Level 2: India Unit Study

Let’s dig a bit deeper into the the map of India. Print this coloring sheet of the country. Using your world map or atlas, help your child to color it and label the following landmarks:

• The capital of India, New Delhi
• The Himalaya Mountains
• The Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal
• The Ganges River

The streets of major Indian cities are infamous for their traffic. One way that people get around these crowded streets is a kind of taxi called a tuk tuk. Click here to learn more about this cool vehicle, and then build your own out of LEGOs or with any materials you have on hand.

One famous animal that is highly respected in India? The Indian elephant! Elephants are often decorated and dressed up for important festivals, like the Elephant Festival in Jaipur, which happens as part of the Holi celebrations. You can learn more about the festival here, and then click here for a video of this gorgeous procession.

Do you know how to tell an Indian elephant and an African elephant apart? Watch this video to learn the differences, and then let’s make a decorated Indian elephant craft. You will need cardstock (blue or gray and pink, orange, or other desired colors), glue, embellishments like rhinestones and stickers, and a googly eye (optional).

Begin by printing this template onto a piece of blue or gray cardstock. Cut out the elephant. Use your other cardstock to create an ear, a blanket for the elephant’s back, and/or a headdress. Embellish further with your rhinestones, stickers, or other craft supplies, decorating the trunk, feet, and adding jewelry as desired. Finally, add a googly eye for the elephant (or you can draw one on).

Your elephant is ready for the parade!

While monsoon season brings good things for the people in India, it also means lots of rain! Let’s play off of this with this STEM challenge on how to make a good umbrella.

Did you see all the peacocks in our book? Peafowl are native to India, and they are the national bird. Let’s learn more about these beautiful birds from this website, and then let’s make a peacock craft. You will need this template, cardstock (blue, green, and orange—you can also use orange craft foam for more texture), glue, google eyes, and paint (blue, green, and gold).

Print the first piece of the template on green cardstock and the second on blue. (You can decide to print a second copy of the second sheet on orange paper, or simply use the template to cut out an orange beak and feet using cardstock or craft foam.)

Cut out the peacock parts and glue the bird body onto the circle. Glue the beak and feet, as well as two googly eyes.

Finally, use their finger (or a small brush) to create dots of layered blue, green, and gold on the bird’s tail.

In our Modern-Day Egypt Unit, your child learned how to write their name in Arabic. Now, let’s learn how to do it in Hindi, the most commonly spoken language in India! Type their name on this website, and then copy the Hindi letters into a word document to print them larger. Have your child copy the letters underneath for a new take on copywork!

Our book discusses several math concepts, so pick an idea from the list below—or do several throughout the week if your child is engaged!

• In our book, Baghat is actually using a form of binary (or base two) counting to pay for his room at the inn. In our Fall Harvest Unit, we introduced place values, or base 10, using number blocks. Let’s review that lesson today! If you need help getting started, watch our demonstration video here.
• Is binary code new to you? You probably use it a lot without even realizing. That’s because binary code is how computers talk and present information. The back of our book contains a helpful explanation of binary counting, but here are some basics you can share with your child:
  • Where base 10 has place values that increase by the power of ten (i.e ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, etc.), base two increases by powers of two (i.e. one, twos, fours, eights, sixteens, etc.).
  • Where base 10 has ten possible values for each digit (0-9), base two only allows two possible values: 0 or 1.
  • A 1 on a certain place indicates that place is added toward the final number. For example, the number 12 is written in base two as 1100. The first digit represents eights, the second fours, the third twos, and the fourth ones. So you would add 8+4+0+0 = 12!

If you’re scratching your head, don’t worry! Share the information with your child as a way to expose them to a new way of understanding numbers, but don’t stress if you don’t feel like they get it yet. You can also try this binary beading activity to represent your child’s birth date with binary code as a way of making a personal connection with this new way of writing numbers.

While Baghat is making his journey, he talks about dividing music notes. If you were with us for our Clouds + Weather Unit, your child knows how to do this, too! Review how notes can be divided with our Rain, Rain Go Away Rhythm Activity, or you can introduce half and whole notes with this new activity.

Henna scratch art.

Another famous Indian animal? The Bengal tiger! (They’re actually India’s national animal!) Click here to learn more about Bengal tigers, and then do this tiger color-by-number.

Mahatma Ghandi is a famous historical figure with special meaning to India—but his legacy has impacted the world. Let’s watch this video to learn about how he changed history for India. (This article also has some great lessons children can learn from Ghandi.) Let’s make Ghandi the subject of our copywork practice today. Pick one of his famous quotes from this list and have your child copy it onto lined paper.

***Click here for more tips on how to do copywork.

Let’s get a little geometry practice by introducing (or reinforcing) your child’s understanding of pentagons (a 5-sided figure) and hexagons (a 6-sided figure) through a traditional Indian folk art called rangoli. Rangoli is a decorative folk art from India that is created on the ground in front of entrances to homes, inside the homes, or in courtyards during celebrations to bring good luck and welcome Hindu gods and goddesses. The details in rangoli decorations can include lotus flowers, mango leaves, geometric shapes, or other elaborate designs made of rice flour, colored sand, or even flower petals. (source) This video shows you some Indian people creating rangoli designs for a competition.

We’ll use rangoli as the inspiration for our math lesson. First, print these rangoli-inspired templates to introduce your child to pentagons and hexagons. Point out the number of sides and angles on each shape. Next, use this tutorial to color them in with colorful salt.

Let’s get a taste for Indian culture with this simple cookie recipe, a Coconut Ladoo.

Let’s try out some Bollywood-inspired dance of our own with this simple tutorial for kids!

Now let’s learn a bit about classical Indian music. One of the main differences between Western music and Indian music is how the music comes together. In Western music, there is typically a melody part (the main tune of a song that you find yourself humming when a song is stuck in your head) and a harmony part (which complements the melody and adds richness to the song). In Indian music, however, there is usually a melody (called the raga), a drone part (a single sustained note or series of notes that provide a background for the melody), and the rhythm (called the tala).

Let’s look deeper at the melody. Western music has two kinds of scales: major (think of “happy” tunes, like “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star) or minor (“sad” or dark sounding tunes, like “Chim Chim Cher-ee” from Mary Poppins). Indian music, though, has dozens of different ragas that set the mood of the piece in very specific detail, even being associated with a specific time of day or season. (source) Want to hear some examples? Click here and scroll down to the second “Try it!” with the audio recordings. Play each one and ask your child if they think it was associated with evening, the rainy season, and day break.

***Click here for more tips on how to turn a song into a lesson!

The Taj Mahal is one of the most famous examples of Indian architecture, and many people think it is the most beautiful building the world! Watch this brief video to learn some more facts about the construction of this amazing structure, and then click here to explore the Taj Mahal with Google Earth. Finally, let’s make this beautiful craft.