Recently, I broke away from the public school version of teaching Language Arts and started messing about Well, not really, but having fun is more like it. I found the public school curriculum extremely tedious and boring. After going to my shrink, I’m trying some new things, and amongst those things is Family Reading every evening. We pick a good book, read it as a family, and study the background of the book from a geographical and historical perspective. I guess it takes on more of a unit studies look after you incorporate other subjects too. This is my first attempt at this, so I am by no means an expert.

al-Hamdu lillaah, our family just finished another great book together: A Single Shard, by Linda Sue Park. Razzy recommended it, and as usual, it’s quite a recommendation! In fact, we began our daily reading on the 7th Chapter last evening. We were so hooked that we ended up staying up till midnight finishing the book! Now see, this wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for my husband, because he was filled with so much excitement about the story that he kept insisting that I continue reading aloud. Even Missy (my younger daughter) was wide awake through the reading, so it must have been a great hit. I didn’t anticipate we would finish so quickly, hoping to cover some other activities related to the book yesterday afternoon, but alas, it will have to be done today in sha Allah.

This is the third book we’ve covered as a family, al-Hamdu lillaah, and ever since our first book, and especially the second one, reading together has now become a family addiction. It’s so much better than watching a movie! Aside from the benefits of reading to one’s children, it’s exercising your imagination which makes the experience so much more exciting, and it’s a great way to spend time as a family.

Anyway, in our effort to incorporate some activities around the story, I came up with a few of the following resources and activities (I’m sure more and better resources could be found, but I’ll get the hang of it eventually):

• Virtual Pot Throw
• Behind the Scenes
• How to Make Kim Chi
• Hidden Korea
• Korean Celadon Pottery
• Color or make the flag of Korea
• Color or label a map of 12th Century Korea
• Make Korean Barbecued Beef
• Play “rock, scissors, paper.” (See 20 Interesting Things about Korea, #1)
• Read other books about Korea (also Razzy Recs!!)

1. Halmoni and the Picnic
2. Yumni and Halmoni’s Trip
3. Peach Heaven
4. Good-bye, 382 Shin Dang Dong

• Create a Korea Fact Sheet (with map, flag, population, capital city, religion, type of government, currency, language, and what the people are called)
• Korea
• WebQuest for 7th Grade Social Studies
• Get to Know Korea (Teacher’s Resource Guide, University of Oregon)

And finally, 20 interesting things about Korea:

1. The game “rock, scissors, paper” originated in Korea where it was called, “kawi, bawi, bo.”

2. South Korea is also known as ‘Hermit Kingdom’ and ‘Land of the Morning Calm’.

3. The bars of the S. Korean flag represent (going in a circle clockwise, starting from the upper left): Heaven, Water, Earth, and Fire.

4. Chinese scholars had devised a kind of printing system using carved wooden blocks. Koreans took this invention one step further and created the first world’s first metal moveable type in the 12th century.

5. About a thousand years ago Korean potters learned how to make a special kind of fine, blue-green glazed pottery called celadon. Korean artisans adopted the technique and it became one of Korea’s great cultural emblems.

6. Dried squid is a favorite snack.

7. Koreans eat many preserved foods because these had to be made for keeping over wintertime. Every traditional household has large earthenware pots filled with pickled vegetables (kim chee), soybean pastes, and chile pastes. Even today, apartment buildings in any city will have row upon row of preserving pots set out on apartment balconies.

8. Tae Kwan Do originated from Korea and is the country’s national sport.

9. The national flower is the Rose of Sharon because it symbolizes the trials its people have endured as well as the victories and prosperity it has seen.

10. Hangul is the Korean name of the language. The alphabet was created by King Sejong in 1446. The alphabet is extremely easy to learn, which gives Korea one of the highest literacy rates in the World.

11. There are actually two Korean New Years. This is because Koreans go by two calenders; one being the same people use in the West, and the other being the lunar calender.

12. Its largest and capital city is Seoul, which is the world’s second-largest metropolitan city.

13. Confucianism, shamanism (traditional spirit worship), Christianity, Buddhism and Chondokyo (Religion of the Heavenly Way) are the religions followed in South Korea.

14. The Korean language is related to the Mongolian and Japanese languages. A large number of Chinese cognates exist in the Korean language. Around 1,300 Chinese characters are used in modern Korean.

15. S. Korea has 63 daily newspapers.

16. S. Korea is the seventh largest fishing industry in the world.

17. In 1910, Korea became a Japanese colony. Korea was under Japanese rule for 35 years.

18. The eldest in the house is considered the most wise, and therefore makes most of the important decisions.

19. When the first night of the new year comes everybody hides their shoes. This is because there is a belief that a ghost will come down and try on everyone’s shoes. If the ghost finds a pair it likes it will take it. It is thought that the owner of the shoes will then have bad luck for the whole year.

20. The Korean hanbok (a type of clothing) represents one of the most visible aspects of Korean culture.