Asian-Pacific American Heritage Blog Hop: Asian Crafts

 

In honor of Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month, Multicultural Kid Blogs is sponsoring a blog hop, and you are invited! We are celebrating the cultures and peoples of this diverse region by sharing our posts and asking other bloggers to do the same! Our hope is to create a wonderful resource for celebrating Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month with children. Be sure to visit the co-hosts of the blog hop (listed below) and share your own posts at the linky at the bottom! You can find even more resources on this region in our Asia and Australia and Oceania boards on Pinterest!

Co-Hosts

Multicultural Kid Blogs Crafty Moms Share Bicultural Mama Finding Dutchland Kid World Citizen Marie's Pastiche All Done Monkey Tiny Tapping Toes Creative World of Varya Miss Panda Chinese

For the blog hop we decided to share some of the Asian-Pacific Island crafts we have been doing as well as a few books we have enjoyed! We have been having fun exploring games, puzzles, stories and crafts! For our crafts we used three books as our main resources: Asian-American Crafts Kids Can Do! by Sarah Hartman, Hands-On Asia: Art Activities for All Ages by Yvonne Y. Merrill, and Asian Crafts by Judith Hoffman Corwin.

We started by looking at China with a Chinese Tanagram Puzzle. I made one from a square piece of memo paper. I copied the line placement from Asian Crafts.

Then I showed Hazel the pictures of ways to arrange the shapes and she chose some of her favorites and made them. For more ideas on looking at China, check out the posts here.

Next we looked at Japan with some origami. I made some shapes for Hazel and she and I made a few.

To make these origami animals, we followed instructions from two books: Super Quick Origami Animals by Nick Robinson and Making Origami Animals Step by Step by Michael G. La Fosse. One of the things I really liked about making origami and about the tanagram is that you can review geometrical shapes. We talked about folding the paper into rectangles or triangles. For older children you can go into more detail and talk about right triangles, etc. 

We also made Japanese fans. Now Hazel has a thing for fans, so she loved this. We followed instructions using Asian-American Crafts Kids Can Do! except instead of cutting out circles we used paper plates. To make them you need a paper plate or a paper circle and three popsicle/craft sticks. Two of the sticks are glued in a v-shape next to the handle stick to support your circle. For more ideas on looking at Japan, check out here.

We also had fun making a Nepal snow leopard mask. Hazel pointed out how we saw snow leopards at the zoo recently. Again I used a paper plate and cut the pattern we found in Hands-On Asia. Not reading the directions closely I cut out the eyes to make it a wearable mask instead of a piece of art. Then I let Hazel have fun. I cut out the mouth, tongue and ears for her as well as using the book's pattern for the nose.

I also followed the instructions in Asian Crafts for a simplified version of Pachisi, a game from India. I decided to make it on the computer instead of hand drawing all the squares. As a result, you can download what I made by clicking the picture above or here. We decided to use glass beads and rocks as the playing pieces. Hazel could not wait to play and started to play with Ducky. 

To start you put the piece on its matching color in the corner of the board. The first person rolls the die (you have to make one either by cutting mine out and taping it together or getting a wooden cube and painting/coloring sides). If the person rolls his or her own color they get to move one square counterclockwise and then roll again. If the person rolls white, they just get to roll again. If they roll any other color the turn is over and the die goes to the person to the right. Once the piece makes its way around the board the player than has to go up the center spoke on their color. The person to make it to the middle first wins. For more ideas on learning about India, check out these posts.

Hazel's and Ducky's Game In Play

We have also been enjoying some stories from the different countries and about children adjusting to moving from the country to America and such. Here are some of our favorites. 

For more book choices, check out my Asian-Pacific Book Round-Up post. For all of our Asian-Pacific Island related posts check out here. And of course check out all the great ideas shared in this blog hop!! Feel free to share your Asian-Pacific crafts, books, and more as well!!

An InLinkz Link-up