China Unit

Geography studies are a great way for your kids to learn about different countries, and with Chinese New Year being so recent a bunch of us have been looking for China activities for elementary kids.  What amazes me is how many amazing things there are to create a great China Unit for a geography lesson.

Hi, Future Ticia 2023 here, I’m updating this and completely revamping and changing this post, slowly. Why you ask? Well first because we redid our China unit again almost a decade later, and this lets me share it all here.

Next, because a lot of the blogs I’ve linked to are no longer published. Now back to past Ticia 2014. Oh! And there are affiliate links I’ll be adding in here.

I’m going to freely admit I’m doing this round-up more for my sake than everyone else’s because I want to do a belated Chinese New Year study with the kids tomorrow.

Even more Future Ticia 2025 is going to add in the future China unit we did and our giant booklist.

China Unit resources

Okay, there are so many books and things you can get.

Let’s talk about resources you can find online.

First, our high school China unit meant we had access to YouTube (because YT in preschool was more cat videos and not as much of an educational resource).

Oh wow, this is early enough that there isn’t a separate Flag Friday video. That’s crazy to think about.

Usually I grab random websites to get information, but China is very popular with other kid bloggers as a major cultural area, so instead here are a large selection of activities you can try.

China activities for elementary in the kitchen

•  Create edible maps of china
•  Make homemade noodles
•   Eat your way through China– I’m cheating this is an entire category of awesome recipes to try

China activities for elementary that require a mess

•  Chinese brush painting, Great Wall of China, and more
•  Chinese paper cutting
• Try Chinese calligraphy– seriously love the horse one
•  Chinese Dragon Toy
• Make paper
• Handprint dragon
• Chinese New Year crafts and Ideas
• How is tea made

China activities for elementary using technology

• Videos of traditional Chinese music
• Chinese New Year celebrations videos
•  Great collection of videos and online resources
• Thousand Hand Guan Yin (since it’s in one of the Asian languages, I’m not 100% certain this is from China, but it’s gorgeous to watch)

Chinese history ideas

• Make a timeline of Chinese history (cool figures included)
•  Organizing your study of China through notebooking
•  Great Wall of China

China booklist

There are so many books, like to the point I originally was going to have a separate Chinese New Year post. I still might do that, because this post will be insane otherwise. I did, here is my Chinese New Year booklist. Now, I will need to combine my Chinese dragon puppet with the Chinese New Year booklist, and I think there is even a random Chinese New Year post, and make that one post all into one. I’m trying to get everything together.

This is what happens when you have a blog that is over 10 years old. It just keeps getting so crazy trying to keep it organized.

Even having pulled out all of the Chinese New Year books, I’m going to split this into nonfiction and fiction books.

China nonfiction books

• The Yangtze River– I include this more because my library had it, then because I thought it was particularly great, but it also isn’t super important in terms of useful books, even if the Yangtze River is huge for China
• C is for China– a solid alphabet book covering Chinese culture, notably it uses pictures for the “illustrations”
• China ABCs: a book about the people and places of China– another solid alphabet book, this one doesn’t have pictures, but with a country as large as China it is able to have different ideas covered with the letters so you can get both books and not be covering the completely same topics
• Ms. Frizzle’s Adventures: Imperial China– part of the short-lived pseudo-chapter book series, and so it goes more in-depth than the traditional Magic School Bus books, but keeping much of the traditional concepts
• Dumpling dreams: how Joyce Chen brought the dumpling from Beijing to Cambridge– As always I enjoy books that show how cultures interact
• China’s Bravest Girl: the legend of Hua Mu Lan– honestly, you could switch out any decent book on her for this one, but this one was at my library and it has good illustrations, so I was happy
• The sons of the Dragon King: a Chinese legend– Ed Young has great adaptations, and as I’m looking at this list I just realized I have several of his books on here. The ink illustrations work great
• Lon Po Po: a Red-Riding Hood story from China– This is where I first discovered Ed Young’s stories, I’m fairly sure it was part of my Kid Lit class as we looked at Caldecott award winners
• The Emperor and the Kite– I just realized this is uniting two superstars: Jane Yolen AND Ed Young, no wonder this was such a great story
• Rabbit’s Git: a fable from China– The illustrations here just make me smile
• Fa Mulan: the story of a woman warrior– Robert San Souci is so amazing and this is another great story of Mulan.
• The Seven Chinese Brothers– Wow, I’m seeing so many authors I enjoy on this list and I hadn’t realized it, no wonder I enjoyed this booklist so much, but a fun story of, guess what 7 brothers
• The Empty Pot– Another great story from Demi, he always manages to put together a great story from simple materials

Fiction China booklist

Okay, now we get to some of my favorite books from this booklist. I very distinctly remember these books from when we read them way back when the kids were in elementary school.

