Mommie_Jen Posted April 25, 2012 Share Posted April 25, 2012 If you have a child adopted internationally, do you dedicate time to teaching them about their country of origin as part of history? My oldest is Ethiopian born. I have been doing some thinking and research about elementary age history. (we are just starting K) to me, it makes sense to teach him about Ethiopian history before American history, even though I don't have a lot of resources. It would actually probably just be a few weeks or a month that we spend on it, especially at a young age. Maybe even not so much covering the whole history, but some basic facts, basic history, and books about life there. Does anyone else make it a point to cover life in the country your child was born? If so, how? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deerforest Posted April 25, 2012 Share Posted April 25, 2012 My daughter is Guatemalan, and we have spent most of this year studying ancient Mesoamerica and the native people, including the Maya. It is incredibly important to me that she have a solid understanding of the pre-exploration/colonization history of the Americas. We will spend a lot more time on Latin American history too. I am not at all interested in SOTW so I am piecing it all together. I am very troubled as to how to handle more recent Guatemalan history and will likely wait until late middle school or high school for that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
missmoe Posted April 25, 2012 Share Posted April 25, 2012 My husband's family is from the Philippians. In elementary grades we spend time learning about its culture, language, and geography. Starting in the middle school years we start to tackle history. I'm lucky that I have the books my FIL used in school when he was in the Philippians. It's been an eye-opening experience for my kids to see how American history is looked at from that perspective. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haiku Posted April 25, 2012 Share Posted April 25, 2012 I don't do it as part of school. We just keep books and things from their country around the house, talk about them frequently, and follow any rabbit trails. My ds doesn't like to be singled out, and if I taught the history of his country as a school subject, he would feel singled out. Tara Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beth in SW WA Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 My younger dds are Chinese (adopted at age 1) and we talk about China a lot. We are starting to study the culture, history and geography more formally and they meet their new Mandarin tutor on Saturday. We just started BetterChinese. They LOVE it. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rutamattatt Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 Our daughter was adopted from Latvia as an older child (13 at time of adoption), so she has her own personal frame of reference in many ways for her country's culture, etc. Right now she is NOT interested in much about her home country as it is very important to her to be identified as an American and a "regular" part of our family. However our family does some things naturally as a part of being a newly formed Latvian-American family with culture, language, and customs. We WILL do formal history about Latvia in the future, not only for her, but for her brothers who need to know all they can about this country now as well. Emotionally though, it isn't yet the time for our daughter to delve into too much from "back there". (I am excited about doing it though! Such an amazing history and story of this little country!!!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaffodilDreams Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 Discovering and enjoying dd's country of birth has always just been a part of life for us. Because her birth country is a major world player, it does come up in our history studies, but that's not intentional on our part. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freeindeed Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 My youngest is adopted from China, and we celebrate Chinese holidays. We also have stacks of books (both fiction & non-fiction) about or related to China. Also, our upcoming school year will be focused on the entire Easern Hemisphere (Sonlight Core F), so we will be learning a lot about China then as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monalisa Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 I have two daughters from China, but only one is school age. We have studied China as we've gone through SOTW, but have read other books that I've found at the library and do some of the holidays (Chinese New Year for instance). At some point, I'm going to do a unit study on China that I bought at a convention, but it is beyond my dd9's abilities at the moment. Mostly we incorporate it casually. I do want them to know a lot about China and feel pride in the culture where they were born, but at the same time I am not wanting to make it such a huge part of their identity that it dwarfs the other facets of who they are. Just my personal opinion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beth in SW WA Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 My youngest is adopted from China, and we celebrate Chinese holidays. We also have stacks of books (both fiction & non-fiction) about or related to China. Also, our upcoming school year will be focused on the entire Easern Hemisphere (Sonlight Core F), so we will be learning a lot about China then as well. I just bought Sonlight F from a friend for that reason. We will do just the China section next year. Tons there to work with for a couple years. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lea1 Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 Hmmm, this is not something I had thought about yet, although my two sons are from Russia. We will likely just spend a little extra time learning about it when it comes up in our history studies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pink and Green Mom Posted April 28, 2012 Share Posted April 28, 2012 My boys were adopted from Kazakhstan in 2005 (one was 4, the other was almost 1). For geography last year, we would study one country per week and made sure to include Kaz as one of the countries. I didn't really do much extra per se, because it is sort of hard to find books or anything from the library about Kazakhstan. Not school related, but we do celebrate New Year's Eve twice - once for midnight in Kaz (which occurs at 3 pm here), and once for midnight here (if they make it that long). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Celia Posted April 28, 2012 Share Posted April 28, 2012 My dd (currently in K) is adopted from Ethiopia as well, and I've wanted to do something like that for her. If you want to brainstorm ideas and come up with a unit study together, I'd work with you to do so! I'm thinking maybe a simple lapbook about some of the significant places and holidays could be fun! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laura Corin Posted April 28, 2012 Share Posted April 28, 2012 Mine grew up in China and I included a year of Chinese history. Laura Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cin Posted April 28, 2012 Share Posted April 28, 2012 My kids are from China and Vietnam. At some point, I will probably put together an in-depth history unit for them about their birth countries. We haven't talked a whole lot about Vietnam because everything we find is about the war. And, aside from the general depravity of war, I can't even begin to tackle the politics of it. Please don't start a tangent with this.... But if anybody has some good resources for those things, I'd love to know! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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