Bahay Kubo (Nipa Hut)

Bahay Kubo is square shaped house with no divisions, just a door and windows.  It is made up of local materials such as wood or bamboo or  nipa grass.  It is a Philippine icon and represents the Filipino culture.  Note that these houses are raised, for proper ventilation I guess since the flooring is made up of bamboo.  Another reason is to avoid the flood.

Yes I have seen Bahay Kubo and have friends and relatives who used to live on this type of house.  Until now, they still exist and I can’t wait to show them to Mavi.  He has always been fascinated with Bahay Kubo. Maybe he can’t imagine how people can live on just a square house. 

Thus, I decided to create a model using cardboard boxes from Book Depository. 

There are still people who lives in this stilt houses and I can’t wait to show it to Mavi when we visit the folks this year :)

I cut out the cardboard boxes into strips then stick them on a wooden BBQ skewers.

And here’s how the skeleton  looks like when all four sides are attached.

Adding the roof which is made up of cardstock and a wooden ladder here’s the end product.

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ASIA Unit Study 2014

It always excites my son to study Asia.  For some reason, he finds this continent so mysterious.  As I said before, maybe it’s because of the diversity in culture, people and lifestyle.  We came from the Philippines and in a short time we stayed in Singapore.  Mavi even attended a Chinese school and yes at 2 years old he can speak a few Chinese :D  So Mavi was exposed to the different culture and people but he was young then, so he couldn’t appreciate it yet.

Anyway, here are the materials/activities I prepared for Mavi for this year’s study.  This is just Asia in general, I have separate post for each study of the Asian regions.

MAP WORKS

A review of the Asia Map.  We are also doing a puzzle map similar to this activity. 

Presentation and work of the Asian Regions. Asia is divided into 6 regions, namely:  Southeast Asia, East Asia, South Asia, West Asia, Central Asia and North Asia (Russia).  Here we identified major countries of each regions and place the Asia Pin Flags to plot their location.  Mavi also worked on the 3-part card of the Asian regions.

 

HABITAT

Study of Animals of Asia and Habitats. 

Below is a worksheet for Mavi to work plotting the appropriate habitat.

ANIMALS OF ASIA

The study of habitat is side by side with our animal study.  We use the cards to look into the animals and sort them out whether they live in a rainforest, desert or grassland. 

In addition, we made animal skin prints similar to Africa Study.

           

 

Now this study won’t be complete without learning about the treasures of Asia.  We used the Natural Resources of the World cards for this.  In the set-up I placed papers and a pen to write/draw the end products of Asia’s resources.

 

ASIAN CUISINE

Now this is part of daily life as this what I always prepare at home (Asian Cuisine cards).  I just have to emphasize to Mavi from what country our meal of the day came from.

     

Coming up… Southeast Asia!

More activities from here:

Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Continent Study: Asia on Pinterest.

 

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Religious Crafts and Activities for Kids

Sharing with you some religious crafts we did to go along with our study of Religions in Asia. 

Hinduism

Hindus offer garlands to God and to their guests as a sign of welcome.  Our garland was made of tissue paper and I used a thread to tie them up all together to form a garland.

 

Mavi decorated his hand.  This is a Hindu tradition wherein a Hindu bride would decorate its hand with a red dye called mehndi on her wedding day.

Christianity

One of the poignant moment in Christianity is the death of Jesus Christ.  So here, we made Mount Cavalry using paper plates and paint and added three crosses.  This is where Jesus died with two other outlaws.

  

Islam

We made prayer rug used by the Muslims when they worship Allah.  Instead of making a stunning and complicated design which Muslim craftspeople are known of, we just weaved our rug using cardstock.

              

Seen below, Mavi demonstrates how it is used.

Using Legos, we made a model of a Muslim mosque.  We used a styro paper cup and top it with a crescent symbol for the dome.  to signify an Islam mosque. Mavi loved this one the most!

 

Hope you enjoy this post.  More of our Asian Unit Study coming your way.  Till next time!

More Asia Unit in my Pinterest Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Continent Study: Asia on Pinterest.

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Religions in Asia (with Resources)

Last week we started our Asia Unit Study by looking at the different beliefs and religions of the Asians.    Click the link of the image for the product details.

We started off with the presentation of materials and an overview of each religion. 

Most of my learning materials come with fact cards. If you might be wondering why, I use these cards as a tool for reading practice for Mavi.  At times books are not available and these cards come in handy.

Speaking of books, our library has the best resource for this :)  My favourite so far are the books from World of Faiths series.  I HIGHLY recommend them if you are looking for books that teaches religion.  They are so engaging, easy to read, very informative but not overwhelming to little ones and it has suggested activities to go along with the specific religion of study.

The books on the series are the following [aff. links]:

• Christianity
• Hinduism
• Judaism
• Sikhism
• Islam
• Buddhism

These are really wonderful wonderful books.  If I have the resources, I would want them all.  They’re treasures! My son reads them every night.

Now, with the books and cards… I printed a map of Asia and Mavi and I tried to mark the places based on their religions.  And look what happened when Mavi encountered the YinYang symbol… he labeled it as Kung Fu Panda LOL. 

  

My next post would be about the craft activities that goes along with this study. So stay tuned!

In addition, we also watched videos of the important celebrations of the three major religions:  Christianity, Islam and Hinduism.

Christianity:  Easter and Christmas. Here we watched the death and resurrection of Christ.

 

Islam:  Observance of Eid-ul-Fitr

 

 

Hinduism:  Celebration of Diwali, the Festivity of Lights.

Linking to:

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Home + School = Afterschool!