India is a truly fascinating country with an ancient culture. While we spent a significant amount of time studying its people and land, I feel that we barely touched the great wealth that is India.
India in General
Hungry Planet by Menzel and D'Aluisio
Material World by Menzel
Children Just Like Me by Kindersley
India: The People
India: The Culture
DK Eyewitness: India
DVD- Queen of the Elephants
The children worked on their maps and flags in addition to learning about the caste system. It was fascinating to learn about the origins of modern day India, the British rule, and India's extraordinary ancient roots. The development of language was particularly interesting.
One of the art projects to spring from our reading was to create a henna hand print like those that adorn traditional Hindu brides. We spent too much time oohing and aahing over the photos of elaborate wedding dressing and ceremonies available on the Internet. They are amazing. We then focused our attention on the actual henna art and its elaborate patterns and floral motifs. The results were loved by everyone. Keeping the the traditional black and red color scheme, the older children wrote a narration about Hindu weddings while the little girls orally narrated.
Another art project was a directed drawing session of the Taj Mahal. TLC has an excellent tutorial available here. Even Gracie, who is six, was able to follow along as it is mostly straights and arches. The end results were impressive.
As you can see, we did a little traditional dressing up with our play silks. We learned about saris and how to wrap one properly in the Daring Book for Girls. This was difficult with the silks as the proportions were incorrect. Still, it was fun to try. I had to entice by boys to try a turban but they consented in the end.
Nanna brought us Indian food to try one afternoon. I honestly don't remember what it was called, only that it was a fried and vegetarian and came with sauces. The kids didn't really care for it but were game to try a bite of everything. I am thankful that we didn't splurge for a full meal on this occasion.
Cultural Stories
Monsoon by Krishnaswami
Monsoon Afternoon by Sheth
Once a Mouse by Brown
One Grain of Rice by Demi
Just So Stories by Kipling (Audio)
The Gifts of the Wali Dad by Shepard (Very funny)
Anklet for a Princess by Brucker
The Road to Mumbai by Jeyaveeran
The Monkey and the Crocodile by Galdone
(We played lots of rounds of the finger game, Five Little Monkeys Sitting in the Tree with the toddlers after this story)
Daughter of the Mountains by Rankin (Loved it!)
Shadow Spinner by Fletcher
The younger girls did a sparkly art project for the monsoon books.
1. Draw a picture of a tree, flowers, and rain with glue. Let dry.
2. Color over the top with bright oil pastels.
3. Copy a poetic monsoon sentence from the book.
4. Go crazy with the glitter glue.
Everyone made a block print picture based on the story, Once a Mouse. The story book has lovely and simple block print illustrations throughout so I thought it would be a fun project to try some of our own.
Everyone picked a few key elements from the story to carve into the styrofoam blocks. Drawing with a pencil came first, then the deepening of the lines.
Finally, they added the paint and printed and pressed to their hearts' content. The results were far different from the original vision. We all decided that block printing was a lot harder than it looked!
Religion
The Usborne Encyclopedia of World Religions
Gandhi: The Peaceful Warrior by Bains
Mother Teresa by Chawla
The big kids spent quite a bit time learning about Hinduism. This was all new for them. They made a map about the revered Ganges River, drew Hindu gods, and wrote a short paper on Hinduism. Everyone made a sacred cow picture based on these images.
The older children read and wrote an essay on Mother Teresa while the little girls narrated. They did the same with Gandhi. Both were very inspirational. It is amazing the sweeping changes that God can bring about through small humble servants.
India was wonderfully fun!
Next stop: AFRICA
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