• The story of chopsticks– I absolutely love this story of three mischevious brother trying to get out of as much work as possible
• The story of kites– we attempted to make kites after reading this one, I didn’t end up writing about it because that did not go well, but the idea of them inventing them to get out of chores is hilarious
• The story of noodles– this led to our field trip to the Asian Grocery Store and my first-ever attempt to make noodles, it didn’t go well, I have since learned how to do it
• The story of paper– this led to our attempting to make paper, and I later updated that post with our successful attempt at making paper…
• The story about Ping– I love this story and the fact that it’s generational
• Bitter dumplings– I don’t super remember this, but the book sounds fascinating
• The White Swan express: a story about adoption– I suspect this story could be controversial since it’s about international adoption, but it can also be great for some people as they prepare their children
• The Silk Princess– the story of a princess searching for the end of a silk thread as she travels over China
• This is the greatest place!: The Forbidden City and the world of small animals– this is one of those super cheesy type of books that does a good job of giving you a peek into somewhere you aren’t likely to visit
• The Seven Chinese Sisters– I feel like this is the Seven Brothers but gender swapped

China Unit recipe: pan-fried noodles

Looking at the pictures from my recipe. I’m pretty sure I can say this is a very Americanized recipe. So, yes, I know this is not authentic Chinese cuisine.

I also absolutely adore this meal, so I will happily take any excuse to make it.

Stir-fried noodles ingredients

• 1-2 pounds of skirt steak sliced into bite-sized strips
• chopped onions
• broccoli
• 2 cups beef or chicken broth
• 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
• 4-6 cloves minced garlic, divided
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 2 teaspoons soy sauce
• spaghetti noodles
• oil for frying

How to make Stir-fried noodles

1. Cook the spaghetti noodles. While that is happening start making the sauce.
2. In a separate pot bring the broth to a low simmer and add in the oyster sauce, soy sauce, and minced garlic.
3. Mix cornstarch and some broth, and slowly stir in the cornstarch mixture. Allow the sauce to thicken and cook down, then turn it down to low.
4. In a separate pan, pour the oil and heat. Once the oil is properly heated add some minced garlic and onion to the pan, sautee until the onion is translucent, then add the broccoli and cook for a minute.
5. Add the beef, and flash-cook it. Add the sauce to the pan and allow the flavors to meld. Then remove the beef, onion, and broccoli from the heat and tent with aluminum foil to keep warm.
6. Add more oil and once the oil is hot, add a serving size of the noodles to the pan to fry. Cook the noodles for roughly 5 minutes until they are golden brown. Remove from the oil and allow to drain briefly on paper towels then pour the sauce over it.

Fried Chinese Noodles

Print

These delicious fried noodles are so much fun to eat and very simple.

Prep Time 5 minutes

Cook Time 25 minutes

Total Time 30 minutes

Ingredients

• 1-2 pounds of skirt steak sliced into bite-sized strips
• chopped onions
• broccoli
• 2 cups beef or chicken broth
• 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
• 4-6 cloves minced garlic, divided
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 2 teaspoons soy sauce
• spaghetti noodles
• oil for frying

Instructions

1. Cook the spaghetti noodles. While that is happening start making the sauce.
2. In a separate pot bring the broth to a low simmer and add in the oyster sauce, soy sauce, and minced garlic.
3. Mix cornstarch and some broth, and slowly stir in the cornstarch mixture. Allow the sauce to thicken and cook down, then turn it down to low.
4. In a separate pan, pour the oil and heat. Once the oil is properly heated add some minced garlic and onion to the pan and cook until sauteed.
5. Then add the beef, and flash-cook it. Add the sauce to the pan and allow the flavors to meld. Remove the beef from the heat and tent with aluminum foil to keep warm.
6. Add more oil and once the oil is hot, add a serving size of the noodles to the pan to fry. Cook the noodles for roughly 5 minutes until they are golden brown. Remove from the oil and allow to drain briefly on paper towels then pour the sauce over it. Repeat with the next serving of noodles.

I’m now back from cooking lunch and I’m really wanting to make this meal again. It’s delicious. We’ve made variations on this since I first wrote this post back in 2014 at least.

Asia unit notebooking pages

Okay, so we used the Asia notebooking pages and then I added in some minibooks that I added to our subscriber page (JOIN MY NEWSLETTER).

Huh, I didn’t take pictures of the zillions of minibooks, that is a gross exaggeration of the number of minibooks I made. I know I had so many of them. So here are the ones that you can’t see because they aren’t really pictures, and I think there may be more…

• The Runaway- because in the Chinese New Year post I have a book called The Runaway Wok, so they had to make their own version of a runaway item
• Mulan- write some facts about her
• Chinse New Year- wrote some facts about how it is celebrated
• The Story of- taking the idea of those books and creating our own story of how something was invented
• Chinese Zodiac- summarizing the story of how it was invented
• Great Wall of China
• Terracotta Warriors- these last two I think there are minibooks for, but I’m not sure

So there you have it, that’s all I have for our China Unit that we did over the many years

Mx. Granger, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Originally published February 6, 2014