The Story About Ping - Geography and Dioramas

Thanks to getting a great deal on the first Volume in the series, I am trying the "Five In A Row" (FIAR) curriculum supplement with my kids this year.  The concept of FIAR is pretty neat; basically, you read the same story together five days in a row, and each day you do an activity or project that goes along with a theme from the story.   You would (presumably) cover a minimum of five areas of study throughout the week, all with a unifying theme to make the process memorable and cohesive.

Today was our second day with "The Story About Ping", a tale of the adventures of a yellow ducking who lives in China.

The Story About Ping - Our first Five In A Row book

Today I decided to enhance my read-aloud of the book with some traditional Chinese music.  I selected "River Water", since the title seemed apropos. I allowed it to play softly in the background as I read, and I think it really added to the tone of the story.

Then it was time for the lesson.  One of the great things about FIAR is that you can switch things up; you don't necessarily have to do science every Monday or art every Thursday.  Because I had it ready to go, I decided to cover geography today.

We all found China on the map together, and then my third-grader got a worksheet about China's geography to complete.  The first-grader got a lesson in "North, South, East and West", where the sun rises and sets, and how to locate the compass on a map.  Meanwhile, the preschooler got his hands on some kid scissors and cut himself a "boat" out of a piece of handwriting paper.

This boat originally went the other way. But Junior did not want to show that side, as his sister has written his name on it with pink crayon.  The horror.

This got me thinking about a website I'd stumbled upon while looking up ideas for this Ping unit, where the "Suggested Student Assessment" was to make a diorama of a scene from the book.  I showed my oldest how to make the diorama and explained to her how to make creatures with tabs on the bottom so that they'd "Stand up" inside the scene.

She was immediately excited and enthusiastic.  However, she was NOT excited and enthusiastic to create a diorama of the Yangtze river and Ping the duck.  No, she was excited to create a "savannah" scene.  Being the cool teacher that I am, I decided that since she'd completed her China worksheet, she could make her diorama however she wanted.  Here it is:

Lion, bird, gazelle, and meerkat.  Cute, eh?

Meanwhile, Junior was pressing me to cut out some shapes for his diorama:

According to the Artist: "It's a dinosaur walking around in the ocean. With a dog.  And a triangle."

Sadly, I have no pictures of Little Sister's diorama, which was made up as a dog pound or pet shop, or something.  She was using hers as more of a play-set, though, moving the pieces around instead of gluing them down..  I think she was the least impacted by this craft; much to the delight of her brother, she spent most of the time asking me why we were spending so much time making "diarrheas".

My oldest was very much "in" to this project.  She proceeded to make another couple of dioramas, one of "a library" (not pictured) and this one of "under the sea":

A mermaid and two dolphins

Between cutting shapes out for the kids, I managed to eek out a bit of artistic expression.  If I am honest, I must confess that I just HAD to make one;  it was driving me mildly bonkers that NOT ONE of my kids was paying homage to the original story during this craft session.  So, here ya go:

Interpretation of "fishing birds" scene

My son brought the Ping book to me tonight and asked me to read it.  I'm glad he didn't protest about having to wait until tomorrow to read it again.  That is the one thing I wonder if I will like about this program; I know kids like to hear a story again and again, but I am not sure I can say I enjoy reading anything 'Five in a Row" times.  But, it is keeping them engaged and we are having fun, so we're going to keep it up.  For now.