Ancient China

Ancient China is such a rich area that we could have spent months covering it.  We focused on the subjects covered in Story of the World since it is our spine for history.

First we discussed the story of how silk was discovered and made, then the kiddoes put the pictures from this worksheet in order to show the process of silk-making.

Next we moved on to Chinese writing.  First, I showed the children examples of early Chinese pictograms, then compared these to more modern Chinese calligraphy.  We used a few pages from Ancient Civilizations from Scholastic (I bought this ebook-- among others-- during dollar deals for only $1. Scholastic has a lot of ebooks that work very well as supplements; I've purchased some for nearly every subject).  For a fun, hands-on project, the kiddoes made ancient books following the tutorial from Jimmie's Collage and wrote stories on them primarily using the pictograms from Ancient Civilizations.  I was not daring enough to let the kiddoes paint their pictograms, but some good pens worked well enough and everyone still enjoyed getting to make these.

Next we discussed how the various states in China were constantly at war, similar to the other areas we have studied, and were eventually united under a conquering emperor who took the name Shi Huangdi.  He began the building of the Great Wall to keep out invading Mongols and searched for the Water of Eternal Life, until his death when he was buried in an underground city guarded by an army of life-size terracotta warriors, horses and chariots.

Building their own Great Walls to protect their side of the Lego empire

We finished up our study of ancient China by discussing the life and teachings of Confucius.

We will definitely be taking a more in depth look at ancient China on our next cycle through history.  We used some resources from Squidoo in our study, but there is a huge wealth of information available.  I can't wait until our next study of the far east.

--Little Miss Crazy