Ancient China studies with kids

We have been busy studying Ancient China for the past couple of weeks. Ellie has decided that she is going to be the archaeologist who gets to Qin Shi Huangdi's tomb :)

We got Chinese take-out one night (I wasn't up for trying to make it myself). We have listened to the sections on China on the Story of the World CDs. We watched some Chinese children's videos and learned to count to ten. We used the book Long is a Dragon and practiced writing Chinese calligraphy. I just wish we were still in Monterey, so that we could take a drive up to Chinatown!

Andy and I were both born in the year of the dragon (but in different years). Ellie in the year of the rabbit, Kate - horse, Lexie - monkey, Nick - dog, and Tori - rat. They had fun with that :)

Here are some helpful websites:

Highlights Kids Story on the Terra-Cotta Army of Emperor Qin.
Here you can draw Chinese characters and print them out!
Get a Chinese name.
This website is full of Power point presentations, activities, and information on Ancient China (including the above 2 activities). When I looked at it further, I realized that the China section was only a very small portion of the entire site. The main page has many different topics and it looks like it will be very helpful!! It is called Pete's Power Point Station.

Here are some of the books we used in our studies: