Friday, March 17, 2017

Learning About India & Pakistan!

We just finished a brief look at India and Pakistan! As I mentioned before, the main books we are covering are recommended by the Five in a Row [FIAR] curriculum and Give Your Child the World by Jamie C Martin.


Our FIAR book was not about India nor Pakistan, but I really wanted to talk about India this year with our kids since we have Compassion kids from there, and since Compassion is having to leave India, I wanted to do it before we lost all our children there. And I decided to do both India and Pakistan because our local library system only has two good children's books about India and two about Pakistan! (I need to get some more for our personal library!) Here are the books we read:

  • Grandma and the Great Gourd: A Bengali Folktale by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
  • Same, Same but Different by Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw
  • King for a Day by Rukhsana Khan
  • Listen to the Wind: The Story of Dr. Greg and Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson

    Grandma and the Great Gourd: A Bengali Folktale was such a fun folktale! We read and re-read this story all week. Juanito ended up choosing it for his narration!

    We also absolutely loved King for a Day about a boy in Pakistan! What I love about this book is that the main character is in a wheelchair and yet it is displaying him as a normal child with amazing kite-flying skills! The main character actually inspired Juanito to design this Lego creation:


    We found the countries on the map and spent some time praying for Arun and Dinesh.


    The kids enjoyed making booklets about Peru last time, so we made our own little booklets with pictures of the flags (Indian flag and Pakistani flag) and traditional clothing (Indian and Pakistani).


    We had some friends join us for artwork, an Indian meal and a Pakistani game! I highly recommend the books Extending the Table: A World Community Cookbook by Joetta Handrich Schlabach and Sidewalk Games Around the World by Arlene Erlbach. These are my go-to references for international recipes and games.


    We played the Pakistani game of Kokla Chhupathi, which is like Duck-Duck-Goose. I toyed with the idea of playing Kabaddi, a game that originated from India, with the kids, but I think our group was too young. And we ate dahl (lentils), rice and chapatis.


    We also made rangoli artwork. I dyed salt with food dye, and then had the kids use glue sticks to make the paper sticky enough. I found the templates by doing a Google Images search of "rangoli templates for kids." Juanito made the peacock and Rosie made the elephant! And then we sent photos of the artwork to our Indian kids.


    Juanito chose to narrate Grandma and the Great Gourd: A Bengali Folktale:

    In a little village Grandma lived, near a deep forest and she received a letter from her daughter and the letter said, "I haven't seen you for years," and Grandma missed her daughter too. But she was a little scared of traveling in the forest where all the animals lived. But she said, "What is life without a little adventure," so she packed her stuff. And then she came upon a clever red fox who wanted to eat her. She tricked the fox and he didn't eat her. And she walked to the deeper part of the jungle, she came upon a bear and the bear tried to eat her up. She went to a deeper part of the forest and came upon a tiger. Grandma tricked the tiger too and she reached her daughter's house and she had fun there. But then she missed Kalu and Bhulu, but she said, "There's a problem, the fox, the bear and the tiger are waiting for me and this time I can't trick them with words." The daughter picked the biggest gourd and Grandma climbed in. At the edge of the jungle she gave it a big push. The gourd went to the tiger, he sent it spinning down the path to where the bear was waiting for Grandma and he said, "What a strange creature." And he gave it a push to the fox. And then Grandma said, "Kalu, Bhulu, come to me!" And they came to her and scared the fox and chased it away.


    And Rosie narrated King for a Day:
    A falcon, it flies. Falcon is a flying thing. A niño flies falcon. He has owies. The niña, she gets these down, the papalotes, because he wants to take it. The bully, he hit the girl. The niño gives her a papalote. She was sad because she wanted her mom. She was happy because she wanted her mom and she wanted to go home and she had a papalote.


    We've had a great time learning about India and Pakistan! Next up, Kenya! It doesn't go along with our FIAR book, but I have some fun books we'll read.

    To view my complete plan for the year, click here. And here are the previous countries in the series:
  • China
  • Spain
  • Tanzania
  • France
  • Colombia
  • Ghana
  • Italy
  • Thailand
  • Peru




    About Hannah Hinojosa...Hannah is a long time Compassion sponsor and writes about her sponsorship journey at Because of Shamim. In addition to being a wife and mother, she is a part-time math professor and loves to read.
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