Non-Schooling Play date {Thailand}

Yesterday I coordinated our first Non-Schooling Play Date with a few families in our community. We met a central park and as part of our curriculum discussed Thailand including stories, food and a craft.  Here's a photo recap.:

 as families arrived we set up blankets for story time.

The littles gathered leaves for our craft project and soon enough everyone had arrived so we started our lesson.

I brought the globe so the kids could see where Thailand is on the earth.

And Gretchen read a story; Tiger, Tiger by Dee Lilegard.

After the Thai story we tried a few new snacks.

I'm not event sure what these all were but my kids enjoyed those chip things with the crab on the front.

Thai Iced Tea. 

Mangos, Pineapple and Banana some of my favorite fruits, very popular in Thailand.

After our snacks we started our craft which was inspired by the floating "boats" at the Loy Krathong festivals source 1, 2, and 3 {below}.

I went with something a bit simpler and we created origami folded paper boxes decorated with leaves and hand drawn flowers.

Here's how to fold the box.

While I was instructing the art portion of the lesson, Vera decided to play in the water mess the kids made at the fountain earlier. So there's that.

Finally, the kids completed their boxes with all their decorations.

We thought about letting them put them in the water to float around but they would have been trash after that so the kids {and parents} opted to keep them, if we had really planned ahead we could have made them, then dipped them in wax so they would be water resistant, maybe next time!

Another Thai craft idea here.

Thai lunch to go here.

Paper floating lanterns how to here and here {we didn't do them because of the desert}

AND there are more homeschooling resources for early childhood here on my pinterest board.