March 8, 2010

Tails from Thailand

I had the awesome privilege of spending two months in Thailand when I was 16. The country and it's kind, generous people made an indelible impression on my young soul. To this day, I love all things Thai. So it is no surprise that when we decided to sponsor a child through Compassion, I chose a little Thai girl. We pray for Aom nightly, but I wanted to get the girls more invested in their Thai sister, so we are learning all about her homeland this week.


Peek!: A Thai Hide-and-Seek by Minfong Ho

Peek!: A Thai Hide-and-SeekWe love this book! The illustrations are gorgeous, full-color eye-candy and the story is simple and precious. A father plays Jing-Ay (Thai for Peek-a-boo) with his daughter. She hides all around their home while her father keeps finding animals instead of his daughter. The animals start off simple and common, like a dog and a bird, but move more exotic and dangerous: snake, elephant, tiger. Eventually the father has had enough and begs his daughter to come out!

Both of my girls (5 and 19 months) enjoyed the book. A liked pointing at the different animals and E loved trying to find the little girl hiding in each picture. I loved that the inside of the book is covered in Thai writing. It's a wonderful introduction to the sights and animals of another country!

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To go along with the book, I created a Thai-themed Sensory Bin for A to play with this morning. I filled it with rice (of course!) and added chopsticks and animals found in the book.

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She promptly evicted the animals and spent her time drawing in the rice with the chopsticks.

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After the fun of that activity wore off, I drew a R for rice with glue on construction paper and let her drop handfuls of rice on top. When we shook it off we had a beautiful letter R!

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Tomorrow we're going to read another book by Minfong Ho and explore what it's like to live in a Thai village!

Thank you to everyone for your kind comments and emails concerning my father's passing. We had a beautiful memorial service for him, and though we continue to grieve, I am grateful to get back into our daily routine... including blogging!

I'm linking up to: What My Child is Reading

6 comments:

  1. I will be going to Thailand in 3 months time!! Going to spend it with my brother who lives there YAY. Interesting to see your post :)

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  2. PS Where did you go????? Just an inquiring mind, it will be my 5th time visiting him yippee (yes I am excited lol)

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  3. I'm so jealous! I spent a month in Chang Mai and a month in Bangkok with a week in Pattaya. We also visited a couple mountain villages and some towns surrounding Bangkok. I would love to go again and bring my husband, but I'm not sure I could do that plane ride again. It's just about as far from here as one can get!

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  4. Evicted the animals??? A and Z would not approve of their cousin's toy choice :). Hope she's feeling better soon.

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  5. I love the picture inside the book. I don't know of a child that wouldn't love to see the illustrations! I also love your activities to go with the book. Funny how your daughter wanted to evict the animals!

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  6. Thank you for joining this week! This book looks delicious, and I am adding it to our list of books to read about exotic destinations. I am pretty sure that my daughter would have evicted animals as well - she is not exactly into animals despite reading so many books about them.

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