Crazy Overachiever Mom

I think it's entirely possible to simply do tooo much of any one thing. Since we're studying China right now I'm scanning the internet for a few ideas based on what the boys said they wanted to learn. (See, I'm following through on what I said I'd do!) So, as I was looking for some ideas on Chinese weapons last night I found a web site with lots of ideas and I groaned. "Oh no! We're not doing Chinese proverbs or music!. " Fear swept over me and I thought about how to add these things into what's left of our four week study. Then the site reminded me of pandas and ping pong. Oh, those are fun too! What am I gonna do?

Nothing.

Seriously, the country is over 3,000 years old so there's a lot to cover. We aren't even touching the whole dynasty thing -- just mentioning their existence and moving along. It seems like an injustice, but when they're only 9 and 6 I think they still have time to recover.

So, today we read briefly about Chinese warriors and weapons, refrained from making our own kite (which were used in warfare in case you were wondering what that connection was), had them write just a scosh about the Terra Cotta warriors and then let them draw their own funny comics about them (which is a big hit with boys). J's was pretty funny actually! Then we learned how to write the Chinese character for "marry into, marry," talked about the difference between western marriages and arranged marriages and painted the characters with black tempura onto red poster board.

From there J read a Chinese legend, worked through his Latin (this child CAN handle two languages at once!), and wrote the third paragraph of his own Chinese legend all while B read aloud to me, worked through some mapwork and pushed through Math (B is tired today). After a break we finished up math, practiced saying the days of the week in Chinese (Friday is a fun day to say), read our Chapter in Eric Liddell and talked about John 13:34-35.

We're skipping Calligraphy today.
Because the paper we made yesterday is still drying.

And it is o.k.