Chapter 33 deals with Confucius, tangrams and tea. We drank tea. Not green tea, because we stay away from caffeine, nor mint tea, as suggested in the activity book, because we did not have any on hand. I started a tea pot and placed three Bigelow Orange and Spice tea bags (affiliate link) in our respective tea cups.
Our tea bags steeping in the cups
They remembered how we used to drink tea with cake or cookies or scones in the winter and at our recent afternoon tea at Buckhorn Inn, so they decided they wanted some pumpkin pie with their tea. (We made pumpkin pie yesterday so they knew we had some in the fridge.) It was a lot of fun and we talked about how tea originated in China, but it is now the national drink in the United Kingdom, India and many other countries.
They colored Confucius and cut up the tangrams.
I set up the desk for them to work on before they got there.
We own a set of magnetic tangrams called Travel Tangoes (affiliate link), which gives you 24 images to build with tangrams. My daughter chose a squirrel and we built one together with the tangrams she just cut up.
Tangram Squirrel
The kids loved the story of Confucius and his teachings. My son actually started applying one of the sayings given in the history book to a situation we dealt with the night before. We stopped history (so to speak) and conversed about that instead. It showed me that he really is a thinker and applies wisdom to every day situation.
