Unit Study on India

We recently studied India as our family’s country of choice for the International Feast Night we had with some other homeschool families. We had a blast and learned so much about India. We kicked it off by reading The Hidden Village by Bonnie Rose Hudson. Read my review to learn more about that book.

After learning about Manju and the world he lived in, we watched some videos. These videos taught us a lot about West Bengal, the part of India that the book was set in. We learned about Bengal Tigers, jute harvesting, the uses of jute, mangroves, markets in West Bengal, foods, mongoose, and more. There are a lot of things to learn about.

We also learned that West Bengal is just one of the part of India, which is extremely diverse. To learn about other parts of India, we used several resources from SchoolhouseTeachers.com. This is a site that we use often through the year and it provided us lots of good information on India. From the video titled India Unveiled in a series titled Trek to the Holy Land to a history study titled A Splash of Geography with a section on India, we had access to lots of good information and images. We looked at, but did not use, lapbooking sets on the rhino and the Bengal Tiger, both available at SchoolhouseTeachers.com. By far, the best resource on this site was Asia: Trade Route Safari (also by Bonnie Rose Hudson, who wrote The Hidden Village that we kicked the study off with). We learned a ton from the India sections of this study.

We used an art project that is available as a lesson from ArtAchieve. In level 1, there is a study of wood block printing in India. This is how they print fabric for the saris. Miss J created this print using the techniques of this art lesson and some videos from their cross-curricular materials.

Miss L studied the sari and decided to duplicate it with material on two of our 18 inch dolls. They were adorable.

We also used a set of notebooking pages from Hip Homeschool Moms titled Around The World Notebook Pages. These were neatly put together. The girls were able to research information for them easily and it was easy to for them to complete the pages.

As this was a feast, we took food from India that we had cooked, as well. Our menu consisted of:

• Butter Chicken
• Picnic Rice (rice with curd/yogurt)
• Apple and Raisin Chutney
• Naan
• Gajar Halwa Ladoo (Carrot and coconut truffles)
• Bhapa Doi

The recipes came from these two food blogs from India – Chef de Home and Fun FOOD and Frolic. There are tons more recipes on these two blogs and I would definitely like to try a few more.

At the feast, the girls set up a display table with their information and projects. Each family also took a few minutes to talk about what they learned, giving each child a few moments. (Great public speaking practice!) The students also had to introduce their menu and describe each of the foods so that everyone could know what they were eating. This was a fun night.

Hopefully, this will give you some resources for your own study of India. This is a very large, diverse country and we have barely touched on it. Perhaps we will cover some more during the springtime when we need a diversion one day. So much more to learn!

Blessings,
At Home.

This post is included in the Homeschool Collection at the Homeschool Review Crew. Click the image below to see the entire collection of posts for March 2019.

Tagged: food, geography, history, notebooking, recipes