China

A couple months ago I read an interesting article in Mothering Magazine (my favorite!) about staycations. This mom of 3 wrote about a summer spent at home, yet still "traveling the world" through books, movies, ethnic restaurants, costume shops etc. It was inspiring and I have been mulling it over every since.

I often feel like I struggle in planning purposeful and engaging things to do with Asher, since our resources are so limited here on base. When I lived in Boston, I pictured raising city kids who had amazing learning opportunities at every corner (which would make up for not having a front yard:) Since Asher is only 2, I knew I didn't need much to entertain him nor, did I need to make things very involved. So with that in mind, I decided to start a year-round "staycation". I have purposed to pick 1 or 2 countries a month to "study" with him.

A cool place mat, I found months ago online. The words around the edges are written in English and Mandarin and have to do with food/kitchen things. I have 2 more, one for Mexico and another on Italy.

I picked China as our first country, because it is big, with a lot of interesting things to learn and the food/people are noticeably different than our everyday world (not much ethnic variety on base sadly!) I pulled every single Atlas, encyclopedia, and book on China our little children's library had. I wasn't sure how much Asher would like the books, as they were definitely more geared to book report writing, but the other day I came in the kitchen to find this....

He is very curious about the water buffalo and giant pandas! It has been fun for me to be purposeful with my reading to him, and show him pictures of Chinese festivals, the Great Wall of China, and read story books that told from a Chinese perspective! (2 random things I have learned are the meaning behind the stars and colors on the Chinese flag and that the Cinderella story is actually originally Chinese and centuries older than people think!) Netflix as been a great resource for movies. Asher loved watching a documentary on a panda being born at the National Zoo in DC. We are planning to make pot stickers and moon cakes with him and maybe a few other things, if we can find the time and energy.

1 country down...Lots more to study! I think Mexico is up next!