A Side Trip to India

George Sr. had to take a business trip to Mumbai India and Jr. requested we learn about where he was going so we stopped our Community study for a day. Since this came up at the last minute (I really should have thought ahead and planned for this) we didn't have much to work with.  I wish we had time to go to the library for picture books since I'm trying to do more reading with the kids.  I also have "Riki Tiki Tavi" on DVD but its out in the garage.  That would've been a great movie to watch while discussing India (and short which is also good).  But, we made do with what we had.

First, we found India on our wall map and our globe (I'm trying to show the kids that they are two different models of the same thing so we do both whenever we look up something) and read the details on the page in our Scholastic Atlas of the World.  Georgie was a little upset to realize Daddy was on the other side of the world.  We looked at the two pages in Children Just Like Me that were about India and Georgie found it interesting that the one didn't have electricity.  He asked the usual question - what about tv?

We printed off crafts from the Internet - we did the Diwali Diya craft and printed some peacock templates from www.dltk-kids.com/.   We also did an elephant mask craft from http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/ but instead of a mask we used googly eyes.    We read about peacocks in our Scholastic Encyclopedia of Animals and did peacocks a few different ways.  In general, the kids don't like coloring but are really big fans of gluing and painting, so we try to go with that as much as possible.  Gluing is actually less of a mess in our house than crayons or markers since those tend to be used on walls and furniture whenever possible.
We tried to make peacock tails with coffee filters by coloring them with blue, green and purple markers then spraying them with water so the colors would run.  Neither kid did more than a few scribbles of coloring so the full effect wasn't there.  I thought they still came out looking pretty but by the time they dried, we had had enough for the day so they were never used.

I cut bodies and feathers out of scrapbook papers and they put them together into peacocks.  This was simple and they were able to do it by themselves while I cleaned up our coffee filters and set up the next activity.

We used irridescent blue watercolors to paint paper plates, then added spots using dab painters, and body template, googly eyes and feathers to complete our peacocks.  The kids had a great time doing this one, Vicki was quite enthusiastic with the dab painters.

Once the feathers were out, the crafts were done.  The kids had a great time playing with the feathers - blowing them around, trying to keep them in the air.