A Lesson on China

Today we had the unique opportunity to actually be teachers for a homeschool group. They were learning in geography about different Asian countries, and some of the parents knew that we had been to China. Therefore, we were asked to speak on the subject to actually quite a few children. It was such a privilege! Here Daddy is seen holding up a globe and showing how far away China is, and how you could go straight through the globe if you wanted to take a short cut. Remember Alice? As she fell in the long hole towards Wonderland, she wondered if she could fall all the way to China. Mommy and Daddy didn't take that route though.

We got in an airplane.

Take a look at Madison here. She's our little helper! Notice how Mommy dressed all of us up today for the presentation - we were in our Chinese best. Madison looked absolutely stunning in her red dress, and was quite the little helper for us, hoisting up pictures and images for all to see, as Mommy and Daddy talked about different things from China. Mommy brought along a whole lot of different items and put them on display on a long table for all to see:

These are just a tiny part of our collection. You can see a tiny terracotta warrior, several books, chopsticks, dolls from Nanning, and of course Madison's first birthday gift from us: the panda bear. She's named him Po, by the way.

You can see her sharing with some of the students one of the mascots from the Chinese Olympics. There were five different mascots, and Madison has dolls representing each one. She walked around the classroom with different objects throughout the course of the presentation, showing them off as Mommy or Daddy spoke. And sometimes, she just sat and watched us from the side:

After we spoke to the older kids, we were invited to speak to the younger ones as well! So we dragged the table down there and set things up, and then talked to those children about China, doing our little lesson once more.

We adjusted our conversation a bit to talk to a younger, smaller audience, but they soaked it up just fine. We had a wonderful time. And Madison was still just as enthused. She's shown above, sharing her cloisonné bracelet - one stop in China had us watching people actually make these. It was a tourist trap: we bought one before we left, of course!

It was a great day. Mommy and Daddy spent a few hours preparing for the lesson - we did some more research and together we put together what turned out to be a nice presentation that hopefully everyone learned a bit from. While there are probably those who know a lot more about this subject, we do happen to have a little experience, so we were happy to volunteer and share what we knew - and we had a great time doing it.