A Study of India for Young Children

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This week in our homeschool co-op, we studied the country of India via the book One Grain of Rice, A Mathematical Folk Tale, by Demi,

Our Co-op is using books as part of the Five in a Row Curriculum.

In Five in a Row, the idea is to read the book to the child for five days in a row. Each time the child gets more familiar with the book and illustrations. When done in a co-op setting, the parent reads the book to the child four times, and then we read it for the last time in class and do projects and follow rabbit trails related to the book.

The Lesson Plan:

About the book:

One Grain of Rice is the story of an Indian leader, The Raja, and a simple village girl named Rani. The Raja has been storing all of the rice in case of a famine, but when the famine strikes, he refuses to release the rice to the hungry people. Rani uses her wit and mathematical wisdom to get the Raja to voluntarily give the rice to her, one grain of rice at a time!

Bible:

There are two familiar bible themes in this book. The author did study with Catholic nuns as part of her education so maybe this explains why these parts of the story are so familiary.

The Raja saving grains in storehouses for a time of famine is reminiscent of the story of Joseph, who tells the Pharaoh of Egypt to save grain in warehouses to prepare for the upcoming long 7-year famine.

Rani going before the great Raja brings to mind the story of Queen Esther, bravely going before her husband the king.

Geography:

India is 1/3 the size of the United States but has approximately 4 times the people. It has the second largest population.

India is a peninsula, surrounded by water on three sides. The northern border is made up of the Himalayan mountains!

There are three seasons in India: Hot/wet (monsoon), hot/dry, and cool/dry.

India is home to tigers, elephants and rhinos.

Culture:

The main languages in India are Hindi and English, but there are over 1000 local languages as well!

The main sports in India are cricket and soccer.

Indian families tend to be multi-generational, with grandparents, parents, children, and in-laws living together.

Indian food is spicy! In fact, 3/4 of the world’s spices come from India including cardamon, cumin, cayenne, cinnamon, turmeric, and ginger.

We also talked briefly about Hinduism and what Hindus believe.

Science:

We talked about rice being a carbohydrate for energy to maintain stamina and body function. We also discussed a little bit about starvation, which we will get into more next week.

History:

We read the story of the Taj Mahal and about Shah Juhan and Mumtaz Mahal, who fell in love as teenagers and were parted after she died giving birth to their 14th child. Her last wish to her husband was that he would build her a beautiful tomb, which I thought was very wise because it gave him a project to focus on instead of his deep grief.

We also discussed that when the English ruled India, they almost tore the Taj Mahal down, but it was renovated and is now one of India’s main tourist attractions.

Activities:

We made a spicy Indian dish and a sweeter one for the kids to sample. I made them at home, and then brought them to co-op to heat up the spicy home. The sweeter one was kept cold. For the savory dish, I cooked the rice and chicken and then poured in the Tika Msala Sauce. For the sweeter dish I just used rice, cream, and raisins. I discovered the kids either liked one or the other, but not both! It varied from kid to kid.

We did a doubling game with one grain of rice, and then two and then four. we also talked about how if the rice was money, how much they would have by the end of 30 days!

We did this art craft of the Taj Mahal from the Crafty Classroom.

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Before we ate, we also talked about India being the movie capital fo the world, and Bollywood. Then we did two workouts based on Indian culture mixed with Bollywood moves! The kids loved them and they were also super tough for the adults!

A couple of things to note: I learned the moves to these two videos FIRST. Then I taught them to the kids before we did them together. I think that helped. The boys absolutely would NOT do the first one with just the all-girl cast, but they were excited to do the one where there was a male lead – so know your audience!! I have mostly girls in the class so we started out with the first one and then did the second. It worked out.

At the end of the class, I just put these on while we were cleaning up and I still had a good handful of girls dancing to these workouts, so I guess that was a success!