Instead of studying a book the next 2 weeks, we are going to concentrate on Christmas. I have checked out some books from the library on how other countries celebrate Christmas along with some internet research and some ideas from our geography book "Galloping the Globe". Instead of waiting until the end of the 2 weeks, I will try to post periodically with pictures of what we are doing. Today we talked about Japan and China. Because there are few Christians in these 2 countries, they don't celebrate "Christmas", but have adopted many of our customs. China does not have Christmas trees, but a Tree of Lights. Just as Christmas is the largest celebration in the states, the Chinese New Year is the largest celebration there. Japan celebrates a Spring Festival by giving and receiving gifts and the children watch out for their Santa Claus who has eyes in the back of his head.
We bought a small tabletop tree (for $1 at Wal-mart) for our school room. With every country we study, we are making an ornament for our tree. Today we made a paper chain to represent China and paper fans to represent Japan. Here are the pictures I took of the boys putting their ornaments on the tree.
I'm doing this with my kids too!! How fun! We haven't done these countries yet, but it's neat to see what is "coming." :-)
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