Reading up about China

China is currently on our minds as we're going through Story of the World, this week and last week. It's actually worked in really well as I'd come across an audio book called Mao's last dancer in our library. A friend had recently read the book to his daughter and thought that my children would also really enjoy it seeing it's about a ballet dancer. Li was also close to Maestro's age in the story, so hopefully he'll relate to the hero.
Here's the blurb from the audio case:

One day, not so very many years ago, a small peasant boy was chosen to study ballet at the Beijing Dance Academy. His mother urged him to take this chance of a lifetime.
But Li was only eleven years old and he was scared and lonely, pushed away from all that he had ever known and loved. He hated the strict training routines and the strange place he ahd been brought to. All he wanted to do was go home - to his mother, father and six brothers, to his own small village. But soon Li realised that his mother was right. He had the chance to do something special with his life -and he never turned back ...

Based on a true story; I'm looking forward to hearing this!!

Another factual based story I've already started to read the children is Gladys Aylward, The Adventure of a Lifetime, by Janet and Geoff Benge. We've only read the first 3 chapters as of last night, but it's a delight watching Maestro (in particular) trying to reason through what would happen with each cliffhanger.

Now, I must tell Australian readers about an educational resource for free-to-air television shows. It's called EnhanceTV, and you can freely subscribe to weekly emails. This helps me when looking for something relevant to our studies for the children to view.

This morning I noticed they had a short 15min 10 part series on China showing as part of the ABC school shows this morning. These sort of programs are often repeated, so no great deal if it's missed. Sometimes the site will also have some study guides and interesting notes.

Today's episode was interesting, showing the temple and how they write their characters (whereby Mariposa promptly got out her white-board and marker, trying to copy!) as well as an introduction to the actual language.

So, I hope that's enough enabling today, lol!! We'll be off to the library later to find some more books on Ancient China, so we can look at more of the costumes and artwork.