China Unit

Geography studies are a great way for your kids to learn about different countries, and with Chinese New Year being so recent a bunch of us have been looking for China activities for elementary kids.  What amazes me is how many amazing things there are to create a great China Unit for a geography lesson.

Hi, Future Ticia 2023 here, I’m updating this and completely revamping and changing this post, slowly. Why you ask? Well first because we redid our China unit again almost a decade later, and this lets me share it all here.

Next, because a lot of the blogs I’ve linked to are no longer published. Now back to past Ticia 2014. Oh! And there are affiliate links I’ll be adding in here.

I’m going to freely admit I’m doing this round-up more for my sake than everyone else’s because I want to do a belated Chinese New Year study with the kids tomorrow.

China Unit resources

Okay, there are so many books and things you can get.

Let’s talk about resources you can find online.

China booklist

There are so many books, like to the point I originally was going to have a separate Chinese New Year post. I still might do that, because this post will be insane otherwise.

China activities for elementary in the kitchen

•  Create edible maps of china
•  Make homemade noodles
•   Eat your way through China– I’m cheating this is an entire category of awesome recipes to try

China activities for elementary that require a mess

•  Chinese brush painting, Great Wall of China, and more
•  Chinese paper cutting
• Try Chinese calligraphy– seriously love the horse one
•  Chinese Dragon Toy
• Make paper
• Handprint dragon
• Chinese New Year crafts and Ideas
• How is tea made

China activities for elementary using technology

• Videos of traditional Chinese music
• Chinese New Year celebrations videos
•  Great collection of videos and online resources
• Thousand Hand Guan Yin (since it’s in one of the Asian languages, I’m not 100% certain this is from China, but it’s gorgeous to watch)

Chinese history ideas

• Make a timeline of Chinese history (cool figures included)
•  Organizing your study of China through notebooking
•  Great Wall of China

China Unit recipe: pan-fried noodles

Looking at the pictures from my recipe. I’m pretty sure I can say this is a very Americanized recipe. So, yes, I know this is not authentic Chinese cuisine.

I also absolutely adore this meal, so I will happily take any excuse to make it.

Stir-fried noodles ingredients

• 1-2 pounds of skirt steak
• chopped onions
• broccoli
• beef or chicken broth
• oyster sauce
• minced garlic
• cornstarch
• soy sauce
• spaghetti noodles
• oil for frying

Mx. Granger, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons