Both kids enjoyed learning about their Chinese Astrological signs, so I am making a mental note to explore these a little further the next time we unpack the country of China. These lessons only scratched the surface and I am looking forward to being able to swing back around to different countries later on. We’ll already know some basics and so specific topics would be the move from there.

I almost forgot the kung fu! I tried finding a trial class for both kids but the best I could find required a six-week commitment. That felt risky for us so I took to YouTube instead. I was very glad I did because we all got the chance to try kung fu together. This video was a good pace for us and had a few follow-up sessions. From what I was told, up until age 6, kung fu should just be fun anyway. We also did a couple sessions of t’ai chi on YouTube as well.

Animals

This was an obviously fun topic to focus on but when we went over the top few animals specific to China, my kid just wanted to learn about pandas, so that’s what we did. A really great fine motor arts and crafts activity we tried was Fork Print Panda Bears. It was good cutting and pasting practice and I was able to re-use some old disposable forks. Plus the kids feel like they never get to use white paint/crayons so they were excited to see that actually “work” on the colored paper.

There’s a really cute egg carton panda craft activity that I loved but definitely turned out to be more my project more than theirs. Had I not been reading the article near the kids I could have avoided this mess but they loved being able to “build” their own animals, especially the painting.

A few books we read and enjoyed that took a closer look specifically at pandas:

If you’ve got Disney+ there was really enjoyable documentary there called Born In China that was beautiful and pretty engaging.

History, Arts & Folklore

This is always my favorite part. Although sometimes it feels like not-school to me. (I’ll get over it.) We read tons of stories with Chinese themes because both my kids love to be read to.

The Great Wall Through Time had a lot of information so I did sort of skip around in this one but the imagery was incredible. It went into depth really well about the history of The Great Wall of China so we will definitely be referring to that book again as we progress through our homeschool journey.

Books we read for more insight into China’s history and culture:

We pretty much always have music playing in our home so of course my little girl wanted to know what they listen to in China. The three of us decided to start with traditional guoyue but then never made it too far beyond that. We had three or four favorite playlists going: 1, 2, 3, and 4. I think we all found it very fitting and enjoyed this very much.

This was a great three-week session and it’s inspired several other lessons already. Students and teacher really had a great time learning about China and some of what it has to offer, and it was just an awesome start to our introduction into Kindergarten.