Around the World: Ni Hao from China!

Our pretend airplane has landed on a new continent this week: Asia--and our first stop is a visit to China. We learned how to greet local residents with a friendly "ni hao!" Our explorations and learning while we are here have included sensory play, math activities, building challenges, arts & crafts, learning a new letter, music and more!


Here's a peek at our most recent travel adventure;

Once our pajama-clad pilot landed our pretend plane, we got to stamp our passport with an appropriately selected panda bear stamp. He, of course, also wanted a panda bear stamp on each hand, too!

I set up this simple math activity to practice one-to-one correspondence. I found the artificial Chinese coins at our local party supply store in a display set out for the Chinese New Year. I wrote number words, numerals and added a corresponding number of red circle labels to each sentence strip from one to five. (You could work toward a higher number or adapt to include addition problems if your little ones are more advanced.)

I worked on this activity with my little mathematician so he could practice placing one coin in each of the designated red spots to count from one to five!

Sensory play is a fun and favorite part of our regular routine here. To adapt it to our current theme, I set up a Chinese-themed rice sensory bin, including chopsticks, take-out containers, coins, scoops, dishes and cups. On a smaller scale, I set out a rice transfer tray activity. This is a great way to practice the fine motor skill of scooping and transferring small materials from one container to another.

We looked at some photographs of the Great Wall of China together and learned some interesting facts about it. We took on the challenge of building our own Great Wall on a much smaller scale using Jenga blocks. You could use any type of block, legos/duplos, even rocks to try out this activity.




We enjoyed listening to some traditional Chinese music while we worked, played and explored. Youtube has been a great resource for finding music from a variety of cultures and destinations!

 We used chopsticks in red and white paint to add cherry blossoms to a pre-painted tree trunk. This was a great activity in demonstrating how mixing red and white make pink and exploring how the ratios of the two affect the resulting shade. Using chopsticks to paint with provides a unique fine motor activity. I initially demonstrated dabbing the wider end to make dots. My son loved using both ends and even dragging the paint to create strokes. I did prepare the tree trunk in advance, though this could very well be done by the child and geared more toward child-led/process art.

Our letter of the week this week is the letter Ff. As soon as it was dry, I hung my son's cherry blossom tree painting on our art display and set aside my model for another activity: we learned how to fold paper and crease with our finger and how to flip the paper back and forth to create a lovely Chinese fan. Needless to say, my son thought this activity was a lot of fun!

Join us on the next leg of our Asian travel adventure when we land in Japan! We will be practicing some more paper folding as we learn about the art of origami, working on flag matching in a new way and testing our hands in making some unique types of sushi while we're there! See you there and until then--safe travels & happy playing!