Adventures in Homeschooling: The Story About Ping

The Story About Ping was our Five in a Row book this week. I think this is the third time we've rowed it. The last time we did it Caleigh was in kindergarten so I thought the girls would enjoy it again. When I was picking up books to go along with it at the library, Colin noticed them and asked what they were for. I told him the girls were going to do The Story About Ping while we studied China in history. He immediately said, "I love that book. Can I do it too?"

We, of course, talked about China and found it on our map. We also found the Yangtze River, where Ping lives. We read lots of books about China. Some of the favorites were Look What Came From China, Two of Everything, Tikki Tikki Tembo, The Five Chinese Brothers, and Children Just Like Me.

We couldn't talk about China and not discuss panda bears. We read all about them and made these fun, easy cupcakes using mini Oreos.

Since Ping is a duck, we had to study those too. We did an experiment to show how the oil on a duck keeps them from getting wet. We brushed oil on one of the ducks. Then they put drops of water on both and compared them. They liked turning the one with oil so that the water rolled off it.

Oil on left one; right one dry

Water on one with oil

In the story, there is a boy with a barrel so we talked about why he would wear the barrel. The kids filled out their predictions on this chart. Then we experimented with different objects to see if they would float or sink.

These frogs would sink so we tried putting them in an empty water bottle and found they would float in the bottle. We kept putting them in to see how many it would take to sink the bottle.